Rudolph Agnew of Consolidated Goldfields reported to Charles Powell at 10 Downing Street on the secret talks at Mells Park between a small group of Afrikaners led by Professor Willie Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch University and Thabo Mbeki and his colleagues in the ANC. Esterhuyse was believed by the Mells Park organisers to be a senior advisor to PW Botha, which, unfortunately, was not the case. But, as he told Mbeki, he was reporting back to senior members of the NIS. Esterhuyse himself told me about these contacts in February. I told him that meetings of this kind with the ANC were welcomed by us. We knew that he had established a good rapport with Mbeki. These were emphatically not negotiations, but they had opened up a useful channel of communication with the ANC.
The Prime Minister attended a dinner in London with Jan Steyn, head of the Urban Foundation, Anton Rupert and the heads of Rio Tinto, BP and Shell. I warned that they would tell her that they had little influence on the South African government, but Anton Rupert was a friend of De Klerk and could have an important influence on him.
2 February 1989
De Klerk was elected by the National Party members of parliament to replace PW Botha as leader of the National Party, though Botha intended to cling on to his position as President. De Klerk defeated Barend du Plessis by sixty-nine votes to sixty-one, with several of the verligte National Party MPs voting for the finance minister, who was thought also to have the support of PW Botha, not because the President had suddenly become a reformist, but because Barend had less of an independent power base than De Klerk.
I was on good terms with both the contestants, but was glad of the outcome, as I had been impressed by De Klerk’s strength of character, which was going to be badly needed in the period ahead. He was not PW Botha’s favourite and would want to take over from him sooner rather than later. I also thought it easier for hawks than doves to make peace, once they were decided to do so. De Klerk was not Gorbachev, I reported, but we had a good relationship with him.
At the opening of parliament, De Klerk had asked Helen Suzman why he was regarded as verkramp. ‘Because you never make a verligte speech’, was her reply. De Klerk proceeded, in his first statement as head of the National Party, to make a very verligte speech indeed, declaring that the aim must be to realise full civil rights for all South Africans and a democratic system in which no community was dominated by another or felt itself to be threatened or excluded.
3 February 1989
I called on De Klerk in his office in parliament. He had said that he would be glad to see me at any time. There was going to be a difficult period ahead. Most of the ministers and National Party MPs hoped that the President would stand down. I said that PW Botha’s staff were telling me that he would not do so. He was resentful and suspicious of De Klerk. I passed on to De Klerk an invitation from the Prime Minister to an early meeting with her.
Pik Botha, meanwhile, had been probing the government in London as to whether sanctions would be lifted if Mandela were released. The Prime Minister agreed that sanctions should be lifted only if Mandela’s release led into negotiations on a new constitution.
17 February 1989
Further meeting with FW de Klerk. He told me that he did not know how things were going to work out with PW Botha. Rather than resigning, the President might well try to hold on for some time. He doubted if this could continue for many months – there had to be an election – but De Klerk could not go to London in the near term. He would do so later in the year. He had a high regard for the Prime Minister, and regarded the ties with Britain as the most important relationship South Africa had, as US policy was hamstrung by Congress. He had ideas about what needed to be done and plenty of authority within the party, but he was not yet in the driving seat. He realised that we wanted to see a new impetus for change.
I said that, if he was able to take South Africa in a different direction, we would try to help him. But if the security police and military intelligence were allowed to continue their activities, including murder squads, unchecked, there was no way any of us were going to be able to help South Africa. We had evidence that, despite all the disclaimers, South African military intelligence were continuing to support Renamo in Mozambique. Other elements of the security forces were strongly suspected of murdering opponents of the regime.
De Klerk told me that he heard what I was saying. He had never been involved in authorising these activities and was determined to deal with them. But, he added carefully, as I would understand, he would have to deal with the security forces with a velvet glove.
De Klerk agreed on the importance of implementing the agreement leading to the independence of Namibia and not backtracking on any part of it. I said that the Prime Minister did not understand the government’s failure to engage more seriously with Buthelezi on constitutional issues. The key issue, however, was the release of Mandela. De Klerk said that he was not security-dominated in his thinking. But the situation had to be dealt with in a way that did not advance the cause of a revolution. I said that Mandela’s continued detention was being exploited by people who wanted to do just that. South Africa was now heading for an election, but Mandela’s release could not indefinitely be deferred.
23 February 1989
Meeting with Barend du Plessis to tell him that the Prime Minister would like to see him when he was in London in April. He had been explaining to his cabinet colleagues that South Africa’s debt-repayment problem constrained economic growth to well below the level needed to provide for a population currently increasing by three quarters of a million people per year. I said that, if Mandela died in prison, the result would be an internal explosion and near-total isolation. When I raised this with General Malan or the police chiefs, they said that releasing Mandela would give a new impetus to revolution. But I did not believe that they had any understanding of the economic consequences of not releasing him. A resumption of investment would happen only if Western banks and governments believed that South Africa had more convincing plans for its own future.
March 1989
Following the assassination of Dulcie September, the ANC representative in Paris, in March 1988, we became concerned about the possibility of an attack on ANC personnel in London. The Prime Minister decreed that we must give the South African government the clearest possible warning that any such action would attract a strong reaction from us, which I duly relayed to Van Heerden and the Presidency. This included telling them that we had received information that South African military agents were planning such action and this must be terminated immediately.
I reported that, to the dismay of his ministers, PW Botha was planning to return to his office. De Klerk was continuing to make reformist statements and the cabinet had rallied behind him. PW Botha was declining to set a date for an early election, causing a head-on clash with De Klerk, who also was being supported by the Afrikaans press, with Wepener and Die Burger calling publicly on the President to go. Even Botha’s closest allies were telling me that he would have to stand down.
As my friend Kobus Meiring had been appointed Administrator of the Cape – the senior official of the province – I asked him to promise at last to open the magnificent beaches to South Africans of all races. Kobus, whose own apartment at the Strand was on a still-segregated beach, needed no persuasion to do so.
It now became possible to discuss with members of the government all the issues that had been forbidden territory for so long, as they were terrified of their leader. I was able to establish a regular pattern of meetings with De Klerk, who had convinced me of his intention to make major changes. De Klerk’s friends were not the security chiefs, but the business community of Johannesburg, and precisely those leading Afrikaners who had felt alienated under PW Botha.
Gerhard de Kock by this time was dying of cancer. He was a golf-playing friend of De Klerk’s, and was determined to warn the new leader of the National Party what would happen to South Africa if the capital outflow continued. De Kock spent the last months of his life convincing h
is friend that only disaster could result from continuing on this course.
CHAPTER VII
‘The whole world will be against you – led by me!’
In my first meeting with him, I told PW Botha that I did not know whether, in my time as ambassador, I would see the end of all the remaining apartheid legislation. But I did hope to see a solution at last to the long-standing problem of independence for Namibia.
Shortly afterwards, I made the first of a series of visits to Namibia, still firmly under South African control. This wild and beautiful territory is a place to which it is easy to form a strong attachment. Most of the country is semi-desert, with vast farms able to support only a few animals. The Skeleton Coast and Etosha Pan are two of the world’s great nature reserves. The only easily cultivable land is in the Kunene Valley in the north, inhabited by the Ovambo people, where the war between South African forces and Swapo guerrillas was at its worst.
Namibia had been colonised by the Germans at the tail end of the nineteenth-century ‘scramble for Africa’, and they had named it South West Africa. The two main streets of the tiny capital, Windhoek, were named Kaiser Wilhelmstrasse and Goeringstrasse – the latter a reference to Hermann Goering’s father, Heinrich, the first governor of South West Africa. At the outbreak of the First World War, at Britain’s request, South Africa had invaded and seized the colony. On the coast, populated mainly by flamingos, lay the Baltic-style village of Swakopmund with, in the cemetery, the graves of Germans killed in that long-forgotten conflict. In the north, there were plenty more graves in evidence, of more recent origin.
I went to South Africa determined to combine my efforts with those of my friend Dr Chester Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under President Ronald Reagan, to achieve an end to the protracted war in the territory. Chet Crocker at the time was being severely criticised by the European foreign ministries, including our own, for linking South African withdrawal from Namibia to the withdrawal of the thirty thousand Cuban troops in Angola. This was a good example of the bizarre positions diplomats from time to time get themselves into. Personally I thought the linkage was entirely justified. For it was, in any event, desirable to get the Cubans out of Angola and I did not see how, otherwise, we were going to persuade the South Africans to withdraw from Namibia.
October 1987
The MPLA government in Angola, led by President Eduardo dos Santos, launched a major offensive designed finally to crush Jonas Savimbi’s Unita guerrillas in their main redoubt in southeastern Angola. The attack was meticulously planned by the Angolan army’s Soviet military advisors. As the massive force they assembled advanced south and east from the provincial capital of Cuito Cuanavale towards Savimbi’s headquarters at Jamba, they were ambushed by South African forces on the Lomba River. The leading Angolan brigade was decimated. The rest of the Angolan force withdrew in confusion to Cuito Cuanavale, suffering further losses as it did so. Savimbi claimed a great victory.
The South Africans had been operating in Angola ever since 1975, when Henry Kissinger encouraged them to intervene to prevent the Communist-backed MPLA from seizing the capital, Luanda. When that venture failed, the main South African forces withdrew. Having fallen back to the Namibian border, they soon discovered that the most effective way to disrupt infiltration by Swapo guerrillas into northern Namibia was by intercepting them in southern Angola. This was done through the use of small but determined special forces units, South African-led but with Bushman trackers. Angolan opponents of the regime in Luanda were organised into the Portuguese-speaking 32 Battalion, which specialised in cross-border operations. At the same time, the SADF continued the supply of weaponry and fuel to Unita and sought to coordinate military operations with them. As necessary, these were supported by South African mechanised units. By these tactics, and through the exercise of local air superiority, over the next fourteen years the South Africans turned much of southern Angola into a free-fire zone.
The South African foreign ministry continued to issue strenuous denials that South Africa was involved in any way in the fighting in Angola. Pik Botha was particularly eloquent on this subject. South African military units, operating deep inside Angola or Mozambique, used to listen on their radios with amusement to their government’s indignant denials. Nor did Colonel Jan Breytenbach, the 32 Battalion commander, and his colleagues on the border very often bother to seek political approval for their operations. These received all the support they required from the South African military command. As PW Botha and his colleagues became frequent visitors to Savimbi’s South African-supplied headquarters in Jamba, they knew perfectly well the extent of these cross-border incursions.
Stopping the massive Soviet- and Cuban-backed advance in October 1987 required some heroic actions by 32 Battalion and the other heavily outnumbered South African forces involved. The South African force never exceeded a brigade in size, and much of its success rested on superior mobility and tactics. The battle was won by concentrated artillery fire and air strikes on Angolan tank formations. Huge quantities of Soviet equipment were destroyed or captured. As always, the public credit for the victory was awarded to Unita, despite Jan Breytenbach’s low regard for their fighting qualities. The Soviet military advisors took an even dimmer view of the performance of their Angolan allies.
November 1987
Visiting Namibia, I was briefed by a half-mad South African colonel on the battle of the Lomba River, which was indeed an impressive military exploit. On the struggle against Swapo in Namibia, he took the view that victory was certain – but for the efforts of the enemy within. When I inquired who the enemy within were, he replied: ‘The churches, the trade unions and the teachers.’
After their victory on the Lomba River, the South African forces, operating hundreds of kilometres inside Angola, overreached themselves. It never was the intention of General Jannie Geldenhuys, head of the SADF, that they should try to take and hold Cuito Cuanavale. As, however, they attempted to eliminate the Angolan bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Cuito River, they found themselves up against entrenched Cuban armour and heavy artillery fire. The South African attempt to eliminate the bridgehead was beaten off and a battle of attrition ensued.
Stung by the failure of their great offensive, the Cuban commanders at last came up with an effective military response. Hitherto, they had kept their forces well back from the Namibian border and away from South African attacks on infiltrating Swapo guerrillas. Cuban forces in the western sector now were reinforced and instructed to move south, bringing them much closer to the border. Their tank formations posed a serious threat to the lightly armed South African reconnaissance forces, hitherto used to operating with impunity in the area. The South Africans had to wonder whether the Cuban tanks might seek to cross the border, where there was not enough South African armour to oppose them. For both sides, the war had entered a new and potentially much more dangerous phase, raising the possibility of a direct South Africa/Cuba confrontation.
* * *
In international affairs, some problems are easier to tackle when they have reached the point of crisis than when they are merely heading there. While acknowledging the skill their forces had shown in the battle on the Lomba River, I asked the South Africans whether they did not think they were in danger of overreaching themselves. Johan Heyns inquired publicly whether it made sense to have men ‘defending South Africa’ two hundred miles inside Angola. The South Africans had suffered significant casualties; theirs was a citizen army, and several of those killed were conscripts. Attending a dinner in Johannesburg at the house of a National Party MP, I found that virtually everyone there agreed with Professor Heyns – including the MP.
South Africa was fortunate at this juncture in having Neil van Heerden at the head of its foreign ministry. We spent many hours together discussing ways to breathe fresh life into the Namibia negotiations. The South Africans hitherto had never really been prepared to contemplate giving up Namibia. Now that the stakes had ri
sen, I argued, it was in their interests to consider doing so – provided agreement could be reached on a credible programme for Cuban withdrawal from Angola.
Pik Botha was at the time, along with West Germany’s Hans-Dietrich Genscher, the world’s longest-serving foreign minister, and was a veteran of countless unsuccessful Namibia negotiations. The South Africans had chosen to install Dirk Mudge and his colleagues in the pro-South African Democratic Turnhalle Alliance as the government in Windhoek, but all real power still rested with the military, led by General Georg Meiring, and the South African Administrator, Louis Pienaar. Mudge privately showed himself well aware that Swapo, probably, had more support than he did, and near universal support among the Ovambo. Pienaar, though deeply conservative, became a personal friend and I was convinced that he would cooperate in implementing a settlement if his government’s policy changed.
Pik Botha kept telling me that South African policy was about to change. But he had been saying that for years. Botha was one of the great characters of South African politics. Built like a buffalo, he would sit in his shirtsleeves, a thick black lock of hair falling across his face, complaining about the world’s supposed injustice towards South Africa. Sessions with him were always entertaining, but never short. An accomplished actor, as he needed to be given the policies he tried with brio to defend, he usually began with a tremendous display of temperament, amid threats to expel some offending journalist or, on one occasion, the German ambassador! Never hesitating to perjure himself in public, he was devastatingly frank in private, not least about his colleagues. Whatever his faults, which were not small ones, I always found him an ally in arguing with his President and the security forces for a Namibia settlement and for internal reform. I believed him when he told me that he felt the time at last had come when we really could hope to achieve a solution, if the Cubans were prepared to withdraw.
The End of Apartheid Page 7
