KEY POINTS:
JOHANNESBURG - Former South African President P.W. Botha, the defiant face of white rule at the height of the anti-apartheid struggle, died at his home on Tuesday aged 90.
Widely known as "The Great Crocodile", Botha, who presided over some of the worst excesses of the apartheid era during the 1970s and 1980s, had lived quietly in Wilderness, about 350km east of Cape Town, since being ousted in 1989.
"Botha died at home, peacefully," the South African Press Association quoted a member of his security staff, Frikkie Lucas, as saying. He had been taken to hospital briefly in October for what were described as routine tests.
Pieter Willem Botha, or P.W., saw South Africa spiral into anarchy under his watch as he kept a tough line against what he called the "total onslaught" of Communism and its partners in Africa's black liberation movements.
During his long political career, he softened some of the worst excesses of the white government. But he defied world opinion by quelling black unrest with draconian force.
His fall from grace in the National Party, led by the French and Dutch-descended Afrikaners who dominated South Africa for decades, mirrored the collapse of apartheid.
He was toppled in a cabinet rebellion in 1989 and replaced by F.W. de Klerk, who repudiated almost everything the finger-wagging hardliner had stood for, including the laws at the heart of the system of strict racial segregation.
De Klerk guided South Africa's white rulers through the delicate negotiations that ultimately brought the African National Congress (ANC), led by Nelson Mandela, to power in multi-racial elections in 1994.
De Klerk and Mandela shared a Nobel Peace prize for their efforts to create a new, non-racial South Africa that stood in stark opposition to Botha's vision for the country, while Botha spent his final decades politically isolated, but unrepentant.
Although his security forces killed more than 2000 people and an estimated 25,000 people were detained without trial and often tortured, he refused to apologise for apartheid and denied he had known about the torture and assassinations.
"Take me to court if you want to charge me! I will not appear in circuses!" he told reporters after being subpoenaed to testify to the state-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which blamed him for much of the horror of the last decade of white rule in its final report in 2003.
Botha had ultimately been unable to roll back white South Africa's increasing international isolation, and he resisted all attempts to demand accountability for apartheid's cruelties.
His legacy was rejected by both South Africa's new black-led government and the rump white National Party that eventually folded itself into the ANC.
Mandela, who Botha refused to free even after 27 years of imprisonment for plotting to overthrow white rule, was among the few visitors to his Wilderness sitting room - although even those visits did not last long.
Since leaving office, Botha had lived a quiet life with his second wife Barbara in a lagoon-side home on the Western Cape coast for almost two decades, occasionally emerging to launch broadsides at the ANC and defend white rule.
Asked in a television interview what would have happened if the black majority took control in 1948 - when Botha's National Party took power - he remained unwavering.
"I think by this time we would have been in the drain already," he said.
The ANC, which under President Thabo Mbeki continues to lead the country, issued a brief statement on his death.
"The ANC wishes his family strength and comfort at this difficult time," the party said.
De Klerk in his autobiography described Botha as an unpleasant bully who frittered away opportunities to improve South Africa's toxic racial politics.
But on Tuesday Botha's successor expressed regret at the passing of a man often associated with the last stand of South Africa's white hardliners, sending deep condolences to his relatives.
Botha is survived by his wife and his two sons and three daughters from his first marriage.
- REUTERS
