The End of Apartheid

by Robin Renwick

  October 1987

  I had my first meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of whom I was a wholehearted admirer. He had been boycotting my predecessor because of his disagreement with the British government about sanctions. So, before setting off for South Africa, I went to Lambeth Palace to see the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Robert Runcie, who knew of my involvement in the Rhodesia negotiations. I asked him on that basis to point out to Desmond Tutu that I could hardly be regarded as a supporter of apartheid, which he kindly agreed to do.

  Each meeting with Desmond Tutu would open with the words, ‘Let us pray’, with both of us falling to our knees. After I got to know him better, I suggested that this was his way of letting me know that there were three of us in the room and I was outnumbered. In reality, he was absolutely right. For with South Africa at the time in the grip of PW Botha and General Malan, who had created the CCB, a secret paramilitary unit to eliminate enemies of the regime, there was indeed plenty to pray about.

  Desmond Tutu said that he knew I was not a believer in general sanctions. He was an advocate of sanctions only because he could see no alternative. ‘Constructive engagement’, the phrase coined by US envoy Dr Chester Crocker, had failed. Tutu felt that Britain’s opposition to sanctions was based on our commercial interests. I said that our economic interests and jobs in Britain were indeed a factor in our attitude to sanctions. But there were other factors too. If we had agreed that Europe should ban the import of fruit and vegetables from South Africa, this would have been liable to put a hundred thousand non-whites out of work, rendering with their dependants half a million people destitute. If we believed that further sanctions would cause apartheid to be removed within two or three years, I had no doubt that we would impose them. But we did not believe that. People who lost their jobs would be out of work for the foreseeable future, as Tutu himself acknowledged.

  I added that, if comprehensive sanctions were imposed, the economy of Zimbabwe would collapse long before that of South Africa, as would the economies of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland. If companies like BP and Shell left, their health, welfare, education, training, pensions and scholarships programmes would be lost. I did not expect him to agree, but I did ask him to accept that our opposition to general sanctions was sincerely based.

  I gave him details of our assistance to Mozambique. He said that President Chissano had spoken to him about this. He knew that the Prime Minister had advised the Americans against support for Renamo. I explained that we also had launched a us$20 million programme to provide scholarships for black South Africans. We also were giving direct help to a lot of church and community group projects in the townships. I needed help from him on this, as some of the external anti-apartheid organisations were contending that this was simply ‘ameliorating apartheid’. Tutu promised his support for the projects. He continued to decline to meet US and British representatives so long as their governments opposed additional sanctions, but decided to waive this ban so far as I was concerned.

  I was able to start establishing a particularly close relationship with the South African Director-General for Foreign Affairs, Neil van Heerden, one of the most outstanding public servants I ever encountered, in his own or any other country. He assured me of his determination, and that of Pik Botha, to make progress at long last towards a solution of the Namibia dispute. Pik Botha, he said, genuinely wanted to work towards a normalisation of relations with Mozambique, an eventual signature by South Africa of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the release of Mandela.

  I had a further discussion with Buthelezi focused on a message he had sent to PW Botha pointing out the consequences of Mandela’s dying in prison, and saying that his release was the key to unblocking the political situation. It would be impossible to get a real negotiation going while Mandela remained in jail.

  The fighting between Inkatha and the ANC had led to over four hundred deaths around Pietermaritzburg in Natal. The Prime Minister had told Buthelezi that she wanted efforts made to bring the violence to an end. We supported efforts by his deputy, Oscar Dhlomo, to reach an agreement with the UDF about this. In Lusaka, Thabo Mbeki knew that Mandela was in favour of mending fences with Buthelezi. Buthelezi said that he accepted Mbeki’s bona fides and those of Oliver Tambo. But Chris Hani, head of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the military wing of the ANC, had said publicly that it was the policy of MK to seek to assassinate members of the Inkatha Central Committee, including Buthelezi. He regarded the ANC’s attempts to overthrow the government by force as futile. But the ANC was not going to melt away and nor was Inkatha.

  The finance minister, Barend du Plessis, had reached the same conclusions about South Africa’s financial situation as Gerhard de Kock. The capital outflow had somehow to be reversed. Du Plessis had the reputation of being more verlig than De Klerk, as did several of his colleagues. But the South African government still was under the iron hand of PW Botha, who exercised a reign of terror over the cabinet. He believed in intimidation across the board. At this time, infuriated one evening by the television news, he telephoned the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) to get the news changed in the middle of the programme!

  Margaret Thatcher, meanwhile, had been attending the Commonwealth conference in Vancouver, at which she felt that the Canadian hosts were trying to play to the African gallery. She flatly opposed any sanctions that would cause mass unemployment, telling Robert Mugabe that 80 per cent of Zimbabwe’s trade passed through South Africa and that one million Zimbabweans lived and worked there. At the end of the conference, she was asked by a journalist about a statement by the local representative of the ANC that, if she continued to oppose sanctions, British businesses in South Africa would become legitimate targets for attack. Understandably irritated, she replied that this showed what a typical terrorist organisation the ANC was.

  While a determined opponent of apartheid, Thatcher had never been an admirer of the ANC, given that the ‘armed struggle’ had been extended to civilian targets and included the necklacing of ‘collaborators’, and that the organisation was committed to nationalisation of much of the economy. Moreover, she had not failed to notice that, despite the SACP’s lack of any mass support, two thirds of the ANC’s politburo were members of the SACP. Nor did she believe for a moment that they were in a position to ‘seize power’. Nevertheless, she had been persuaded that the ANC had nationwide support and there could be no solution without them.

  On her return to London, I telephoned the Prime Minister’s Private Secretary, Charles Powell, to say that I understood why she had reacted as she had to a stupidly provocative statement by the ANC representative, who had been speaking on his own behalf. But as he well knew, through the programmes we were organising in the townships, we were in touch with much of the internal leadership of the ANC, while a colleague in Lusaka was in daily touch with the ANC leadership there. Downing Street agreed that of course these contacts must continue. This was confirmed also to Lynda Chalker, Minister of State in the Foreign Office, with the proviso that it should be our objective to get the ANC to agree to a suspension of violence.

  At the end of October, I was asked to pass a simple message from the Prime Minister to PW Botha. This was that she had refrained from putting pressure on him, but if he did nothing he would make things difficult for everyone, including him. A few days later, on 5 November, there was a modest step forward, with the release from prison of the long-term Robben Islander and hardline Marxist, Govan Mbeki, father of Thabo. In reporting this, I warned the Prime Minister that the release of Mandela was as remote as ever.

  November 1987

  Meeting with another senior member of the government, the courteous and erudite Gerrit Viljoen, De Lange’s predecessor as head of the Broederbond. His scholarly accomplishments included first-class honours in Classics from King’s College, Cambridge. Asked what I wanted to talk about, I said that it was the resettlement of the Magopa people, victims of a forced removal from the Ventersdorp district in 1983. Vilj
oen put his head in his hands. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I have just had the most dreadful hour with Mrs Suzman about the Magopas and now there’s you!’ In the event, a partial resettlement was agreed for the Magopas. I had an equally friendly meeting with his cabinet colleague, Dawie de Villiers, former captain of the Springbok rugby team, who also appeared firmly in the ranks of the verligtes.

  I kept telling South African audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town that the international campaign for increasing sanctions against them was born not of malevolence, but of frustration at the lack of any visible progress towards any meaningful political rights for the black population. Apartheid was unsustainable; it also was unaffordable. The question was not whether it would disappear, but how protracted its death throes would be, and how much more self-inflicted damage would be done meanwhile. Thanks to Ton Vosloo and the verligte editors of Beeld and Die Burger, Willem Wepener and Ebbe Dommisse, these comments were featured regularly in the Afrikaans press.

  At this time the government decided to try to silence one of its most effective critics, the Weekly Mail newspaper, which had shown itself to be particularly accurate in exposing many of the murkiest deeds of the security forces. I had befriended its courageous editor, Anton Harber, and other members of the editorial team. The government clearly was hoping that the paper would go to the wall financially before, through the courts, it could get permission to start publishing again. I went to see Anton Harber at the Weekly Mail office in Johannesburg to hand over sufficient funding for the paper to be able to survive for the three months or so that looked likely to be necessary to achieve this.

  In Pretoria, I attended a party given by a young member of the embassy staff, John Sawers – nowadays head of MI6 – at which Johan Heyns was asked by a group of ANC supporters what he was trying to do. ‘I am trying to change the hearts and minds of my people,’ replied Heyns. ‘That’s no use: we want power now,’ they asserted. ‘But you are not going to get power until I change the hearts and minds of my people,’ was Heyns’s reply.

  December 1987

  I arranged for Helen Suzman to meet the Prime Minister. She told Margaret Thatcher that PW Botha had no plans to release Mandela. He wanted to keep the neighbouring countries vulnerable. He had run out of ideas for reform. We had to work on his potential successors.

  At the end of the year, I had a discussion with Van Zyl Slabbert. He believed, as I did, that the idea of a suspension rather than a renunciation of violence was one whose time would come, but not if it were served up from outside. Meanwhile, both sides still thought they could win – the security forces that they could contain the situation and the ANC that they could somehow seize power. Slabbert, Suzman and the influential Stellenbosch academics did not believe that either side could win, but it was still going to take some time for that realisation to sink in. Meanwhile, there was likely to be a period of violent evolution, with the government trying to co-opt black South Africans, without success, and the ANC trying to challenge the state militarily, with equally little success.

  CHAPTER IV

  ‘If you want to get out of a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging’

  20 January 1988

  I delivered a further message from Margaret Thatcher to PW Botha. She said that she had opposed punitive sanctions, though she was totally opposed to apartheid. She had to be able to demonstrate that a policy against further sanctions could yield practical results.

  I told PW Botha that the Prime Minister was trying to help South Africa. She could herself be helped or hindered in doing so. We wanted British companies to stay in South Africa, and he could make that easier or more difficult. PW Botha said that he hoped the Prime Minister would visit South Africa to see things for herself. He complained about the sanctions imposed by the US Congress despite what he claimed were his reforms. I warned her that his reply would include considerable argument and self-justification about what already was being done.

  February 1988

  The South African ambassador delivered to the Prime Minister PW Botha’s reply, which was as self-serving as I had predicted, producing an explosion from her. The ambassador was asked to tell the President that his reply contained nothing of substance and failed to address the heart of the matter, which was that apartheid must go. When people had legitimate aspirations, these must be addressed by negotiations. She needed to be able to show progress with political reform; there had to be some hope. She had nothing to show for her battle against more sanctions.

  On 24 February, I crossed the road from the British embassy, within the Cape Town parliamentary precinct, to meet a number of National Party MPs on the steps of parliament. I asked about their reaction to the announcement I had just received that the government had banned the UDF. They looked at me in amazement, entirely unaware of the news. PW Botha was to pay a price for this increasing tendency to ignore the parliamentary party, who felt that all important decisions were being taken by the coterie of securocrats around him. The power of the securocrats was exercised through the State Security Council (SSC), operating as an inner cabinet and controlling the National Security Management System (NSMS), whose function was to coordinate the military, intelligence and police response to internal challenges to the regime.

  The Prime Minister sent a message to PW Botha deploring the banning of the UDF and the fact that Mandela remained in jail. She had done everything she could to give South Africa time to make political changes. She gave a clear warning that, to resist further sanctions, more progress with political reform was urgently needed. ‘I am particularly disappointed that Nelson Mandela remains in prison … if he were to die in prison the damage to South Africa would be enormous.’ Her reaction was reported prominently in the South African press. Pik Botha told me that, when he pointed out the external consequences of the government’s action, he had simply been overruled.

  Archbishop Tutu and the Reverend Allan Boesak organised a meeting in Cape Town’s St George’s Cathedral, to be followed by a march on parliament to protest against the banning of the UDF. I sent members of the embassy to witness the demonstration. The church leaders explained that, if stopped by the police, the demonstrators should kneel on the pavement and start singing a hymn. With these instructions they set off. As they rounded the corner towards the parliament building, the demonstrators ran into the riot police, led by the redoubtable Major Dolf Odendaal. Archbishop Tutu and Allan Boesak fell to their knees, as did the congregation. Unimpressed, Odendaal opened up with water cannon filled with purple dye, following which he arrested Tutu and Boesak, the wife of the Canadian ambassador and the BBC crew filming the incident. They were quickly released and by lunchtime Allan Boesak, never a one for martyrdom, was to be found eating a lobster in the Tuynhuys restaurant nearby. Meanwhile I was deluged with calls from Lambeth Palace urging me to secure his release and that of Desmond Tutu.

  I had dinner that evening with FW de Klerk and Johann Rupert at the Mount Nelson Hotel. Johann Rupert, an outspoken advocate of reform who had been threatened by Magnus Malan if he did not mend his ways, said that he had been discussing a potential investment in South Africa when, on turning on his television, he had discovered the Minister of Law and Order, Adriaan Vlok, stating that the country was on the verge of revolution and that, therefore, the UDF must be banned. He told De Klerk what would happen to the country and its economy if the security junta who were running it continued to behave in this way. I described what had happened at the demonstration we had witnessed earlier in the day. De Klerk made clear, with surprising frankness, that he had not been consulted, and that, if he had been in charge, affairs would have been conducted in a very different way.

  March 1988

  I saw Neil van Heerden to warn of the potential consequences of the South African ambassador at the United Nations seeking to curry favour with his President, telling the world to ‘do its damnedest’.

  At the beginning of March, I arranged for Enos Mabuza, the Prime Minister of Kangwane homeland, ne
ar the Mozambique border, to meet the Prime Minister. Mabuza, like Buthelezi, had rejected ‘independence’ for his territory – which, in this case, would have involved incorporation into Swaziland – thereafter being harassed by the security forces. I had visited Kangwane a couple of times to show support for Mabuza and to provide some help in dealing with the flood of Mozambican refugees. For this I received a message of thanks from the ANC in Lusaka. The Prime Minister told him that she understood that he could not negotiate with the South African government so long as Mandela remained in jail.

  PW Botha replied to the Prime Minister’s message about the banning of the UDF that they held different views on the reality of South Africa. She was simply ill-informed.

  8 March 1988

  Further meeting with PW Botha. Pik Botha had asked me if I could not do something to calm the President down. He was worried about the state he was in; his right hand was shaking. The meeting, once again, was tête-à-tête. PW Botha said that Mandela could not be released unless he renounced violence. Otherwise he would have to be arrested on the next day. I said that Mandela’s death in prison would do enormous damage. PW Botha had said of the Afrikaner hero General Christiaan de Wet that the indefinite imprisonment of leaders could unleash great emotional forces. Exactly the same was true of Mandela.

  PW Botha said that he had made reforms, but the West had let him down, especially the United States. Following the passage of sanctions legislation by the US Congress, the United States had lost all influence in South Africa. I said that Margaret Thatcher had fought many battles to avoid the total isolation of South Africa, but that South Africa kept contributing to its own isolation. Account needed to be taken of her views.