Mandela leads tributes to SAfrica's Botha

JOHANNESBURG, Nov 1 (Reuters) Nelson Mandela led South Africans today in paying tribute to former President P W Botha, the defiant face of apartheid who doggedly clung to white rule and refused to free Mandela from jail.

Botha, 90, died at home yesterday. His wife Barbara said he will be given a private funeral on November 8.

News of his death prompted an outpouring of conciliatory statements from President Thabo Mbeki's government and others who had fought to wipe away his regime's strict racial divisions and embrace the multi-racial reconciliation embodied by Mandela.

Widely known as ''The Great Crocodile'', Botha, who presided over some of the worst excesses of the apartheid era during the 1970s and 1980s, had lived quietly in Wilderness, about 350 km east of Cape Town, since being ousted in 1989.

''While to many Mr Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the eventual peacefully negotiated settlement in our country,'' Mandela said in a statement today.

Mandela spent 27 years behind bars, including about a decade under the rule of Botha, who was at the helm during South Africa's most tumultuous years and struggled in vain to preserve apartheid white rule.

Botha was toppled in a cabinet rebellion in 1989 and replaced by F W de Klerk, who repudiated almost everything the finger-wagging hardliner had stood for, including the laws at the heart of the system of strict racial segregation.

De Klerk guided South Africa's white rulers through the delicate negotiations that ultimately brought the African National Congress (ANC), led by Mandela, to power in multi-racial elections in 1994.

''Our correspondence with Mr Botha while we were in prison was an important part of those initial stages, as was the agreement to a personal meeting in Tuynhuys,'' Mandela said, referring to secret talks in the then presidential residence.

Botha's death should be a reminder of ''how South Africans from all persuasions ultimately came together to save our country from self-destruction'', Mandela said.

SPIRIT OF RECONCILIATION Mandela's statement reflected the core policy of reconciliation that underpinned his own presidency. Many believe this saved South Africa from a bloody transition from apartheid.

That policy earned Mandela the Nobel Peace Prize, which he shared with De Klerk in 1993, and was echoed in tributes to Botha from leading South Africans, including radical elements in the apartheid-era political divide.

Mbeki said Botha held the reigns at a difficult period of South Africa's history.

''It stands to his credit that when he realised the futility of fighting against what was right and inevitable, he, in his own way, realised that South Africans had no alternative but to reach out to one another,'' he said in a statement.

Zizi Kodwa, a spokesman for the ANC Youth League said: ''We really express our condolences and wish that the ''Groot Krokodil (Great crocodile) would rest in peace.

''It's good that he lived and experienced democracy, and that black majority rule was not about black domination above whites and that it was not about communists taking over and terrorists running the country.'' Barbara Botha put paid questions as to whether the former president would be given a state funeral. ''My husband wished that it be private,'' she told reporters at the family home.

She said Botha had been ''terribly misunderstood'' and that South Africans would come to realise what they had lost.

''The man cared about everyone, irrespective of what politics said. He really cared. He wanted everyone to have a piece of the pie,'' she said.

Mandela's fellow political prisoner Tokyo Sexwale gave condolences to Botha's family, but said he deeply regretted the former leader had never attempted to heal the wounds or apologise for bloody atrocities that occurred under his watch.

''It is his government that was repressive, brutal, committed murder and torture. We know when a man has passed you cannot say bad things. But he died without (admitting) his mistakes.'' REUTERS SP ND1942