Who is pieter willem botha

His autocratic style and his increasingly evident inability to find a solution to the country's racial problems, plunged the country more and more into international isolation. While recuperating from a heart attack, he was replaced by de Klerk. Subjects: History — Contemporary History post View all reference entries ».

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Oxford Reference. Publications Pages Publications Pages. Recently viewed 0 Save Search. Your current browser may not support copying via this button. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. This cherished promotion precipitated a lifelong love of the military, including acts of war and covert operations at home and abroad.

Botha brought South Africa close to self-sufficiency in weaponry, circumventing the UN arms embargo where import substitution failed. The state-owned arms corporation produced cannon that were regarded as the best of their kind.

Major warships, the latest aircraft and helicopters were beyond reach, but three small submarines were acquired from France, while Israel proved a surprisingly willing partner in such joint enterprises as missiles - and nuclear technology. When the US secretly backed the increasingly blatant South African interventions in the Angolan civil war against the FPLA government backed by Cuban troops, Botha was able to acquire munitions and spares in cornucopian quantities.

When Vorster was kicked upstairs as non-executive state president in in the wake of the "Muldergate" corruption scandal, the NP felt the same need for a strong man as it had when Verwoerd died.

Who better to face the "total onslaught" by communists and blacks than the man who had built up the strongest military power in Africa - even if his power-base was the Cape NP rather than Verwoerd's Transvaal? Botha soon stunned everyone by pronouncing apartheid dead. The world fondly imagined he would abolish discrimination as he became the first South African leader to visit Soweto, Johannesburg's south-western township, and travelled abroad more than any of his NP predecessors.

However, the furthest he was prepared to go was to shift the great divide in South African politics from between white and non-white to between non-black and black. But progress could not be stemmed altogether.

One of the most important changes under Botha's leadership was the legalisation of black trade unions in , giving African industrial labour a real voice. But residential and educational segregation and racial classification were retained. In , under loudly trumpeted constitutional reform proposals, the coloured and Asian minorities were given their own separate chambers in parliament.

Black political rights, however, were to be enshrined in their tribal "homelands" as conceived by Verwoerd. The urban black population erupted, especially the young, as the reforms came into force in , when Botha elevated himself to executive president. Only after tens of thousands had been arrested and 2, killed in confrontations with trigger-happy police under a permanent state of emergency was the lid forced back on the simmering townships.

The outside world lost patience as the domestic concessions backfired and the customarily apoplectic Botha took the view that the west was moving the goalposts on the urging of communistic liberals and black opinion. He decided on one more try, in a televised speech heavily telegraphed as all but revolutionary, on August 15 He announced in a live worldwide broadcast that he was "crossing the Rubicon". In fact, after a short attempt at walking on water, he returned to where he had started.

Even the assiduously sympathetic Mrs Thatcher now gave up on Botha, the rest of whose time in office was marked by inertia. Nothing more could be expected from an authoritarian politician with a violent temper whom nobody dared to cross. Even a secret meeting with Nelson Mandela, still the inspiration of the ANC after 25 years in jail, bore no fruit through Botha's intransigence. In , Botha was forced out of office and replaced by the more moderate F.

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