YouTube Investor Comes From Racist Family

Yesterday, there were 5 lines in the front page of the Wall Street Journal describing the passing of P.W Botha. I had no idea who Botha was until I looked up the name. Most people in America would not know this, but Botha was the last dictator under apartheid. Apartheid according to Wikipedia is the system of segregation where people were classified as White, Black, Indian, or Coloured. It was legalized discrimination and the Bothas profited massively from it.

Little mentioned was the fact that another Botha of the same name, Pik Botha, who worked under P.W Botha, is the grandfather of Roelof Botha, the partner of Sequoia Capital who invested in YouTube. Yes, Roelof Botha is the investor in our favorite site - the Google Inc. (Nasdaq GOOG) owned and operated YouTube which Google bought for $1.6 billion. So, yes, Roelof Botha is the scion of a well known ~~racist~~ (make that apartheid since that is more politically correct) family that benefited from oppressing minorities and discriminating against them. I'm not making this stuff up. You can check Wikipedia's profile on Pik Botha and Roelof Both yourself. What an interesting piece of trivia! I was suprised myself since I would have never expected it.

So, who is this Roelof Botha? According to Wikipedia,

Roelof Botha is an actuary. He was the CFO of PayPal. Now he works for Sequoia Capital and currently sits on the board of directors of YouTube.

He is the grandson of the long-serving South African Foreign Affairs Minister of the same name who was also known as Roelof 'Pik' Botha.

Prior to Sequoia Capital, Roelof was CFO of Paypal. Some have said that Roelof used his pull as the grandson of the former foreign minister of South Africa to secure financing for Paypal. Makes you wonder where that money came from - all those plantations maybe. According to Wikipedia, the Bothas were responsible for the most violent times in South Africa's history.

The most violent time of the 1980s was 1985–88, when the P.W. Botha government embarked on a campaign to eliminate opposition. For three years police and soldiers patrolled South African towns in armed vehicles, destroying black squatter camps and detained thousands of blacks and coloureds. Some of those who were detained died in incidents ranging from outright murder by the authorities to suicide. Exact numbers are impossible to ascertain but is estimated by some to be hundreds and by others to be more than a thousand. Rigid censorship laws tried to conceal the events by banning media and newspaper coverage.

Detention, murder, censorship. It sounds like a reign of terror that nobody should have to live through. I don't know what bothers me more: that the offspring of racists are thriving well in America, the land of the free and equal opportunity? Or that they continue to exploit our system and use their blood money to benefit and enrich themselves to the tune of billions? These are the facts, and you'll have to make your own judgment on this piece of history.

Update: Botha subsequently served as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs in South Africa's first post-apartheid government from 1994 to 1996 under President Nelson Mandela.

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1 Comments:

Homeowner said...: Where did you descend from? Have you looked into your family tree and found all your ancestors to be squecky clean, Jesus loving people? Or perhaps you just don't know really?

We are not responsible for the sins of our parents and grandparents.

I think your posting shows that you can use Wikipedia and Google to do some research but nothing else. So can a trained monkey - think about that.; 9:59 PM