Former South African president, P.W. Botha, has died at his home in Wilderness on the country’s southern coast. He was 90. VOA’s Delia Robertson has this profile on the man who introduced some reforms in apartheid South Africa, but who also established a shadowy parallel government that ruthlessly oppressed opposition, assassinated opponents and was involved in widespread state-sponsored violence.
Immediately after being elected Prime Minister of South Africa in 1978, P.W. Botha stood on the steps of parliament in Cape Town and promised the country a streamlined government that would administer openly, honestly and fairly.
When pushed from power by his cabinet colleagues in 1989 he had established himself as an executive president presiding over a bankrupt administration that spent 20 percent of the national budget on defense; and included nine so-called homelands for black South Africans operating at varying degrees of nominal independence.
Most importantly he had put in place the so-called State Security Council, a shadowy parallel government whose tentacles reached into every aspect and level of South African society. The Council, in which he had the final say, was drawn primarily from defense and intelligence structures and included some members of cabinet, but by-passed parliament altogether.
One isn’t supposed to speak ill of the dead.
Dunno why not, if someones a tosser when they’re alive, dying just makes them a dead tosser.
P.W. Botha. Unrepentant Racist.
Tosser.
Labels: Dead Tossers
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