S Africa apartheid-era leader Botha has no regrets

JOHANNESBURG, Mar 18 (Reuters) Apartheid-era strongman P W Botha does not regret his political career and believes South Africa would be ''in the drain'' by now if blacks had gained power in the 1960s, he was quoted as saying today.

In a filmed interview, South Africa's last hard-line apartheid leader, said he did not regret a moment of his decade in power and denied blacks were considered inferior under white-minority rule, Sapa news agency said.

South African broadcasters have opted not to air the interview, launched on DVD by a commercial production company on Saturday, but Sapa said it was being sold to the general public.

Botha was ousted as president by reformist F W de Klerk in 1989. Apartheid ended in 1994 when South Africa held its first all-race elections that brought anti-apartheid campaigner Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress to power.

Asked in the interview what would have happened if the black majority had taken control in 1948 -- when Botha's National Party came to power -- or in the 1960s, when most African countries won independence, he said: ''I think by this time we would have been in the drain already.'' Botha, once feared as the ''Great Crocodile'', said ''the forces of evil'' were sweeping across Africa in the 1960s.

An autocrat who maintained South Africa's despised apartheid system with only halting reforms, Botha argued that rules forcing blacks to eat in separate restaurants were merely hangovers from British colonialism.

Asked if white South African were racist at heart during the apartheid era, Botha said: ''Yes. Some of our people were, and some of them still are.'' To launch the DVD, Botha gave his first public speech in more than a decade on Saturday to an all-white audience of about 70 people near his home in Wilderness in the southern Cape. Sapa said Botha walked using a stick but needed no assistance during the 15-minute speech.

Asked whether he had read the best-selling autobiography of Nelson Mandela, ''Long Walk to Freedom'', and what he thought of it, Botha said: ''I don't think it's one of the best books in the world.'' REUTERS CH KP2306