BOTHA, JJ

I realized that I could have done more to turn the tide of apartheid earlier. I acknowledge that I could have done more in the State Security Council, in the cabinet and in Parliament to ensure that political opponents were not killed or tortured by government institutes. I could have and should ...

This one guy he was just so bossies, he was actually amusing. I mean whenever you heard helicopters, I mean this is Voortrekkerhoogte, it’s like a military town, helicopters going all the time. This guy heard a helicopter, he would shoot under his bed and he would go into … this guy was … his ...

I want to help build the new SA. I was a destroyer now I want to be a builder.

Now where do you take it from now? I ask myself, I can’t ask my colleagues. Everyone must speak for himself. I said to myself, not for the sake of this meeting but here this man, should I not have done more?

Did you know that there were no tigers in Africa? // If there were, you wouldn’t have been one of them.

Your name is all over the Ferdi Barnard charge sheet, why didn’t you come forward to clear your name? // To be quite honest, I’ve noted all the allegations. I have approached the TRC with regards to an application, with regards to certain activities which took place within the CCB boundaries so ...

We prepared ourselves for an onslaught against our people and on the morning of the 9th of October 1980 I heard on SABC news that a group of about 30 black people clad in PAC T-shirts had attacked whites on the Durban beach front. Since we’d already declared war against the National Party and as ...

‘Elimineer,’ eliminate, ‘neutraliseer,’ neutralise, ‘uitwis,’ obliterate or wipe out.

There is not the slightest question as to its authenticity. There are even notes pasted by themselves at the back of this document in the handwriting of members of the delegation or members who attended the meeting. These are obviously notes as it’s only normally done at meetings of this nature ...

I assure you Mr. Chairperson that the Seychelles coup was neither discussed nor approved by the South African cabinet or the State Security Council.

Only four months after the assassination of David Webster the most prominent white member of the Namibian liberation movement, Anton Lubowski, was shot and killed in front of his house in Windhoek. One of the men who conspired to kill him, Irish citizen Donald Acheson, was arrested soon after the ...

All the decisions were taken to cabinet. You were not dealing with State Security Council decisions; you were dealing with cabinet decisions. Cabinet, it can be proved. Not only factually, but that is the constitutional position. So the cabinet was governing. The State Security Council was a ...

Neither the international community at large nor any particular state will dictate to us what the contents of our political programme should be. We have to live in this country. We have nowhere else to go, therefore we ourselves shall find solutions to our problems and we will make them work. Let ...

General Mortimer had nothing more to say about the CCB, not that they killed SWAPO leader Anton Lubowski, not that they killed Johannesburg academic David Webster, not that they tried to kill Justice Minister Dullah Omar, not that they bombed and attacked activists and organisations such as the ...

‘This man, PW, is quite fearless, sometimes to a point that drives his security men to distraction. Threats, bomb scares, even two actual bomb explosions in Paris, but PW wants to go for a stroll in the Bois de Boulogne.

Are you going to apologise to the people who died in jail, who died in Lesotho, who died in … // No, I’m praying for them.

No but you [Max du Preez] are always in front to do wrong things. He’s one of the gentlemen I don’t like.

Dames en here [ladies and gentlemen], can you all hear me? Those who can’t hear me put up your hand and salute me. I stand by everybody who executed legal government orders on our struggle against revolutionary communist onslaught against our fatherland which had to lead to anarchy. I stick to my ...

‘He’s a very neat and a very tidy man. That is, I suppose, the reason why he always chooses and selects his own clothes.’

‘Third Force: Operation Marion’ // Now how did it happen, why did it happen?