Botha remains unrepentant
It is a measure of the spirit in which the new South Africa was born that the likes of Pieter Willem Botha are allowed to enjoy liberty and the freedom of expression that they, when they held on to the country's top offices, once considered such a danger. It is a measure of the meanness of spirit of the former state president of South Africa that he has shunned the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The commission, established on the ruins of the edifice of apartheid championed by Botha when he was state president from 1978 to 1989, has been a bold and worthy experiment. It has drawn some of the poison left over from the apartheid era that to this day remains a threat to the aspirations of South Africans.
P.W. Botha has chosen to go to court rather than make a contribution to the process to heal wounds administered through the armed and brutal enforcers of apartheid who obeyed his every order. In testimony to the court, empowered to do little other than impose a modest fine for his failure to go before the commission, Botha said he wanted nothing to do with what he termed a circus. Even though he was not on trial for the excesses carried out while he was the chief executive of the white minority regime, Botha told the court he would not apologize for his actions in office. There was nothing, he stressed, to apologize for.
Perhaps, at 82, Botha's memory is not what it was. In absolving himself he forgot, apparently, about the state or emergency that claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people, about the state's murderous game of divide and rule and its chosen brand of terrorism. It was striking that Botha chose to speak in a court of law on the subject that was pertinent to the commission.
Botha may not realize it, but he has painted himself into a corner in his strident and ill-tempered crusade against the commission. By staying away and holding forth elsewhere on matters irrelevant, he has shown himself to be little more than a fugitive not from punishment or the law but from the concepts of truth and reconciliation.
The former state president might be the toast of reactionary afrikanerdom but by his actions has shown himself in his true colors, those of an embittered racist who is bewildered at the decency with which he is being treated by a people who endured the brutal oppression of his rule.
-- The Bangkok Post