Did Botha Actually Say That “Black People Cannot Rule Themselves”? Fact Checking FFK’s Article, A Bond That Must Never Be Broken
The Oasis Reporters
August 3, 2026
Print media, online media and broadcast media etc usually receive an avalanche of press releases in the form of articles, videos, opinion pieces etc every day for publication and this, they are often grateful for because such is the oxygen that they need to survive on. Without this their raw material, work would be a bore.
But overtime, many publishers and editors have come to realize that a lot of disinformation often slips through, inadvertently or intentionally to the reading or viewing public which is rather regrettable.
To discourage that front from continuing, many star eyed and discerning editors now rely on Artificial intelligence to fact check every information that streams in for veracity purposes.
In the light of this, we decided to entrust the fact checking of a beautifully written article titled:
A BOND THAT MUST NEVER BE BROKEN (Part 1) by Chief Femi Fani-Kayode, who is a compelling read anytime because of his free flowing grammar that comes from his upper class education in the United Kingdom as a young and growing man way back in the sixties.
He wrote like a true patriot and if those words were to be factual, every one would feel worked up in anger over it:
Read on:
In 1988 Mr. P.W. Botha, who was President of apartheid South Africa from 1984 till 1989, said the following:
“Black people cannot rule themselves because they don’t have the brain and mental capacity to govern a society. Give them guns, they will kill themselves. Give them power, they will steal all the government money. Give them independence and democracy, they will use it to promote tribalism, ethnicity, bigotry, hatred, killings, and wars!“
These choice words coming from this racist Afrikaaner and white supremacist appall me.
They have been entrenched in the inner recesses of my spirit and soul ever since I first came across them 33 long years ago.
My repugnance and revulsion for such sentiments and those who harbour them will never subside.
To be sure racism has no place in the civilised world or indeed in the land of the living.
Botha’s mindset seeks to dehumanise us and negate who and what we are as Africans and turn us into what we are not.
It is for this very reason that we have an obligation before God to prove him wrong and that is precisely why a failure of governance in either post-apartheid South Africa, Nigeria or indeed anywhere else in Africa is not something that we can accept, tolerate or abide”
We took to Gemini, an AI assistant a simple question: Did former president Botha actually say that?
The answer was resounding.
“No, there’s no credible record of P.W. Botha saying that”.
Gemini:
That quote is widely circulated online, but historians and fact-checkers have looked for it in Botha’s speeches, parliamentary records, and interviews — and it doesn’t appear anywhere.
What we know:
1. P.W. Botha was Prime Minister 1978-1984 and State President 1984-1989 of South Africa during apartheid.
2. He did make racist and segregationist statements defending apartheid, and those are documented. But the specific wording you quoted has never been found in any official transcript, speech, or reliable biography.
3. Fact-checking organizations like Africa Check and Snopes have flagged this exact quote as misattributed / fabricated. It first started spreading online in the 2000s, long after Botha left office.
Botha’s real views were still rooted in apartheid ideology, but attributing fake quotes to him makes it harder to deal with the actual historical record.
If you want, I can pull up some of Botha’s _verified_ speeches from the 1980s so you can see what he actually said publicly. Want me to do that?
Many thanks to you, Gemini. We will need you more in the coming days, especially now that elections and campaigns would soon kickstart in Nigeria, Africa’s largest democracy.
