'New South Africa'
Embattled farmers, soldiers, activists,
P.W. Botha reveal nation's ebbing hope
Posted: July 17, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
Editor's note: For most of the past 18 months, long-time WND contributor Anthony C. LoBaido has traveled throughout southern Africa conducting research, doing interviews and taking photographs. In this in-depth story, eye-opening interviews with various South African figures – from threatened farmers to political analysts to former Prime Minister P.W. Botha – rock the conventional view of the nation and where it is headed.
By Anthony C. LoBaido
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
NELSPRUIT, South Africa – Heidi Le Roux sat weeping in her spacious farmhouse on the South African veld as the leaves turned gold and saffron in the glorious autumn twilight. Blonde and pretty, boasting of three young, healthy children and a devoted, hard-working husband who runs a huge multi-million dollar sugar and macadamia farm, it would seem that Heidi's life is a page out of apartheid's "glorious" past.
It is a not-too-distant past when farmers were the "lords of the manor" and the future seemed bountiful and perhaps even endless. In the "New South Africa," however, nothing is as is seems. The old axiom, "The more things change the more they stay the same," comes to mind in this mad dance where neither the past nor the present makes sense.
Against this tumultuous backdrop, plots and intrigues inspiring notions of Shakespeare have become the faire du jour.
"I don't want to have to leave the farm. I don't want my children to get exposed to and debased by the paganism in Western culture," Mrs. Le Roux said during an extensive WorldNetDaily interview.
"I want my children to grow up speaking Afrikaans. We have talked about moving to New Zealand. So many South Africans have fled overseas. We will remain a people but not a nation. Yet this farm is our home. We've worked so hard. But we have to look honestly at the future – if there is one."
Heidi's husband, Stephan, is a South African Defense Force veteran who fought in Angola during the Border War of the 1980s against the former Soviet Union and Cuba. Like many South Africans, he is struggling to reinterpret the past, navigate through a violent present and ascertain just where the African National Congress, or ANC, will take South Africa in the future.
Stephan Le Roux seems to have come full circle during his family's epic struggle to survive and even thrive on the land.
"After the Boer War (1899-1902), there was another rebellion against the British. My grandfather had his farm taken away by those who sided with the British against our own people," he said while walking through robust fields of sugarcane.
"My grandfather was extremely sad. But he trusted in God and began to slowly get back his land again. He did this by trading advice on farming and animal husbandry with the very people who'd stolen his farm in exchange for little bits and pieces of it. In time he got back all of this land and much, much more."
Farm killings
"Today however, I am caught in a conundrum," said Stephen Le Roux. "This farm is worth 22 million rand, but no one will buy it. People are afraid about all of the farm killings. The [neighboring] black farmers and farm workers will only get more jealous of me the more successful I become. Sure, I could sell the farm to the government, but others have done that and only gotten a promissory note from the bank and never received any money from the ANC government. When you look at how the farms have been taken away from the whites in Zimbabwe and Namibia, its makes you wonder about your destiny."
Since 1994, over 1,600 farmers have been tortured and killed by criminal elements lurking in South Africa's rural areas. This figure is augmented by another 9,000-plus recorded attacks on a total farming population of 40,000 – making the white South African farmer the highest at-risk murder group on earth. The world average murder rate is 7 out of 100,000. For the South African farmer it is 313 out of 100,000.
Genocide Watch has monitored the situation carefully. But it is not only whites who are targeted. Black farm workers also have been killed in the attacks.
Moreover, the South African media have reported stories of white farmers mistreating black farm workers, some of whom work for very low wages while fleeing Robert Mugabe's nightmare across the Limpopo River in Zimbabwe. One black farm worker was fed alive to a pack of lions. Another was dragged to death by a farmer's truck. Such incidents, while rare, receive major media coverage and inflame an already tense situation.
Says Heidi Le Roux, "I often say to my husband, '… and how would you feel if you had been born black?'"
"There is so much hatred and distrust between the farmers and the farm workers, it's just a vicious cycle," said Heidi's sister Katrina, a South African medical student living in the nation's capital of Pretoria-Tswana. "I often ask myself, 'What on earth is happening to my country?' I want to understand, but nothing seems to make sense."
It is a lament shared by many South Africans – black, white, colored and Indian alike.
 Victoria Falls in Zambia. Writer LoBaido photographs the beauty of southern Africa when not researching the area's political machinations. |
21st century Stalinism
More people today in the world live under Stalinism than live in the United Kingdom – over 50 million. Countries like Belarus, North Korea, Cuba and Laos are all Stalinist regimes. In South Africa, cultural Marxism is rife, yet Stalinism has reared its ugly head on several levels.
Consider that in response to the farm killings. Dr. Rocky Williams, a prominent African National Congress spokesman, said that the Boer Commandos – which had protected the rural areas for decades as rear guard troops, in case the Soviets or Cubans broke through – would be replaced by mostly ex-MK cadres (part of the ANC's now-defunct military wing, trained by Mainland China, Libya and the Soviets) modeled on "the militia of the old Soviet Union" during World War II.
Saki and Louise Van der Merwe, who live on a farm next to the Le Rouxs, called this a case of "the fox guarding the chicken coup." Louise's first husband was killed in a car crash, and his death affected her deeply. However, Saki doesn't keep a gun in the farmhouse in case of an attack.
"I believe in angels," he said.
Their friend Mandy Branch, decidedly less optimistic about reliance on angelic intervention, has been studying martial arts and knife fighting in preparation for a would-be attack on her home.
"I say we must prepare for the worst and hope for the best," she said stoically and defiantly.
While clinging to notions of Stalinism might seem strange to some, the ANC and its elite still refer to one another as comrade and use Marxist-Leninist jargon in their speeches and meetings. The most notable exception is the way the ANC has embraced neo-liberal economic theory, much to the chagrin of its allies in the South African Communist Party and in the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
Inside the ANC
According to Perion Rayford, a top Cape Town-based researcher for the Democratic Alliance – the African National Congress' main opposition in Parliament – the secret, inner workings of the ANC reveal that its elite are steeped in Stalinist tendencies at the very top.
"Thabo Mbeki will be running South Africa long after he moves on to Ethiopia to steer the new African Union," Rayford said. Along with this writer, Rayford has been asked to prepare a brief on the use of mercenaries in Africa for a prominent Democratic Alliance member of Parliament.
Much of what Rayford and her staff uncover cannot be openly stated in Parliament, since "The DA is afraid of the totalitarian tendencies of the ANC regime. You have to keep your head down," she said. "Mbeki is asking himself if he wants to position himself with the U.S., European Union or the Non-Aligned Movement. He has chosen the latter, along with Brazil and India."
"Mbeki wouldn't set up the new African Union's parliament in Cape Town. That would be too obvious," she said. "So it will be set up in Ethiopia. Mbeki has set up committees in South Africa on black empowerment and the Internet. The ANC made technology agreements with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. All of these committees report directly to Thabo Mbeki. Mbeki is a micro-manager. Not much goes on in South Africa that he does not personally sign off on."
Rayford said that in addition to those committees, Mbeki controls South Africa by painting the Democratic Alliance as the party of the whites, and relying on overseas technology and drug money (through friendship with Brazil and an alliance with the now deposed "Father" Aristide of Haiti, who was only recently given asylum in South Africa.) In addition, Mbeki relies on his partnership with ABSA Bank and the Afrikaner Bond. When the ANC announced that all future mining ventures would have to be at least 50 percent black-owned, the mining stocks lost $6 billion in value in a single day. Understandably, Mbeki has chosen to keep such matters quiet.
Rayford also said Mbeki relies on controlling the mostly foreign-owned media of South Africa, the educational system and the nation's economic policy to keep a huge, disenfranchised mass of people ready for a war against the whites if and when that sad day should come. (According to this South African rumor, during "Operation White Clean Up" all of the nation's whites will be killed on the night of Nelson Mandela's funeral.)
"It is sad how Mbeki oozes contempt and hate for whites, but must still beg for their [European] money to fund his initiatives," Rayford said. "It is so pathetic. First he said that HIV does not cause AIDS. Then he ups his anti-white rhetoric while pleading with the same West he despises for his very subsistence. The poor man, I almost feel sorry for him."
Writing in a column titled, "We come to the G-8 not as mendicants," in the June 10, 2004, issue of This Day (just before he attended the June 2004 G-8 summit), Mbeki told the world:
Henry Kissinger writes in his book "Does America Need a Foreign Policy?" Africa is destined to become "the festering disaster of our age." In his view, only the "moral commitment of the American people and international community can save us from that fate. ..."The premise is that Africans lack the capacity to save themselves and must rely upon the kindness of strangers … in the public imagination of the [Northern Hemisphere] we will still be poor relations crashing the party."
Rayford's analysis of Mbeki has been seconded by Harry Wu – one of the world's most respected living human-rights dissidents – who told WorldNetDaily, "Mbeki is definitely a communist. He was trained in the former Soviet Union."
South African Communist Party honcho Jeremy Cronin has publicly lamented "the ZANU-ification" of the ANC leadership – a reference to the dictator Mugabe's ruling party in Zimbabwe known as the ZANU-PF.
Prominent British journalist Christopher Hitchens said Nelson Mandela was being "used as a fig leaf for an increasingly repressive regime."
In fact, the ANC is currently trying to pass legislation limiting freedom of the press and is working even harder on total gun confiscation while at the same time making it almost impossible for doctors and pharmacists to engage in their respective professions.
"Only those willing to accept ANC rule will be able to live in The New South Africa," said Rayford. "In 2004, the ANC won 70 percent of the vote. Even though the turnout was very low (less than half all eligible South Africans voted), this was still a massive victory for the ANC. They are here to stay 'until Jesus returns,' as one prominent ANC figure told the South African media, much to the chagrin of the opposition and other critics."
Mbeki can't be understood without understanding his own cognitive processes, argues Rayford. This theory of "actor-action indispensability" – meaning that a world leader's policies can't be understood unless one understands what makes that leader's cognitive processes tick – was first popularized by Arizona State University professor Dr. Stephen Walker.
"Thabo Mbeki wrote a treatise on Shakespearean poets while he was still a university student in the UK," explained Rayford. "This has led Mbeki to organize many intrigues along Shakespearean lines – be it with the NNP, white mercenaries, HIV/AIDS or the G-8."
Rayford cited the recent appointment of the New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk (the NNP, a product of the architects of apartheid, has made an alliance with the ANC, which has all but destroyed it) to the cabinet portfolio of Environmental Affairs and Tourism. This appointment has in the recent past embarrassed the NNP over a shady cash-for-zoning-clearance boondoggle concerning a South African golf course allegedly funded with Italian mob money.
 Sunset on Chobe River, Botswana. |
"It is no accident Mbeki put the only white cabinet minister in this particular portfolio. It only serves as a Scarlet Letter of white greed and corruption, which in turn deflects attention away from the ANC's own horrific greed and corruption," he said.
Continued Rayford: "Everything concerning Mbeki involves careful planning and scripting. This is the Russian way coming out in him. The Soviets always had a plan for everything. Moreover it is the Shakespeare coming out in him."
Rayford commented on how Mbeki's own 88-year-old mother had been "wheeled out on national television" right after Mbeki was re-inaugurated in front of the entire world in recent months.
"This was to show South Africa he is still mommy's little boy – an ordinary person, when he is anything but," she said.
"Mbeki's [recent] inaugural speech was filled with the usual bitterness, hypocrisy and anti-white hatred for which he is well-known. Mbeki is the only world leader to embrace Aristide. The ANC was caught sending arms to Aristide's police force. Isn't it sad, Mbeki speaks in English and Afrikaans, wears Western clothes, gets funding from Europe and even uses the European term 'Renaissance' to describe his most important program and vision?"
When asked about the ovation Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe received at Mbeki's recent re-inauguration, Rayford said, "It is the 'African Big Man' philosophy playing out. Mugabe is senior to Mbeki, and because of that Mbeki cannot challenge him. That is the African way. It is a long-standing tradition and it is understandable in the broader context of black African culture. Yet would Churchill have tolerated Hitler or Stalin just because they were older than him?"
Rayford explained that there was an internal split within the African National Congress and that understanding this split is a key to the inner workings and intrigues of the ANC elite.
"During Operation Vula, when the ANC sent in operatives to infiltrate the apartheid state in anticipation for their eventual takeover of the nation, the intelligence operatives on the ground did the real hard work. They were hunted and captured by the security forces. Meanwhile overseas, Mbeki was playing the great role of the anti-apartheid activist and meeting with liberal European elites. Those who paid the greater price on the ground during the war for national liberation really resent Mbeki and those who lived an easier life in exile and then 'came home' to take over the new Marxist South Africa," she said.
"Mbeki visited the Mbokodo or 'Grinding Stone' camps in Angola where ANC cadres suffered horrendous human-rights abuses by their own ANC cadres. This does not bode well for him. The blacks in South Africa do not know Mbeki. They do not like him. Nelson Mandela never wanted Mbeki to succeed him and has gone on public record about this. But Mbeki was well connected in Europe to the futuristic plans of the transnational elite of the Northern Hemisphere. There were, and remain, plans for a United Africa, NEPAD (The New Economic Program for African Development) and the idea of reorganizing Africa as a singular economic bloc that would fit in with the greater plan of one-world trade and one-world government."
Rayford added that France provided the communications technology the ANC used while in exile and that the much-hyped and scandal-ridden arms deal South Africa made with certain European countries in the mid-to-late 1990s was "merely payback for that help."
The arms scandal is far-reaching. It involves the chief buyer for the defense force, a European defense company called Thompson CSF/Thales, which provided the ANC with the technology for naval Corvettes, Denel (the export arm of ARMSCOR) and PRODIBA.
France also sold weapons to the apartheid state and thus was playing both sides of the fence, waiting to see who would win out in the end. It also did this during the Angolan war, during which the French state oil company allegedly paid bribes to the late UNITA anti-Marxist rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in exchange for a promise not to attack French petroleum facilities.
"European corporations tend to hunt in packs. German manufacturing has German banks heavily involved in their operations. They are like Japan in that way. Germany has strong dealings with the ANC," Rayford told WorldNetDaily.
Speaking about the farm killings, Rayford explained: "They are soft targets. The attacks are easy to coordinate. It is terror – plain and simple. They are denigrating to the Afrikaner. They denigrate unity. This gives the ANC pleasure and appeals to both the ANC elite and rank and file judiciously. It is the same as in Zimbabwe. It appeals to base emotions. The farmer is the master of his domain and the lord of the manor. The farmer controls the population and cares for his workers … but no more."
"It is now South Africa's worst-kept secret that at least some of the farm attacks are coordinated from Shell House, the ANC's headquarters. One farm killer admitted to the police that he received his orders from Shell House. Another farm killer was given his gun to carry out an attack by a black, pro-ANC policeman. Rarely is anything stolen in these attacks. Snipers are used. The attacks are earmarked with military-style precision. When the Executive Outcomes mercenaries stopped all of the farm crime in the tiny town of Rhodes, the ANC made them pull out. Why? Executive Outcomes (EO) said they could stop all of the farm crime with only 2,000 soldiers spread over the entire country. The old commando structure had around 25-30,000 troops. Again, the same ANC which sent EO to destroy UNITA in Angola now says 'no' to the use of these same elite soldiers. The ANC wants the farm killings to continue. What hypocrisy. But no one has the guts to call the ANC's bluff on this."
Asked if South Africa would turn into another Zimbabwe, Rayford replied: "Personally, I don't believe that it will. In Zimbabwe there were few whites. South Africa has more than 3 million whites. Yet Zimbabwe is not an issue for Mbeki, nor is the plight of the South African farmers. Mugabe made the white farmers an issue by playing the race card. Zimbabwe is a tobacco, export-based, agricultural economy. In South Africa, in the Western Cape you have grapes and therefore some of the best wine in the world – and trade with the EU is involved. Mbeki is not going to want to mess that up. Do you see the wine growers being attacked? No you don't. Quietly, the word has been put out – hands off the vineyards in terms of farm attacks. Of course, international trade is important for the ANC. The U.S. is No. 1 in terms of exports, and then you also have Germany, France, the UK and Japan.
"Land is very valuable. The African dream is ownership. But it is the housing crisis that is the real problem. Only to the PAC (the Pan African Congress) is the Maoist land-reform program critical, and they have zero support. I can tell you that the ANC government has a solution to the housing issue – government-owned land. So they won't throw the farmers off the land. White farmers are the colonial image. They are a dying breed. For example, there is only one white farmer left in Kenya. Yet no one is driving that single farmer out. The government in Nigeria has asked for white farmers to move up there from the southern portion of Africa to start working the land. As long as there are white farmers you can make a fuss about colonialism."
Rayford explained how Mbeki views the whites in South Africa: "Whites don't know what it is like to live in the township with no water or electricity. Most whites have not been to the rural areas. They live in a Western, First World environment and this has come at a cost to others," she said.
"Apartheid was about controlling people. It's still all about control. Mbeki sees all whites as racists with blinders on who in fact believe all black Africans are wild. This is opposed to the view of Nelson Mandela who said that the Afrikaners were 'decent people misled by their leaders.' Mbeki likes seeing the white tribe drowning in despair. But the Freedom Front (a conservative South African party that seeks to protect Afrikaner interests) and [its leader Dr. Pieter] Mulder are turning this all around now. During President Bush's last trip to Africa, Dr. Mulder gave Bush a video documentary on the South African farm killings. Bush promised to review the situation."
Continued Rayford: "We in the Democratic Alliance believe a lot of what goes on in the Bush White House in regard to AIDS/Africa packages is driven by often well-meaning homosexuals and political correctness. We in the DA understand the new rules of the game. Dr. Mulder sees this as well. To him, the Afrikaner is now the victim, not the oppressor. The ANC has had to invent the Boeremag (a small, extremist group accused of planning to overthrow the government). There is no threat from the so-called 'right wing' to the government. Now the Freedom Front is using the international language of self-determination and minority rights. That is a very smart strategy.
"Many whites are leaving South Africa now. For Mbeki this eases transformation. They will never accept ANC rule. That's the way he looks at it. Lawyers and doctors are going overseas to make a new life. The ANC is making it impossible to practice medicine. The ANC is bringing in Cuban engineers and teachers. This is politically significant because it expresses solidarity with Cuba. It is a massive anti-U.S. statement. Needless to say, Cuba and the war in Angola is a touchy subject."
Rayford went on to describe how she and the Democratic Alliance believe Mbeki will achieve his goals.
"Again, how to achieve what he wants to achieve? That's Mbeki's question. It is like religion – one must offer hope," she explained.
"You keep making promises to solve problems and keep hope alive. But you never intend to fulfill those promises. As long as the people have wants, Mbeki will have promises. The DA can't stand up and say this in Parliament, but it is true. This is why the seemingly self-destructive policies of the ANC make sense in the broader context.
"So what are the results of all of this? Afro-pessimism is one of them. The ANC concentrates on black empowerment, which will one day be rued just as we rue apartheid. But does anyone really care? Africa is a dismissive part of the world economy, comprising only 1.2 percent, and South Africa has almost half of entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa."
Speaking about South Africa's involvement in the Congo, where over 2.4 million have perished in the past decade in the bloodiest conflict since World War II with scant coverage from the Western establishment media, Rayford told WorldNetDaily: "Putting troops in the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] is acceptable and desirable for Mbeki and the ANC. We must take the pursuit of wealth as a given. The Congo is the jewel. There is mineral exploitation going on, but is it for the benefit of the local people or the elite? Mbeki wants to be seen as a peacemaker in Africa. Is South Africa the new colonizer up country?"
Zimbabwe also has sent troops to the DRC where untold mineral wealth has been extracted and is headed for the coffers of Mugabe's henchmen.
 A rural area of South Africa. |
Voices in the wilderness
Understanding the ANC and Mbeki's relationship with the U.S., European Union, Islamic World and Non-Aligned Movement of nations including Brazil and India is a challenge many South Africans are only beginning to face up to.
Stephan Le Roux told WorldNetDaily: "I am growing macadamia nuts because they are an export crop. They have low cholesterol and the Germans and Japanese are fond of them. Hopefully that will signal 'hands off' to the ANC in regard to the macadamia farmers."
Adds Rayford, "I still have hope for Mbeki. He recently spoke to the Council on Foreign Relations and attended Ronald Reagan's funeral. Why? Well, because he knows that he is a Clinton-era foreign policy appointee, so to speak, and that the Bush Jr. administration has taken a hard line against North Korea, Iraq, Cuba, Libya and other pro-terrorist states. Remember, Dick Cheney voted in Congress against the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, and he is only one heartbeat away from the presidency. Mbeki's anti-Americanism has not been lost on the White House, the Pentagon or the U.S. military academies at West Point, Annapolis or The Citadel.
"Yet more importantly, Mbeki understands the South African economy and South Africa's place in the global economy," Rayford continued. "The value of the Rand is not determined by the ANC or the Reserve Bank but rather by macroeconomic forces. The South African economy is basically commodity driven – wine and nuts are a part of that. You see, the ANC can and has changed the name of Pretoria to Tswane, but they can't change the fundamentals of the South African economy.
"Many white South Africans are ready to embrace Mbeki, but only if he continues to campaign and walk the streets as his did prior to the recent elections as a man of the people, dressed like a lumberjack instead of in his fancy suits. When he did this, even I thought, 'This is what a decent man and a good leader would do.' But he must not stop being a regular guy.
"The devil has taken all of us out to the desert at one time or another and made all of us promises. But if Thabo Mbeki won't protect a handful of farmers, then how can we trust him to run all of Africa from atop the African Union?"
Willem Ratte, considered a great Christian patriot and hero by the Afrikaners, and who commanded the South African Defense Force in South Africa's war in Angola against the Russians in the 1980s, told WND: "Nelson Mandela was and is the smiling goody-goody face of the New South Africa. Thabo Mbeki is closer to what black rule is about – racist, corrupt and brutally efficient at eliminating all opposition."
Ratte, imprisoned by the ANC for staging a peaceful protest, survived his ordeal – which included a hunger strike that nearly killed him – and now runs, among other ventures, a museum dedicated to the memory of the current Afrikaner farm holocaust.
Kevin Fitzgerald, who also fought in Angola with both the old SADF as well as with the mercenary organization Executive Outcomes, told WorldNetDaily: "When you think of the ANC's foreign policy in regard to Iraq and Haiti, you have to ask yourself, 'Do they know what they are doing? Is this a mistake or is this all by design?' If it's by design then we've got big problems in this country."
Bert Sachse, a 34-year veteran of the Rhodesian and South African special forces and the man who ran the mercenary war in Sierra Leone for the UK-based group Sandline/Plaza 107, mixes deep patriotic sentiments with the flexibility of a modern mercenary.
"If you switch sides at the end of the day then what do you have?" he asked. "That is why I could not fight in Angola against UNITA. I helped train UNITA. I knew Jonas Savimbi. Mercenaries have always been misunderstood. But if it weren't for the soldiers fighting (under the apartheid regime) all of the order and wealth and beauty you see all around us in Cape Town would have been destroyed just as it has been in the rest of Africa."
Recently, South African intelligence helped trap a team of South African mercenaries led by the infamous British ex-SAS leader Simon Mann in Zimbabwe for allegedly attempting to overthrow the leftist regime in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. The men now face the death penalty. The ANC has promoted the mantra, "There is no place in Africa for white mercenaries" – of course, with the notable exception of destroying UNITA. In reality, both the U.N. and UK have floated white papers about the legalization of mercenaries as "private military companies." However, Mbeki and the African Union, along with the approval of the G8, have now outflanked the Simon Manns of the world and are busy setting up regional, rapid deployment forces around the African continent.
Says Rayford, "Mbeki likes Shakespeare, but it appears he likes chess even more."
Even the highest-level leaders of the Old South Africa are trying to match wits with the fluid tactics used by the ANC. For them, the struggle to make sense of the past and the present is an unending one.
P.W. Botha: 'No way to fight'
Former South African Prime Minister and President P.W. Botha, now 88 years old and living in retirement in the South African town of Wilderness told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview: "America says that it wants to fight terrorism. President Reagan had the ANC on the State Department's terrorist list. When I fought the terrorism of the ANC, America put sanctions against me. There is no way to fight against all of this insanity. We can only let the madness run its course."
Says Botha's second wife, Barbara: "Nelson Mandela called our house not long ago to talk with P.W. Nelson is 85 and P.W. is 88. They are around the same age and that is important. Nelson likes to reminisce about the old times. P.W. told him, 'Be careful, Islam is your enemy.'"
Barbara Botha told WorldNetDaily how P.W. had organized special medical care for Nelson Mandela when he was in prison: "Nelson was afraid the apartheid doctors would try and kill him. But P.W. organized doctors from Switzerland to fly to South Africa and treat him. P.W. didn't have to do that, and I believe only now that Nelson is beginning to appreciate that. Instead, the apartheid doctors tried to kill P.W. after he refused to accept bribes from certain European leaders to turn over South Africa to the ANC. Talk about Shakespeare!"
Commented Rayford: "That kind of anecdotal information makes so much of everything else that goes on irrelevant."
Said P.W. Botha: "I had a stroke shortly after a visit from my doctors. I don't know what they did to me, but they did something to me."
"I don't know how P.W. ran this country," Barbara Botha said. "He had half of his cabinet against him and global sanctions. The CIA and British intelligence, Europe and United Nations, Soviet Union, China and the Islamic world were all against South Africa in the 1980s. Still, I believe in the future of this country. There is only one answer if the Afrikaner is to survive – we have to pray South Africa back to God."