Cape Town - South Africa's Truth Commission said yesterday it had ordered the former president, Mr P.W. Botha, to testify on his government's strategy to quell black resistance to apartheid.
"The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has subpoenaed . . . former state president P.W. Botha to give evidence at its forthcoming hearings on the roles played by armed forces and the state security council during the apartheid era," the commission chairman, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, said in a statement.
Dr Tutu said Mr Botha, who headed the country's white minority government for most of the 1980s, had responded that he could not attend the planned state security council hearings in Johannesburg on October 14th for health reasons.
Dr Tutu said blacks had been deeply hurt by apartheid but were not seeking revenge. "All we ask . . . is an acknowledgment that these things were done, and they are accountable, and they are sorry, and that will be the end. Please."