Early Life
Pieter Willem Botha was born on a farm in the Paul Roux district of the Orange Free State Province, the son of Afrikaner parents. His father, Pieter Willem Botha, fought as a commando against the British in the Second Boer War. His mother, Hendrina Christina Botha (born de Wet), was interned in a British concentration camp during the war. He was a descendant of an Indian slave woman, Catharina van Bengale.
Botha initially attended the Paul Roux School and matriculated from Voortrekker Secondary School in Bethlehem, South Africa. In 1934, he entered the Grey University College (now the University of the Free State) in Bloemfontein to study law, but left early at the age of twenty in order to pursue a career in politics. He began working for the National Party as a political organiser in the neighbouring Cape Province. In the run-up to World War II, Botha joined the Ossewabrandwag, a right-wing Afrikaner nationalist group which was sympathetic to the German Nazi Party. However, with Allied victory looming in Europe, Botha condemned the Ossewabrandwag and changed his ideological alleigance to Christian nationalism instead.
In 1943, Botha married Anna Elizabeth Rossouw (Elize). The couple had two sons and three daughters.
Read more about this topic: P. W. Botha
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