Botha passed away over the weekend after losing his battle with cancer. 

Musician Karen Zoid shared the news on social media and told JacarandaFM she was heartbroken over his death. 

"He was always a bit of a tormented soul for me on the one hand, and on the other as free as a 5-year-old child," said Zoid. 

She remembered how Botha helped her establish herself as a musician, and talks about her regret in not having been able to record with him before he died. 

Botha was born in 1955 and shared his birth date of 18th July with Nelson Mandela. 

He was the son of former South African Foreign Affairs Minister, Pik Botha. 

According to Botha's blog, he began writing songs and forming bands while still at school and his first professional gig was as an acoustic duo in 1974 at "a local drinking hole" in Pretoria.

From 1981 to 1983 Piet Botha was involved with Wildebeest which was one of the first bands to mix rock music with Afrikaans lyrics and recorded ‘Bossies’, a song about the South West African/Angolan Border War, which was very much a no-no during those Apartheid times.

In 1984 he co-founded the Blues Rock group Jack Hammer which he described as "a collective of musicians that somehow survived the strange machinery that is the South African music industry and produced some sterling original albums over the years".

During the 1990s Jack Hammer opened for Deep Purple and Uriah Heep on their “Masters of Rock” tour and were also privileged to be the supporting act for ZZ Top (one of Botha’s prime influences) on their South African tour.

Jacaranda News