Word: bothas
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...astounding to see how the government of Benjamin Netanyahu increasingly echoes shades of the intransigent, apartheid-era South African government of President P.W. Botha. Only Netanyahu's personal charisma precludes even more opprobrium in the face of international condemnation of his hardened position on the Palestinian question...
CAPE TOWN: Church bombing isn?t necessarily a human rights violation, former South African president P.W. Botha told a court hearing today. Botha?s contempt-of-court trial heard evidence that the octogenarian hardliner had ordered the August 1988 bombing of the headquarters of the South African Council of Churches, in which 21 people were injured. Botha is unfazed by the charges: ?He?s never denied ordering the bombing,? says TIME Johannesburg bureau chief Peter Hawthorne. ?He?s never admitted it either. In his own inimitable way, he?s saying he did it because the building was the headquarters...
...Botha is facing contempt charges over his refusal to testify before the commission, but Hawthorne believes the ex-president is unlikely to be punished: ?In the end he?ll probably get away with it because the commission doesn?t want to be seen to be hounding a dinosaur of the old regime.? In other words, they?ll opt to let not-yet-sleeping dinosaurs...
CAPE TOWN: The "great crocodile" appears to have caught himself in a trap of his own making. In choosing to hang tough and reject a deal allowing secret testimony to South Africa's Truth Commission, former president P.W. Botha found himself defending a contempt of court case that will likely cover the same ground. "In the end, Botha's simply doing it the hard way," says TIME Johannesburg bureau chief Peter Hawthorne. "The commission will present all the evidence against him in order to explain why he was subpoenaed, and Botha will have to respond to that evidence...
...only Botha's victims who want to see him called to account: "The hit men from the old security forces who are serving prison sentences are outraged that they've had to take a fall while their leader has gotten away with it," says Hawthorne. Now the hit men want to see some crocodile tears...