P. W. Botha - Retirement

Retirement

Botha and his wife Elize retired to their home, Die Anker, in the town of Wilderness, close to the city of George and located on the Indian Ocean coast of the Western Cape. His wife Elize died in 1997, and he later married Barbara Robertson, a legal secretary 25 years his junior, on 22 June 1998.

Botha remained largely out of sight of the media and it was widely believed that he remained opposed to many of F W de Klerk's reforms.

Botha refused to testify at the new government's Truth and Reconciliation Commission for exposing apartheid-era crimes, which was chaired by his cultural and political nemesis, Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The TRC found that he had ordered the bombing of the South African Council of Churches headquarters in Johannesburg. In August 1998 he was fined and given a suspended jail sentence for his refusal to testify in relation to human rights violations and the violence sanctioned by the State Security Council (SSC) which he, as president until 1989, had directed. In June 1999 Botha successfully appealed to the High Court against his conviction and sentence. The Court found that the notice served on Botha to appear before the Commission was technically invalid.