By Iavan Pijoos
Former president FW de Klerk has described the late Roelof “Pik” Botha as a valued colleague and friend‚ while President Cyril Ramaphosa on Friday conveyed his condolences to family‚ friends and former colleagues.
“He was a unique and colourful personality who made an enormous contribution to the peaceful and constitutional resolution of the great historic challenges with which we had to wrestle before 1994‚” De Klerk said in a statement released by his foundation.
De Klerk said Botha’s “colourful style and forthright rhetoric” won him widespread popularity among the white electorate and had also encouraged him‚ in 1978 and 1989‚ to stand as a candidate for the leadership of the National Party.
He said Botha’s most important contribution was the manner in which he and his colleagues in the department of foreign affairs held the line against growing international pressure – until the collapse of international communism in 1989 opened the way to the negotiations that led to the establishment of a non-racial constitutional democracy.
Botha died at the age of 86 at his home in Pretoria on Thursday evening.
He was admitted to hospital late in September.
Botha was the world’s longest-serving foreign minister. Times Live.
