"Don't take life too seriously, because you won't come out of it alive," he told an all-white audience of about 70 people at the sales launch of two hours of interviews with him by former SABC journalist Cliff Saunders.

The interviews, one in English, and one in Afrikaans, were made for television, but have been rejected by the SABC, eTV and MNet. Now the makers, Thuthuka Broadcasting, are selling them to the general public on DVD and video at R130 a shot.

The launch was held at a hotel in Wilderness in the Southern Cape, not far from the lagoon-side home to which Botha retired after being ousted from the presidency by a reformist FW de Klerk in 1989.

Still compos mentis

Though he walked with the aid of a stick as he entered the room (and his audience rose to its feet and applauded), Botha, wearing a grey sports jacket and blue-and-grey striped tie, required no assistance as he delivered his 15 minute address.

He smiled as Thuthuka director Mark Williams confessed his trepidation about approaching Botha for the interviews in view of rumours that he was senile and incapable of coherent thought or speech.

"I thank you that I had the opportunity to say I am not yet (non) compos mentis," Botha said towards the end of his own address. "Sometimes people think I am, but I know of other people who are not compos mentis in South Africa. And I will not discuss them."

He drew laughter from his audience, mostly members of the public, plus a handful of journalists, when he recounted a joke about a Presbyterian priest who was asked why, after having served his congregation for so many years, he seemed to have so few enemies.

"‘Oh,' he said. ‘It's very easy to explain. The only reply I can give you is, I outlive the bastards'," said Botha.

"But in my case, through the grace of God, I still live and many of them who fought with me are not there any more."

He mentioned graves several times, quoting the Afrikaans writer CJ Langenhoven as saying that every man who dies takes a mistake to the grave, and recounting how he himself had visited the Second World War graves of South African soldiers in Europe, the last resting place of Napoleon, and the tomb of Christ in Jerusalem — "the one who stood up and secured life for us".

"Our beloved country, you are a country of the future as long as we believe in the man who conquered the grave," he said.

"Something wrong" in SA

Botha, who in his political heyday was known as the Groot Krokodil (big crocodile) also touched on South Africa's history, and its current "situation".

"Now if there is nothing wrong with South Africa, why are people so inclined to tell you that there are (sic) nothing wrong with South Africa?" he asked.

"I say with the armaments legislation that we are experiencing today, with this sort of attitude, that thousands of young people are in foreign countries, instead of giving their attention to South Africa as they ought, then there must be something wrong.

"If there is something wrong, it is our duty to find out what is wrong and to take each others' hand and stand up and say South Africa belongs to us through the grace of God.

"And we will try to maintain it because South Africa is a beautiful country, South Africa is a good country. It only needs good people, competent people. It needs skilled people. It needs people that want to serve it. And my message to you today is, come let us learn to serve South Africa."

Botha would have freed Mandela

Asked during question time whether Mandela would have been released when he was if he, Botha, had still been in power, he said he had given Mandela an opportunity to leave jail.

"I told him to renounce violence, which he did not do. He kept himself in jail at that stage."

He said he had spoken to then British premier Margaret Thatcher and German chancellor Helmut Kohl on this issue.

"One of them told me, let him go and then put him in jail again. I said no, it's for him to decide whether he is prepared to renounce violence."

No regrets for Botha

He said he had read Mandela's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom.

"I read the book and decided what I think about it, and I still think the same," he said.

Pressed for an opinion, he said: "I don't think it's one of the best books in the world."

In the interviews, extracts of which have already been published, Botha is dismissive of the notion of a rainbow nation, vehemently opposes affirmative action, maintains he does not regret anything he did in his political career, and says he is "looking forward to the rest of my life".

Sapa