The moving spirit behind the Namibia negotiations was the US envoy, Chester Crocker. He was continuing indefatigably to work on the Russians and Cubans, and he too was beginning to sense a breakthrough. For the war in Angola was becoming unpopular in Cuba. The Russians, increasingly disillusioned, were beginning to contemplate cutting their losses in Africa. At around this time Eduard Shevardnadze, Gorbachev’s foreign minister, making a voyage of discovery to the region, astounded a number of African governments by telling them that, in future, Russia’s relations with them were going to be conducted on the basis of cost-benefit analysis! To my surprise, I started receiving notes from Boris Asoyan, the deputy chief of the Department of African Countries at the Soviet foreign ministry and the de facto Soviet envoy in southern Africa, approving of my public statements that what South Africa needed was not more sanctions or armed struggle, but a negotiated outcome.
January 1988
The Angolans for the first time indicated a willingness to agree in principle to eventual Cuban withdrawal. This would be phased over four years. The South Africans remained deeply sceptical. In May, we made available a venue in London for the first in a new series of negotiations, led by Crocker, between the South Africans, Cubans and Angolans. In June the discussions resumed in Cairo, this time with Pik Botha and General Malan conducting some well-publicised tourism on camels by the Pyramids.
Further meetings followed at various venues. British involvement was indirect but important, for the Americans had no embassy in Luanda. Our ambassador to Angola, Patrick Fairweather, served as the indispensable channel of communications for the Americans, and was able to influence the Angolan replies. Following the imposition by Congress of general sanctions against South Africa, in 1986, there had been a near-breakdown of relations between the Reagan administration and the South African government. So we also had to do a good deal of the heavy lifting in Pretoria, not only with Pik Botha and Van Heerden, but also with other members of the South African government. On 9 May the Prime Minister sent a message to PW Botha saying: ‘It would be a major prize to secure the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola and an internationally accepted settlement in Namibia.’
June 1988
Neil van Heerden told me that there had been a sea change in the South African attitude. The political leadership felt that the military had indeed overreached themselves and that further casualties around Cuito Cuanavale were unacceptable. The South Africans also had begun to realise that a profound change really was taking place in Soviet policy.
South African and Cuban minds were concentrated by incidents on the battlefield. As Cuban forces by now were close up against the Namibian border near the Calueque hydroelectric power station on the Kunene River, the South Africans engaged a Cuban column north of the border, inflicting heavy casualties. In retaliation Cuban MiGs bombed the dam and the pumping station, which was controlled by the South Africans, eleven of whom were killed. Although there had been isolated incidents in the air, these were the first major direct clashes between Cuban and South African forces. Having tasted blood, some of it their own, both sides drew back from further exploits of this kind.
July/August 1988
Van Heerden and Pik Botha were working hard for a settlement. To convince PW Botha and the South African military, they needed to be able to persuade them that Cuban withdrawal really was assured. At a meeting in New York the leader of the Cuban delegation, Carlos Aldana, told Van Heerden that they were interested in a ‘peace without losers’. Going further than any European foreign ministry was prepared to do, Aldana added that linkage (of Namibian independence to Cuban troop withdrawal) ‘exists and its existence is accepted’. One month later, in Geneva, Van Heerden responded by proposing that the process leading to Namibian independence should be started – once the South Africans were satisfied about the modalities for Cuban withdrawal.
By this stage I was convinced that a Namibia settlement was within our grasp. Neither South Africa nor Cuba had any real desire any longer to bear the escalating costs of the war. By November a schedule had been worked out whereby Cuban forces in southern Angola would withdraw to the north – and then leave. In December, this agreement was signed in New York – a triumph of persistence for Chet Crocker and his team.
But with the election of George Bush senior, Crocker by now was close to leaving the scene. Bush’s Secretary of State, James Baker, felt that Crocker had become too much of a liability with the black caucus in Congress. As my experience in Rhodesia led me to suspect that implementing the agreement would be no less difficult than negotiating it, I was dismayed at this news. Crocker told me that Britain was going to have to take on much of the burden of helping to ensure that the agreement was in fact implemented.
* * *
1 April 1989
The New York Accords, which ended the war in Angola, opened the way for the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 435, which contained a plan for a ceasefire and UN-supervised elections in Namibia. A multinational force, the United Nations Transitional Assistance Group (Untag), was formed to supervise the elections, which were scheduled for November.
Margaret Thatcher was due to make a visit to Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Malawi. I wanted her to end this tour in Namibia, arriving on 1 April – the day on which the UN plan, to which the South Africans had agreed, began to be implemented. But we would not know until the last moment what the situation would be in Windhoek on that day. I went ahead to Windhoek, and it was agreed by Margaret Thatcher that a decision should be taken only as she was about to leave Malawi.
Having talked to the South African Administrator, the UN representatives – the Finnish diplomat (and future President of Finland) Martti Ahtisaari and General Prem Chand, of the Indian army – the British military signals contingent who were providing communications for the UN force and a number of black Namibian friends, I sent a message urging her to come. Foreign Office officials, understandably concerned that the Prime Minister might find herself in a difficult situation, felt that this was a risk not worth taking. As always, she took pleasure in overruling them. The press accompanying Mrs Thatcher on her plane were told only in mid-air that they were heading for Namibia, not Heathrow.
So, as Namibia returned to legality, the prime ministerial VC10 arrived at Windhoek airport. Mrs Thatcher had lunch in their tented camp with the British personnel. The rest of us had fizzy water, but the troops, thoughtfully, had provided Denis Thatcher with an indistinguishable gin and tonic. We then set off for the British-owned Rössing uranium mine, on which Namibia depended for much of its exports. There had been fierce pressures on Rio Tinto to close down the mine, which would have been a disaster for Namibia, as it would have been extremely costly and difficult to open it up again. Instead the company had set an example by developing housing, health, pensions, safety and other standards far superior to those anywhere else in the territory.
As we boarded the plane for Rössing, the first reports were coming in of large-scale Swapo incursions and clashes on the Angolan border. By the time we returned to Windhoek, it was clear that the entire agreement was threatened.
Louis Pienaar reported that large armed Swapo columns, crossing the border contrary to the terms of the ceasefire agreement, had been intercepted by South African forces. This was the situation we had faced in Rhodesia when, immediately following the ceasefire, large numbers of Mugabe’s guerrilla forces moved across the Mozambique border into Rhodesia with their weapons. It had been touch and go to dissuade the Rhodesians from attacking them. The South Africans had far more formidable military capabilities, though their forces were restricted to bases under the terms of the ceasefire agreement. Both sides already were behaving as if the agreement was no longer in existence. Martti Ahtisaari, who had joined us at Pienaar’s residence, was in an impossibly difficult position. The South Africans were on the verge of withdrawing from the settlement. Mrs Thatcher told Ahtisaari that he must get agreement from the UN Secretary-General, Javier Pérez de Cu�
�llar, to authorise South African ground forces to stop the Swapo incursions.
The scene shifted to a long and extremely difficult meeting with Pik Botha at the airport. Under pressure from the military in Pretoria, he was adamant that the South Africans would have to take the law into their own hands and call in air strikes against the Swapo columns, whether the UN authorised these or not. Mrs Thatcher said that she had told Ahtisaari that he must get Pérez de Cuéllar to authorise the local South African forces to deal with the incursions, but that, if the South Africans took unilateral action, ‘the whole world will be against you – led by me!’
Pik Botha, on this occasion, though highly overwrought, was not play-acting. He and Van Heerden had invested much personal credit in negotiating an honourable way out for South Africa from Namibia. He now had every hawk in the South African security establishment desperate to resume the fight against their foes in Swapo.
I argued fiercely against air strikes. This went on for two hours, until Denis Thatcher mercifully intervened, as the Prime Minister had to board her plane. As I returned to Windhoek, I was told that the UN had accepted the need for action to deal with the incursions and Pik Botha told me the air strikes had been called off. Ground forces and police units were allowed to deploy instead.
Margaret Thatcher boarded her plane reluctantly. She clearly was attracted by the prospect of continuing to conduct the affairs of Namibia. Martti Ahtisaari was heavily criticised for his actions and had shown plenty of political courage in taking them. If he had not done so, the settlement would have been lost. The Prime Minister had some justification for thinking that she had been ‘the right person, in the right place, at the right time’.14
But it remained to control the military situation. We used our embassy in Luanda, where Patrick Fairweather’s successor, James Glaze, was in direct touch with the Angolan chief of staff. He, the Cubans and the Russians did not want the Swapo incursions to continue: they realised what was at stake. So did several of the senior members of the Swapo political leadership, who also were contacted by Glaze. Gradually an uneasy truce was restored.
Notes
14 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 529.
CHAPTER VIII
‘I am happy to request you to pass my very best wishes to the Prime Minister’
On arriving in South Africa, I had grappled with the problem of how to communicate with Nelson Mandela. I did not have to do so for long. In May 1986, Helen Suzman had seen Mandela in Pollsmoor prison. He had told her that he was ready to negotiate with the government and that he wanted to ‘normalise conditions’ in South Africa. She did not know when she would be permitted to see him again. I asked her, when she did, to tell him that the Prime Minister was intensifying her efforts to help to secure his release.
When she saw Mandela during his treatment at the Constantiaberg Clinic in August 1988, he told her again that he wanted to help change the situation and could not be expected to sit ‘with his arms folded’ once he was released. Shortly afterwards, to the alarm of the ANC in Lusaka, he wrote a secret memorandum to PW Botha proposing negotiations to find a solution acceptable to all South Africans. I did not know the content of the memorandum, but I did know that Mandela favoured negotiations and did not believe in the ANC mantra of a ‘seizure of power’.
Nor did most of his colleagues in Lusaka. In January 1990, in a speech intended for an internal audience but which, inadvertently, he made in public, the ANC secretary-general, Alfred Nzo, declared that ‘We must admit that we do not have the capacity within our country to intensify the armed struggle in any meaningful way’.15
13 April 1989
I reported to the Prime Minister that I had received a letter on prison notepaper from Nelson Mandela. Mandela had told one of his lawyers, Hymie Bernardt, to pass on his thanks to me for the work we were doing in the townships, and I had relayed this to London. To my annoyance, this found its way into the British press as a supposed message from him to Mrs Thatcher. Mandela wrote to me that ‘If I had wanted to express my views on Mrs Thatcher’s work, or on the policy of the British government on any specific matter, I would have preferred to do so in the course of a face to face discussion with you. Meanwhile, I am happy to request you to pass my very best wishes to the Prime Minister.’
I replied to Mandela: ‘Thank you for your letter, which I was very glad to receive. The Prime Minister’s position is well known. It is that you should be freed and free to express your views. Needless to say, I should be very glad to have a face to face discussion with you. I have been asked to assure you that our efforts will continue to promote the idea of a negotiation in which all parties can participate, in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides.
‘I have, as you requested, passed your best wishes to my Prime Minister. Mrs Thatcher has asked me to send you her best wishes and to say that she looks forward to the day when she is able to discuss these matters with you herself, as she would very much wish to do.’
24 April 1989
In a meeting with Barend du Plessis before his departure for London, I said that the real danger for South Africa was not revolution, but a progressive and worsening economic haemorrhage. The new government would have the chance to change the course of events after the elections. The opportunity must not be lost. Du Plessis, like his colleagues, including De Klerk, was thinking in terms of power-sharing and certainly not of a transfer of power. As he talked of trying to make progress with Buthelezi, I asked the Prime Minister to make clear to him the imperative need to release Mandela, which she proceeded to do.
2 May 1989
I was asked to extract from the South African government, that same day, a response to accusations, made during the trial in Paris of a US arms dealer and three other accused, that South African agents had supplied a rocket launcher and training to a Northern Ireland Protestant paramilitary splinter group. This produced an untypically contrite letter from PW Botha denying that the South Africans had supplied a rocket launcher (it had come from a middleman), but acknowledging that two members of the group had received training in the use of a rocket launcher in South Africa in 1988. Margaret Thatcher replied that the South African ambassador was being asked to send home three members of his staff. The South African arms procurement agency, Armscor, must be told to cease their activities in the United Kingdom.
3 May 1989
FW de Klerk told me that the election would be held on 3 September. He hoped to see the Prime Minister in June. I said that we were concerned about the activities of the lunatic fringes of the security establishment, as evidenced in the missile story from Paris. South Africa could not afford to keep shooting itself in the foot in this way. I warned about military intelligence units ‘taking out’ enemies of the regime, and that, despite his own orders to terminate support for Renamo, senior officers in military intelligence were continuing arms supplies to them. De Klerk said that any South African president had to retain the support of the armed forces and the police. But he was determined to assert civilian control over the military. I said that we welcomed his statement that after the elections there would have to be negotiations on a new constitution.
In a joint meeting with De Klerk at this time, Harry Oppenheimer and Jan Steyn told me that they too had warned him of the difficulty of knowing exactly what shadowy and criminal elements of the security forces were doing in defiance of any authority from the President.
10 May 1989
In a further discussion with him, De Klerk told me that he envisaged a new constitutional body that would be above the existing houses of parliament. The homelands would become part of a federation. I observed that Buthelezi had made clear that he would not participate unless Mandela were released. What kind of offer would be made to the extra-parliamentary opposition?
De Klerk had not worked out an answer to this question. He was preoccupied with the need to defeat Andries Treurnicht and the Conservative Party in the elections, in which he would be facing a strong right-wing challen
ge in his own constituency of Vereeniging.
18 May 1989
Helen Suzman had a good relationship with FW de Klerk, whom she had always found to be meticulous and courteous in his dealings with her, despite their political differences. She told him in parliament that his statement of intent must be translated into reality. She saw him not as a starry-eyed liberal, but as a pragmatic, intelligent man who understood what needed to be done to secure the country’s future. He had not previously had the authority to be able to do so. She quoted the African saying about not arguing with the crocodile when you are still in the water – an unmistakable reference to PW Botha. But now, she said, De Klerk was no longer in the water and could do what needed to be done to restore peace at home and South Africa’s reputation abroad. Above all, he must use his powers to prevent all further offensive actions by the state.
6 June 1989
I called on PW Botha, who was looking tired and fragile, and was now very isolated. He asked if we thought the Cubans really would withdraw from Angola. I said that their withdrawal so far was ahead of schedule. He made a half-hearted attempt to complain about the Americans, but did not have the energy to finish it. He said that he would be handing over his seals of office in September.
The End of Apartheid Page 8
