Johannes Melchior Botes (1952 - 2017)

Jannie Botes and I arrived at CCAR – as it was then – at more or less the same time, in the autumn of 1988. I came as a newly appointed faculty to help teach on the doctoral program which was just starting up at George Mason University. Jannie came as one of that first cohort of students to study for the degree and so was a member of an astonishingly varied and accomplished group of 8 people, most of whom had careers behind them and were looking for a change and a challenge.

In Jannie’s case, as I very rapidly learned, he probably knew more, more directly and for longer about social cleavages and intractable conflicts that I did. He was an Afrikaaner South African who had worked for the South African Broadcasting Corporation, both in sound radio and then as a television planner and presenter, and had increasingly found the political constraints placed on journalists by the apartheid government of the day to be intolerable – and antithetical to the practice of any kind of independent journalism. So, he had come to the USA as the local representative of the SABC and, in looking around for an interesting higher degree [he already had two South African degrees from the prestigious Afrikaaner university in Stellenbosch] had happened upon this odd new centre and degree at GMU.

Jannie never forgot that he was by trade firstly a journalist and by background an Afrikaaner – a white African. He never lost his interest in the countries of that continent and particularly in his own country, for which he always wanted the best and had hopes for some resolution of its many conflicts. His pleasure in the legalization of the ANC, the release of Nelson Mandela and the other ANC leaders, and the transition towards the Rainbow Nation there was profound. It was made more so by the fact that one of his old professors at Stellenbosch had participated in some of the crucial Track Two discussions that had been held in secret in England and which had contributed significantly to the breakthrough leading to the ending of apartheid. 

My wife and I went with him on one of his last trips back to South Africa, when he had truly settled down with Susan and his family in Fairfax to become an immigrant American, and it was clear to us that this was – for him – a journey of reminiscence. He took us round to all his old haunts - as a student, as a young  journalist, as a television presenter - and puzzled us no end by asking everywhere we ate for snoek – a boney, inedible South African fish rejected even by the hungry British just after the Second World War when presented as a “tasty” source of protein. It was a part of his roots.

Jannie never forgot his television roots either. He was always very annoyed at the faculty and staff of CCAR and ICAR for their not having troubled to make any kind of pictorial record of the early years of the M.S. and Ph.D. programs and for there being no systematic effort to record what happened to our graduates when they went out into the conflict-ridden world and grappled – as they did - with its problems and pains. In 2002, when he had finally graduated – I think he still holds the record for the longest Ph.D. ever undertaken at ICAR [he was always busy on something else] - and was teaching up at Baltimore University – he came to me and suggested that we really ought to interview and record the views of that first, pioneering generation of conflict and peace researchers who were rapidly aging and becoming mere names to the next generations entering the field. Fortunately, I had the sense to agree that this was a good idea and  should be done, but it took me a while to realize that this was Jannie, the TV journalist, still at work and not just Jannie the conflict researcher. At all events, this started a ten-year period of travels with a cine camera throughout North America, Europe, Scandanavia and – eventually – South Africa, interviewing as many of this pioneering generation as possible. After that, came the business of editing, cutting, adding to and introducing each interview – all on a financial shoestring, and all in the interstices of teaching, writing, and – in Jannie’s case – directing a new teaching program at the University of Baltimore.

Again, fortunately we managed, with Paul Snodgrass’ help, to finish off the project  - originally intended to involve 15 interviews but ending up with 40 – before Jannie finally succumbed to the last stages of the ALS he tragically contracted in 2015. The “Parents of the Field” interviews thus form Jannie Botes’ final gift to the field he joined in mid-career in the late 1980s,  and then became himself one of the next generation of “parents” through his own contribution and  his work in recording the work and ideas of others. Looking back, I was honored to be part of this work and realize that the autumn of 1988 was the start of a time with Jannie as first my student, then my colleague, and always my friend. 

I will miss him.

– Chris Mitchell