Perspective is powerful phenomonen, which is why being aware enough to choose your perspective is powerful.
I was reminded of that this week reading the responses to PW Botha’s death.
Some of these include:
- The life and times of PW Botha – IOL
- Flags fly at half mast, but let the truth be told: A monster is dead – Sunday Times
- Rattling sabres, paranoid prattle, clashing metaphors — PW Botha in his own words – Sunday Times
- Groot Krokodil: when moving on obscures historical perspective – Business Day
- ‘He was my bread and botha’ – Mail and Guardian
- How history will treat PW Botha – Mail and Guardian
- Cosatu: PW was a brutal dictator – Mail and Guardian
- P. W. Botha, Defender of Apartheid, Is Dead at 90 – New York Times
- More thoughts on Botha’s death – Commentary
- YCL rejects falsification of P.W.Botha’s role in SA History! – SACP
My own response is one of amazement when I think of the changes between today’s society, and the horrors of that time, the seeming omnipotence then of the terrifying Groot Krokodil, and the harmless, bitter old man he became. I feel regret too that he did not return any of the magnanimous gestures he was afforded. In another place, perhaps he would have been hauled out of a cave and sentenced to death.
So much of our history remains hidden. He could have testified at the TRC with full amnesty, but his ego and stubborness got in the way.
There’s a popular sentiment that apartheid will only be gone when everyone above the age of 35 or so is dead. I don’t subscribe to it, as anyone can change (after all, it’s rare to find a white who supported apartheid), but the older one becomes, the more difficult it is for many to change. For Botha, whose childhood was informed by tales of betrayal and family tragedy in the Boer War, who lived through the heady days of the rise of Afrikaner nationalism in response to British colonial oppression, whose view of Africans was one of racist 19th century Europe, perhaps it was too much to expect. His perspective was rooted in another time.
Inside IOL saw 645 comments, ranging from the verbal equivalent of spitting on his grave, to the converse, furious insults from Botha’s supporters, mostly using the hoary old tactic of pointing out the problems in today’s South Africa to eulogise their hero.
What’s sad is to see young people, who didn’t live through the horrors of his rule, calling themselves proud Afrikaners and looking up to him. Anger bubbles under initially at responses like these, but I can’t really be angry. Ignorance and fear flourish in pockets here, as elsewhere. The atrocities committed during his rule are ignored, or watered down and compared to a current perspective of, say, violent crime.
He has gone, and with barely a flicker, though some of his poison remains with us. Showing love to your enemies shows true understanding of love, and connection. I’m unable to go that far, but I can understand, and, surprisingly, feel no bitterness towards him.
And I’m left with a mannerism of wagging my finger at someone when I’m pretending to be stern (or worse, when I’m not pretending).