Legal action against former South African president P.W. Botha heralds a new battle for the "Great Crocodile" who is determined to defend his role under apartheid. Pledging never to seek amnesty through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), Mr Pieter Willem Botha has demonstrated the fierce resolve and pugnacity that carried him through 11 years as apartheid's executive. He was prime minister and later South African president from 1978 to 1989.
At the time the National Party embarked on its 1989 reforms, continued by Mr Botha's predecessor, Mr Frederik de Klerk, which led to the 1994 transition to majority rule, Pieter Botha remained associated with one of the cruellest periods of apartheid: the total onslaught strategy.
Defence minister from 1966 to 1979, P.W. Botha was largely responsible for putting in place South Africa's security and military system and for imposing the power of the State Security Council, which brought together weekly a select group of cabinet ministers and chiefs of the police, army and intelligence services.
It was also under Mr Botha's leadership of the defence portfolio that cross-border offensive attacks into Angola, Botswana and Swaziland took place from 1975.
Combative, relentless and prone to anger, Mr Botha began his rapid rise to heart of the National Party when he committed himself to a full-time job as party organiser at the age of 19. Born into a family of farmers in the Orange Free State, he had started his university studies with the help of a loan as his parents, ruined by a drought and the 1930s Depression, were unable to finance him.
Over the last year, several former apartheid officers charged with human rights violations have alleged to the TRC that Mr Botha ordered and approved bloody terrorist operations by the South African security forces in the 1980s.
After hip surgery last year, Botha is today a fragile man, but remains very alert, as is demonstrated by his meticulous written defence against the TRC, prepared with his advocates. He also ridiculed the commission as a "circus"
He was widowed in June last year after his wife of 54 years died. Botha became engaged in November to a long-time friend who is 35 years his junior, Ms Reinette Te Water Naude.