CAPE TOWN, South Africa – P.W. Botha, the apartheid-era president who led South Africa through its worst racial violence and deepest international isolation, died Tuesday. He was 90.
Botha died at his home on the southern Cape coast, according to the South African Press Association.
Nicknamed the “Old Crocodile” for his feared temper and sometimes ruthless manner, Botha served as head of the white racist government from 1978 to 1989.
Throughout his leadership he resisted mounting pressure to free South Africa’s most famous political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Mandela was released by Botha’s successor, F.W. de Klerk in 1990.
Botha liked to depict himself as the first South African leader to pursue race reform, but he tenaciously defended the framework of apartheid, sharply restricting the activities of black political organizations and detaining more than 30,000 people.
Through a series of liberalizing moves, Botha sought support among the Asian and mixed-race communities by creating separate parliamentary chambers. He lifted restrictions on interracial sex and marriage. He met with Mandela during his last year as president.
But after each step forward, there was a backlash, resulting in the 1986 state of emergency declaration and the worst reprisals of more than four decades of apartheid.
Botha’s reprisals against the black majority’s uprisings in 1986 drew international economic sanctions against South Africa during the 1980s that contributed to apartheid’s fall.
From Herald news services
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