Word: krokodil
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...commission. Embattled and isolated, he refuses to give interviews or even to pick up the telephone; an aide who answered a call last week described the unrepentant hard-liner as "unapproachable." Yet if auguries are to be credited, the swelling inquiry may spill over and reach even the "Groot Krokodil" (Great Crocodile), as he is known in Afrikaans. Last week, after rains caused the Touws River to burst its banks, Botha's living room was knee-deep in water, symbolic perhaps of what Tutu hopes will one day become a flood of justice...
...most obvious contrast between F.W. and P.W. is temperament, not ideology. Die Groot Krokodil -- the Great Crocodile -- as Botha was not so affectionately called, was an irascible and imperious man who listened less as he grew older. De Klerk is an amiable fellow who prefers consensus to dogmatic, one-man rule. He has restored the Cabinet to the role of the premier policymaking body, and he has held more Cabinet sessions in five months than Botha did in his final two years. More refined than the boorish Botha, De Klerk has done away with some of the trappings of autocracy...