It may help to understand the balance of hope and fear which surrounded the whole subject of South Africa at that time to note the report Mrs Thatcher received from the Cabinet’s policy group on South Africa (MISC 118). It calibrated the different possibilities twenty years on. It put deterioration leading to a long-drawn-out civil war at 55 per cent, the breakdown of central government and ‘black revolutionary takeover’ at 10 per cent, and ‘peaceful transition to black majority rule’ at ‘perhaps 5 per cent’.85 This sense of the precariousness of the situation weighed heavily with Mrs Thatcher.
On 19 May 1986, South African forces suddenly launched ground and air raids on ANC offices in Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana. One effect was to end the EPG’s mission. For Mrs Thatcher, the raids must have seemed like Groundhog Day, as they so closely resembled the Botswana raids of the previous June. They evoked the same fury from her. She wrote to Botha wanting to know:
what possible advantage to South Africa could outweigh the immense damage done to your international position and in particular to the Commonwealth initiative of which you make no mention [in a recent letter to her] but which I have supported so strongly, believing it to be in your interest. I frankly find this omission astonishing.86
He claimed that terrorists were not interested in negotiations, she went on, but the EPG had been in Lusaka, ‘exploring this very point with the ANC’, when the raids took place. People would say that these attacks were ‘a deliberate attempt by your government to torpedo an initiative which was developing too well’. And she wished to register her sense of personal hurt: ‘I myself find them hard to reconcile with the relationship of trust and confidence which I had thought we had established.’ It was ‘a watershed’: ‘I cannot emphasise enough the deep anxiety which we all feel about South Africa’s future if what I believe may be the last chance for a negotiated settlement is rejected.’ If she could get nothing out of this stubborn man, how could she hope to influence events in the direction she sought? It was probably from this time onward that Mrs Thatcher decided that real change within the white regime would not come from Botha and so began to look out for an Afrikaner Gorbachev.
Botha professed to be equally angry with Mrs Thatcher, complaining over eight pages. He spoke of her ‘veiled threats’87 and his ‘deep disillusionment’ with the contents and ‘spirit’ of her letter. If his government were forced to choose between ‘accepting the domination of Marxist revolutionary forces and threats from certain Western countries and our determination to maintain civilised standards and our very existence – we will have no option’, he concluded rather vaguely, ‘but to follow the dictates of our own consciences.’ On the same day, he sent her a separate, confidential document of the South African Communist Party, unearthed by his National Intelligence Service (NIS) and designed to shock her, about the revolutionary seizure of power. ‘Not really a very illuminating document,’ commented Powell drily. ‘That’s what Communist parties are like.’88
With this setback, Mrs Thatcher came under ever greater pressure from the Commonwealth and from her own Foreign Office. When Powell suggested that Howe should ‘explore discreetly’ Pik Botha’s private suggestion that European heads of government might have a meeting with P. W. Botha, Mrs Thatcher scribbled, rather desperately, ‘Yes – let’s try everything we can. We must play for time.’89 On 12 June, Botha reimposed the countrywide state of emergency he had earlier lifted. The EPG report was published on the same day. It said that South Africa was not making progress towards the abolition of apartheid. Although Charles Powell wrote disparagingly to Mrs Thatcher about the report, he drew favourable attention to what it had to say about Mandela personally: ‘He clearly is a remarkable man.’90
When she met the co-chairmen of the EPG on the day of publication, Mrs Thatcher set out her overall case:
in the end there had to be negotiations in South Africa between the Government and blacks … She believed … that Mandela held the key. But there must be a risk that his release would provoke further violence, even if this was not what he himself would wish. She also wondered to what extent Mandela would be able to control the ANC, let alone the young blacks in the townships. But in the absence of any other way forward, she thought that his release must be the focus of further efforts with the South African Government.
There was ‘much to be said’, she went on, ‘for focussing attention on a single person and a single event’.91 One of the two co-chairmen, the Nigerian General Olusegun Obasanjo, told Mrs Thatcher that she was ‘the only person to whom President Botha would talk frankly about his fears and what he was prepared to do’.92 This was ‘interesting’, Powell reported, but ‘The Prime Minister deliberately did not respond to this. She thinks she has used up much of her credibility with Botha, for the time being at least.’93 Talking to him might be a ‘possible option’ later. The very next day, Powell communicated Mrs Thatcher’s emphasis on the importance of the release of Mandela to the South African Ambassador, Denis Worrall.* ‘I am not passing this on to the Foreign Office,’ he told Mrs Thatcher.94† As was the case in some other areas of diplomacy – aspects of the Cold War, relations with Saudi Arabia – South Africa became one of those subjects for which Mrs Thatcher and Powell worked out the direction of policy at the highest level in Downing Street and cut out Geoffrey Howe and his officials. Powell used the reformist Worrall, who had political ambitions of his own, almost as his spy within South African officialdom.
Ahead of the European Council in The Hague at the end of the month, Hawke and Mulroney lobbied Mrs Thatcher for the EEC to introduce sanctions. Still seeking delay, Mrs Thatcher revived her idea of Geoffrey Howe as an ‘eminent person’, but this time proposed that he should go to South Africa and the Frontline States as the European Council’s special envoy. This was agreed, with notable support from Helmut Kohl. The Council announced a prospective ban on the import of gold coins, iron, steel and coal, and proposed a voluntary ban on new investment in South Africa, but not full-bodied sanctions. The Howe visit was allowed three months to work before any of the agreed action would be taken. This would make it more difficult, Mrs Thatcher hoped, for the Commonwealth London ‘review conference’, scheduled for the beginning of August, to throw its weight about. ‘We must at all costs avoid bringing [his visit] to a premature conclusion,’ Mrs Thatcher told Howe, perhaps unconsciously pleased at the thought that he would be away a lot. ‘Anything less would be to let down the Germans, which the Prime Minister could not contemplate.’95 She was not normally so tender about German feelings. Commonwealth leaders understood what she was up to, and were ‘enraged’ by it.96
Laurens van der Post rang to congratulate her on ‘the best that could be done’ at The Hague, and on avoiding sanctions once again: ‘If we start on sanctions, it will be the end of South Africa.’97 Botha thanked her too, for the same reason, but complained that the EEC had handed South Africa an ultimatum.98 He told her haughtily that he would decide whether Howe, on his mission, could see Mandela, after he himself had seen Howe, if indeed he would see him at all. Reports warned that the ANC would not let Howe see Mandela anyway.99* Mrs Thatcher wrote back to Botha, maintaining her support for the EPG concept very clearly: ‘a commitment to the early release of Nelson Mandela and the unbanning of the ANC, in exchange for a suspension of violence, would do more than any other step to create the climate of confidence in which a dialogue would become possible.’100 It ‘perturbs me considerably’, she went on, that he would not see her Foreign Secretary: a meeting would be the best way of enabling her to ‘defend what I perceive to be your interests as much as ours in the face of the rapidly mounting pressures for action against South Africa’. Faced with this plea, Botha, as was usually the case, backed down.* As for poor Howe, he resented the poisoned chalice which Mrs Thatcher had passed him, but could scarcely reject such an important role.
The ensuing month, leading up to and including the London review conference, was the most difficult in diplomatic terms that Mrs Thatcher ha
d ever endured. She had to deal with the combined opposition of the Commonwealth leaders and the Commonwealth Secretariat (based in London), and the consequent anxieties of the Queen. Elizabeth II, as head of the Commonwealth, was worried about divisions between Britain and the other members. In addition, and related to the post-Westland anxieties about her style of government, Mrs Thatcher faced discontent among her own senior ministers over South Africa. Geoffrey Howe, in particular, found her attitude to the subject, her way of doing business and her treatment of him increasingly disagreeable. Against this, she had only the genuine but sotto voce support of Ronald Reagan and Helmut Kohl, and the strong backing of her supporters in the country, of several newspapers and of public opinion more widely. South African sanctions provided a classic example of Mrs Thatcher in action – reaching over policy elites and foreign leaders by reiterating what she saw as home truths, putting up with isolation in the belief that she would be proved right later.
There was a real danger, however, that the Commonwealth leaders, goaded beyond endurance by Mrs Thatcher and empowered by the sense of their own moral rectitude, would try to squash her once and for all. In planning this, they had several weapons – the London review conference, the fact that it coincided with the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh, and the belief, encouraged by Sonny Ramphal at the Commonwealth Secretariat, that the Queen was on their side.
Towards the end of June, the Queen received a letter from Desmond Tutu. The black people of South Africa had been loyal to her, he wrote, at a time when Hendrik Verwoerd (Prime Minister of South Africa from 1958 to 1966 and the arch-exponent of apartheid) had not been. Now he made an appeal: ‘Madam, our country is on the brink of a monumental catastrophe.’101 He was aged fifty-four, he said, a bishop and a Nobel Prize winner, but he could not vote. The EPG’s work for peace had been scuppered by the cross-border raids. The South African government was being protected in its appalling behaviour by Britain, the United States and Germany. Why were there no sanctions against the ‘most vicious system since Nazism’? ‘Your Majesty, this is a cri de coeur. Please help us bring about a new South Africa.’
The letter immediately raised the ticklish problem of who should answer it. Since it came to Buckingham Palace from an Anglican bishop, by hand of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s special representative, Terry Waite,* it might seem to be an appeal to the Queen in her role as supreme governor of the Church of England. On the other hand, since it dealt with foreign policy, should it not be a matter for the Queen’s ministers? Yet again, though, since the Queen was head of the Commonwealth, and the London review conference was about to discuss the key matter of sanctions, was this really a matter for her British government at all? This was part of the awkwardness which could be produced by the Queen’s different roles.
A fortnight after the letter was delivered, Charles Powell laid the problem before Mrs Thatcher: ‘Bishop Tutu recently wrote to The Queen about South Africa in fairly objectionable terms. The fact of his letter is public.’102 Geoffrey Howe, Powell reported, thought that the politics of the situation would be minimized if the Queen’s own private secretary, Sir William Heseltine,† were to reply. Heseltine’s draft, which Powell enclosed, said that the Queen was ‘conscious of the historical connections to which you allude’ and ‘has followed developments in South Africa in recent months closely and with great concern’. She sought ‘an end to the suffering and an early and peaceful solution to your country’s problems’ and emphasized the ‘special responsibility of those in positions of influence to speak out against violence’. Powell questioned Howe’s recommendation: ‘The press would be bound to take it as somehow reinforcing the notion of a difference of opinion between The Queen and you.’ He suggested that Howe should reply, in uncontroversial terms. Mrs Thatcher agreed: ‘I think the proposed draft does involve The Queen in politics … I am very unhappy about the proposed advice. The Press is bound to claim that there is a rift between The Queen and Her Government.’103 A variant on the Powell idea was that the British Ambassador in South Africa should reply to Tutu.
After a week’s further cogitation, however, Sir William Heseltine wrote to Howe’s office to say that the Queen had considered carefully the pros and cons of a letter to the Bishop from Buckingham Palace or from the Ambassador. Her Majesty had agreed it would be wrong to send a reply from the Foreign Secretary himself and, after much thought, decided that the balance of the argument rested with a letter from the private secretary.104 Although the final draft differed little from the one that had worried him and Mrs Thatcher, Powell for some reason acquiesced happily. ‘This is a simple and satisfactory solution,’ he told Mrs Thatcher.105
There were no public explosions about the Queen’s reply to Tutu, but the overall situation was not satisfactory for any of the parties. Mrs Thatcher was absolutely incensed, as she had been at Nassau, by the suggestion that her stand against sanctions was immoral. Indeed one of her favourite points, formulated by van der Post, was ‘the immorality of sanctions’ themselves. As usual, the disapproval of bishops, whose respect, in principle, she valued, did not help her temper. On 9 July, the day after Howe set off on his mission to South Africa and the Frontline States, Mrs Thatcher publicly denounced her critics. ‘I find nothing moral’, she told Hugo Young in the Guardian, ‘about them sitting in comfortable circumstances, with good salaries, inflation-proof pensions, good jobs, saying that we, as a matter of morality, will put x hundred thousand black people out of work.’106 The proposed fruit-and-vegetable boycott alone, she claimed, would put 95,000 people out of their jobs: ‘blacks and their families out of work. Moral? Poof! Moral? No social security. Moral?’107
At the Commonwealth Secretariat, Sir Peter Marshall,* formerly a senior diplomat in the Foreign Office, was now Deputy Secretary-General. It was his job to make sure that Britain and the Commonwealth stayed close together, and he was dismayed. ‘A dispiriting day,’ he confided in his diary, ‘… an impassioned interview with Hugo Young in the Guardian has added fuel to the flames.’108 He noted the news that several nations were now pulling out of the Commonwealth Games: ‘The gap is widening.’109 As early as 20 June, he had asked himself, ‘Is the Commonwealth able to cope with the magnitude of the issue or is it now a means of breaking us?’110 As the review conference approached, that break seemed ever more likely.
True, the pressure was not all one way. Helmut Kohl strongly supported Howe’s mission, and said that Botha’s rudeness to Howe reminded him of his own mother’s wisdom. She ‘used to say to him, “Slam the door if you like, but remember you are going to have to open it again” ’.111 In Kohl’s view, the ANC ‘were a motley lot, and their leaders did not really want Mandela released: in prison he was a useful martyr, out of prison he would be a competitor for them.’112 Reagan, under pressure of his own over sanctions in Washington, said it was ‘unreasonable’ to expect the whites ‘to go immediately’ to one man, one vote. He feared Communist penetration of the ANC, but ‘did not exclude the possibility of dialogue with them’.113 In a speech on 22 July the President went public with a call to resist ‘this emotional clamor for punitive sanctions’.114
Nevertheless, those who disagreed with Mrs Thatcher on sanctions increasingly combined against her. She was inundated with messages from EPG members and other Commonwealth leaders trying to persuade her to change her mind. Brian Mulroney saw her when she visited Canada for Expo ’86 and attempted to persuade her with his silken tongue. But he got the thick end of hers. ‘Margaret, I am not a member of your government,’ he stated as she became increasingly strident, ‘I am the head of a sovereign nation!’115 When he said British leadership of the Commonwealth would be ‘imperilled’ if she did not give ground at the review conference, she retorted that ‘one had to draw a distinction between leadership and followership’:116 the way to get rid of apartheid was through negotiations, while sanctions would lead to violence. Mulroney told her they disagreed, and that this was ‘not a happy situation’. ‘You could tell how angry she w
as from her colour and her tight smile and her look at you – if she could have slit my throat and got away with it, she would probably have tried,’ he remarked with a grin.117 The ANC leader, Oliver Tambo, refused to see Geoffrey Howe in Lusaka because he (correctly) considered Howe’s mission part of a policy of postponement: ‘the statements made by the British Prime Minister have, to say the least, been wholly unhelpful.’118
What made things worse for Mrs Thatcher was the increasing restiveness of Geoffrey Howe himself. Although he had always agreed with her that South Africa ‘should not be made the leper of the world’,119 Howe cared about the Commonwealth and agreed with its view that South Africa was part of its cuisine interne,120 so he did not share Mrs Thatcher’s indignation at Commonwealth involvement. He felt that she was needlessly putting Commonwealth unity at risk. On 24 June, he confided in Peter Marshall at a reception that ‘the trouble is with the Prime Minister.’121 The day before, Mrs Thatcher had been disagreeable to him in front of colleagues about his paper for the OD Committee in advance of the European Council. ‘It gave the impression’, she complained, ‘that the mainspring of our policy should be to go along with the crowd.’122 Trying, as with the British Leyland question after Westland, to rein in Mrs Thatcher through the power of ministers, Howe recruited senior colleagues on his side, causing Peter Walker to write to her: ‘Willie [Whitelaw], Norman [Tebbit], Quintin [Hogg, Lord Hailsham], the Chief Whip [Wakeham] and I all have expressed our political judgment that we must be seen as positive in our desire to negotiate.’123 The following day, in Cabinet, Howe won general support for further measures if his mission to South Africa should fail.124
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