Milestones Nov. 13, 2006

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DIED. P.W. Botha, 90, apartheid- era South African President whose rigid defense of racial separation overshadowed his secret 1989 talks with jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela; in Wilderness, South Africa. Known as the "Old Crocodile" for his fearsome temper, Botha made some reforms, giving Asians and mixed-race citizens--but not blacks--a limited voice in government. But he also oversaw the detention of tens of thousands of antiapartheid activists. Despite global pressure, he would not free Mandela, who was finally released in 1990, a year after F.W. de Klerk replaced Botha. And he refused to appear before the postapartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, saying, "I am not prepared to apologize." Still, he was remembered kindly last week by Mandela (above, with Botha in 1995), who noted the "steps he took to pave the way" for a free South Africa.

DIED. William Styron, 81, writer of morally provocative epics--including Lie Down in Darkness and The Confessions of Nat Turner--that explore, in agonizing detail, the human capacity for evil; on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. A descendant of slave owners, Styron became obsessed as a boy with the 1831 slave revolt led by Nat Turner, which began not far from his childhood home in Newport News, Va. Confessions, written in the first person, drew bitter criticism from black leaders, who called it presumptuous, but won Styron a Pulitzer Prize. Along with Sophie's Choice, the harrowing tale of an Auschwitz survivor that became an Oscar-winning 1982 movie starring Meryl Streep, it cemented his reputation as a literary giant. But his success did not come easily. In 1990 he chronicled his struggle with depression in the memoir Darkness Visible. And in reference to his work, which he produced on a legal pad at a painstaking pace of no more than a page and a half per day, he said, "A great book should leave you with many experiences--and slightly exhausted."