Mr Botha, known as the Great Crocodile for his explosive temper, died at his home in the Western Cape, aged 90. His second wife, Barbara, said that her husband’s death was unexpected. “He was so well,” she said. “He just said to me he’s a bit weary. We went to have an early night. He took my arm and sank slowly to the ground and drew his last breath.”

During 11 years in power Mr Botha refused to release Mr Mandela from life imprisonment for plotting the overthrow of his Afrikaner-dominated white National Party in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

“While to many Mr Botha will remain a symbol of apartheid, we also remember him for the steps he took to pave the way towards the peacefully negotiated settlement in our country,” Mr Mandela, 88, said. “His death should remind us how South Africans ultimately came together to save our country from self-destruction.”

The black-dominated African National Congress was banned and exiled throughout the time Mr Botha was Prime Minister and then President, from 1978 to 1989.

Yesterday the ANC Government, which came to power in 1994, offered to provide a state funeral but Mrs Botha said that the family would respect her husband’s wish for a private ceremony. Generous tributes were paid despite Mr Botha’s reputation as a right-wing tyrant who never apologised for the killing and torture of black nationalists and other anti-apartheid activists under his administration.

Thabo Mbeki, the South African President, ordered flags to be flown at half-mast from today. He said that Mr Botha had “realised South Africans had no alternative but to reach out to one another”. Mr Mbeki’s son and brother are both believed to have been killed by apartheid agents.

The comments underlined the subtlety of secret negotiations, still to be fully disclosed, that marked the years-long transition from apartheid to democracy. Mr Botha cracked down ruthlessly on ANC supporters at home but turned a blind eye to negotiations between top Afrikaners and the ANC in Britain; meanwhile, his ministers began talks with Mr Mandela in prison.

During the Government of Margaret Thatcher — who denounced Mr Mandela, Mr Mbeki and the ANC as terrorists — Mr Mbeki met about 20 members of the Afrikaner ruling elite at Mells Castle, near Bath, for highly secret talks from 1987 to 1990, with the blessing of Mrs Thatcher and British Intelligence.

They discussed conditions for Mr Mandela’s release and held constitutional talks. Technically Mr Mbeki’s “terrorist” ANC and the “ostracised” Afrikaners were at war. But in the English West Country, talking over South African brandy and cigars into the small hours, the two sides planned peace.

In South Africa, Mr Botha moved Mr Mandela into a prison officer’s bungalow. There Mr Mandela, who at his trial had said that he was prepared to die for his beliefs, received colleagues of Mr Botha such as the Justice Minister Kobie Coetsee. When he was taken for a meeting with Mr Botha at his official residence in Cape Town, the prison commander had to knot Mr Mandela’s tie because he could no longer remember how to do it.

Mr Mandela said of that meeting: “He completely disarmed me. He was unfailingly courteous.” From that moment Mr Mandela felt that Mr Botha had crossed the Rubicon and there would be no turning back from abolishing apartheid.

Others were expressing less rosy opinions on Mr Botha. Frederick Van Zyl Slabbert, a fellow Afrikaner and one of South Africa’s top political consultants, became leader in 1984 of the opposition Progressive Federal Party in the whites-only Parliament at the same time that Mr Botha became President. “He was not impressed by the Opposition,” said Mr Van Zyl Slabbert. “He would say, ‘ Those who are against me are in the pay of communists in Moscow’. Generally speaking, he was not a pleasant fellow.”

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