Alternate title: “ordinary bigotry vs murderous incompetence.”
P. W. Botha was the last South African leader to defend apartheid. Other than his racial views, he seems to have been a reasonably good leader who in many ways left his country better off than it was when he took office.
Robert Mugabe took a country that was doing quite well in many respects, and turned it into one of the worst-perfoming countries in the world. Zimbabwe is among the worst in terms of corruption, life expectancy, and general economic conditions.
If you had to choose, which one would you rather live under? I would choose Botha. As long as a country has well-functioning institutions, you can always try to improve the parts that aren’t good.