Pik Botha, South Africa’s Last Apartheid Foreign Minister, Dies at 86
Pik Botha, South Africa’s longtime foreign minister, whose defense of apartheid was tempered by flashes of recognition of the system’s injustice, and who went on to serve in Nelson Mandela’s unity government, died on Friday at his home on the outskirts of Pretoria. He was 86.
His death was confirmed by his son Piet.
Mr. Botha was a busy figure on the world diplomatic scene as foreign minister from the late 1970s through the ’80s, a time of deepening unrest in South Africa, when the government crackdown on protests to white rule was growing increasingly violent.
It was also a time of rising international pressure against the racist regime. Mr. Botha fought the imposition of Western sanctions on his country.
A bluff, plain-spoken man popular with the white electorate and a jocular off-the-record drinking companion of journalists, Mr. Botha at times showed a moderate streak rarely found among his hard-line party fellows.
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In 1970, during his first address to Parliament as a member, he urged the government to subscribe to the United Nations Universal Declaration on Human Rights, a move that had been strongly resisted.
In 1974, while serving as South Africa’s ambassador to the United Nations, he stated that discrimination on the basis of skin color — the foundation of apartheid rule — was indefensible.
And in 1986, with the end of apartheid approaching, he said at a press briefing, “It would possibly become unavoidable that in the future you might have a black president of this country,” as long as minority rights were guaranteed. The president of South Africa, P. W. Botha (no relation), forced him to retract the statement.
Pik Botha served as foreign minister from 1977 until democratic elections in 1994 ended apartheid. He joined the Mandela-led coalition government — comprising the African National Congress, which had waged the fight against white-minority rule, and the formerly ruling National Party — as minister of minerals and energy. But he left two years later, when his party pulled out, and retired from politics.
Mr. Botha was “one of the few” from his party “who recognized at an early stage that apartheid was a wrong and crime against humanity,” the A.N.C. said in a statement after his death.
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President Cyril Ramaphosa, himself a prominent anti-apartheid leader, said Mr. Botha “would be remembered for his support for South Africa’s transition to democracy and for his service in the first democratic administration,” according to a statement from his office.
Mr. Botha declared his support for the African National Congress in 2000.
“Afrikaners, whites should support the A.N.C.,” he said in interviews. “We cannot just continue with blacks voting A.N.C. and whites voting for the opposition. I want to break with the racist attitudes of the past.” Some news reports said he had actually joined the A.N.C., but he denied this years later.
Roelof Frederick Botha was born on April 27, 1932, in Rustenburg, about 80 miles west of Pretoria. His father, also named Roelof Frederick, was a schoolteacher; his mother, Maria Elizabeth (Dreyer) Botha, was a homemaker.
Mr. Botha was educated in Potchefstroom, to the south and closer to Johannesburg, and received a law degree from the University of Pretoria.
His nickname, Pik, is short for pikkewyn, Afrikaans for penguin. He acquired it later on, some thought, because of his resemblance to that bird when he wore a suit.
Mr. Botha joined the foreign service and served in Sweden and West Germany. In 1963 he helped defend South Africa in a case brought by Liberia and Ethiopia against it in the International Court of Justice at The Hague, challenging its administration of South West Africa, which later became Namibia. The case was dismissed.
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In 1975 he was appointed ambassador to the United States while also serving as permanent representative to the United Nations.
As foreign minister, Mr. Botha was involved in the talks that led to Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980, and talks that preceded Namibia’s independence a decade later. He negotiated a delicate peace accord between South Africa and Mozambique in 1984.
Mr. Botha also helped broker an agreement that brought an end to a Cold War proxy struggle in Angola, which included South African forces on one side and Cuban troops on the other.
In addition to his son Piet, Mr. Botha’s survivors include his wife, Ina; another son, Roelof; two daughters, Anna Hertzog and Lien Botha; and a number of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. His first wife, Helena Bosman, died in 1996.
Toward the end of his life, Mr. Botha paid tribute to Nelson Mandela and the goal of racial coexistence.
“From our point of view, he led an organization which we regarded as a terrorist organization, and they saw themselves as freedom fighters,” he said in an interview with the BBC in 2013, the year Mr. Mandela died. “Of course, all of that had to change. It is not always that simple and easy to change, you know, mental attitudes, mind-sets, but eventually it did change.”
Speaking of Mr. Mandela, he said, “I so often experience his capacity to forgive, and then his will to improve the country, its systems, the poor black people, uplift them but without damaging the economy.”
He added, “Black and white in this country need each other to succeed.”