thecages

PW Botha died yesterday.
Reactions to his death are mixed; the government is politely detached[1], others emphasise the good in his bungling attempts to reform South Africa. Very few reports are openly agressive.

This is the natural reaction to the death of a man who the world has passed by.
He lived the last seventeen years of his life in a country that day-by-day proved how viciously misguided his policies had been.

You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder
as you get older
(yeah)
And in the end you'll pack up, fly down south
Hide your head in the sand
Just another sad old man
All alone and dying of cancer.

And when you loose control,
you'll reap the harvest you have sown
And as the fear grows,
the bad blood slows and turns to stone
And it's too late to loose the weight you used to need to throw around
So have a good drown, as you go down, alone
Dragged down by the stone.

In many way he represented, to me, the arch-incarnation of the Apartheid regime. Probably because his imperial rule was at the height of its lunacy when I was just becoming aware of a social/political reality wider than just my family life.
I have a vivid memory of a classmate at school(I must have been about 7) talking about his parents' preference in politicians (Konserwatief) and how weird it seemed to me that there would exist something like this that people would argue over.
Of course now that I'm growing older it's getting harder, harder and harder - fly down south.

My experience of the political distopia of South Africa in the 80's was exclusively white.
Family grumbling about more outjies heading to the grens.
Friends' older brothers passing around third generation copies of banned albums. Evita Bezuidenhout's jestering.
The State of Emergency. The Total Onslaught. Crossing the Rubicon.

While all around us the real war in the townships raged.

And at the center of it all was PW with his wagging finger and raging temper - the years of the iron fist.

I'll leave the last word to the bitter Krokodil himself:
How does he want to be remembered?

“Ek gee nie om wat hulle van my onthou nie. Ek het Suid-Afrika gelei op ’n pad wat rég was. Orde. Vooruitgang. Teëspoed ook. Maar die teëspoed is éfféktiéf aangespreek.”

“I don't care how they remember me. I led South Africa on a road that was right. Order. Progress. Setbacks as well. But the setbacks were addressed effectively.”

[1] As the victor always bahaves towards a forgotten opponent.