Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, (27 April 1932 – 12 October 2018) was a South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era, the longest-serving in South African history. Known as a liberal within the party, Botha served to present a friendly, conciliatory face on the regime, while criticised internally. He was a leading contender for the leadership of the National Party upon John Vorster's resignation in 1978, but was ultimately not chosen. Staying in the government after the first non-racial general election in 1994, he served under Mandela as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs from 1994 to 1996. Botha was nicknamed 'Pik' (short for pikkewyn, Afrikaans for 'penguin') because of a perceived likeness to a penguin in his stance, accentuated when he wore a suit. He was not related to Prime Minister (later State President) P. W. Botha, under whom he served as foreign minister for 17 years. Early life Botha was born at Rustenburg in the Transvaal, to Roelof Frederik Botha and Maria Elizabeth Dreyer. At the age of four, he was struck by meningitis in Lourenço Marques (modern-day Maputo, Mozambique); he received treatment at a small hospital in Barberton, Transvaal, and his mother vowed that if he survived, he would become a church minister. Botha attended Paul Kruger Primary School, where his father was principal. He excelled in high school, becoming chairman of the debating society and officer in the school cadets. Botha was also a writer of both prose and poetry in Afrikaans, and his writing supplemented his salary in his early years as a diplomat. In his first year studying law at the University of Pretoria, a theologian explained to him that God would not expect him to keep his mother's promise to become a church minister. Diplomat and lawyer Botha began his career in the South African foreign service in 1953, serving in Sweden and West Germany. From 1963 to 1966, he served on the team representing South Africa at the International Court of Justice in The Hague in the matter of Ethiopia and Liberia v. South Africa, over the South African occupation of South-West Africa (now Namibia). In 1966, Botha was appointed legal adviser at the Department of Foreign Affairs, in which capacity he served on the delegation representing South Africa at the United Nations from 1967 to 1977. In 1974, he was appointed