PRETORIA - The former South African president, Mr P.W. Botha, was dragged deeper yesterday into accusations that he knew a great deal about the apartheid regime's dirty tricks against opponents and even ordered a civilian bombing.
A convicted state assassin, Eugene de Kock, said in a Pretoria court that his superiors had told him Mr Botha directly ordered the bombing of the Johannesburg headquarters of the black trade union federation Cosatu in the late 1980s.