by Guy Arnold
When he came to power after the Vorster era, P. W. Botha intended to act as a new broom. Apartheid, as it had been applied up to that time, was no longer working and Afrikaners, he said, ‘must adapt or die’. The essential was change, ‘rapid, visible change: the replacing of outdated political principles, the restructuring of race relations, the rejection of racial domination (baaskap), the removal of humiliating discrimination and injustice, equal opportunity and rights, fewer restrictions – and a new disposition’.26 Botha’s ‘vision’, if that is what it amounted to, was clouded by his belief that South Africa was experiencing the full onslaught of Marxism, and so with Gen. Magnus Malan, then head of the SADF (Botha had previously served as Minister of Defence), he devised the ‘total strategy’ to meet the Marxist onslaught and this meant coordinating military activity, foreign policy and domestic, social and political administration in order to ensure security and internal unity. South Africa would use force as and when necessary. This total strategy demanded that the neighbouring front-line states, as they had come to be called by the beginning of the 1980s, must either co-operate or knuckle under and in order to encourage them to follow a path acceptable to South Africa international law could be set to one side in the interests of national security. The logic of such an approach led naturally to the cross-border raids and destabilization policies that South Africa pursued throughout the decade. However, the modest reforms that Botha attempted split the National Party into the Verkrampte and Verligte camps of hard-liners and enlightened with the former breaking away from the NP to form the new Conservative Party under Andries Treurnicht. The Conservatives were not sufficient in numbers to challenge the NP although the 18 who formed the party represented 20 per cent of the white electorate. Nonetheless, ‘The disintegration of Afrikanerdom had begun’. ‘The policy of the Botha administration was a complex attempt to adapt to changing circumstances without sacrificing Afrikaner power. It included efforts to neutralize South Africa’s neighbours, to scrap apartheid symbols and practices that were not essential to the maintenance of white supremacy, to draw English-speaking citizens into the party, to win the co-operation of big business, to intensify the ethnic and class cleavages among the subject peoples, and to suppress domestic dissidents.’27 This policy represented a tall order by any standards but it contained too many contradictions and was bound to fail as it did.
Britain had always been the principal source of investment in South Africa and remained so throughout the apartheid years. British interest in Southern Africa was essentially in the Republic and its policy there was to protect its trade, investments and loan finance; to maintain access to South Africa’s strategic minerals; and prevent the mass exodus of those whites who qualified for British passports (an estimated 800,000) to Britain. In 1984, for example, direct private investment by British companies in the SADCC region totalled £100 million, about 3.6 per cent of the value of British direct investment in South Africa, while British trade with South Africa was nine times greater than its trade with all the SADCC countries combined. In 1980 there were 1,200 British companies in South Africa as opposed to 350 from West Germany and 340 from the United States. In 1982 British private investment in South Africa amounted to US$6,342 million, that from the US to US$2,800 million and from West Germany to US$260 million. Foreign direct investment in South Africa had begun to tail off following the 1976 Soweto uprising, forcing South Africa to increase its borrowing. During the 1980s there was a growing and complex disinvestment trend, most marked among US companies. The International Chamber of Commerce estimated that over 500 foreign companies sold their South African holdings between 1985 and 1989. They were concerned to project a more positive public image, to maximize foreign currency returns on investments and to keep enough control over their former subsidiaries to allow re-entry into South Africa at a later date.28 According to the UN Commission on Trans-National Corporations, of the 535 with more than 10 per cent interests in South Africa, 216 were British-based and they were slower than US transnationals to disinvest. Even so, between 1985 and 1989, 132 British transnationals did disinvest while another 16 reduced their equity interest. Britain’s total investment in South Africa, direct and indirect, was estimated as follows: 1986 – £8,586 million; 1987 – £7,924 million; 1988 – £6,400 million. Britain provided approximately 40 per cent of all foreign investment and 80 per cent of the European Community total.
South Africa’s debt crisis really became severe in 1985 when the state of emergency led US and European banks to refuse to ‘roll over’ their loans. Even the British government was urging change by the late 1980s. Addressing the Royal Commonwealth Society in London during May 1988, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘… the sooner white South Africans accept the need for negotiation and change, the greater the odds that change will be peaceful and democratic… The South African Government have to take the lead. Dialogue cannot take place against a backcloth of violence and repression’. At a public meeting in London an ANC spokesman told Lynda Chalker, the Foreign Office Minister, that ‘it has to be understood that Britain’s international anti-sanctions crusade is widely viewed in South Africa, by people of all political persuasions, as a policy which protects the South African government and undermines the right of the disenfranchised South African people to determine their own future’.29 At the 1989 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, Britain still stood out against pressures upon South Africa and issued its own unilateral communiqué after signing the official consensus communiqué. Even Margaret Thatcher changed her stance on her visit to South Africa in November 1989 when she said: ‘I do not see how, in the modern world, it is possible to achieve political stability except on a basis where all adults have the vote.’30
President Reagan was as active in his support of white South Africa as his political ally Margaret Thatcher. ‘US foreign policy is riddled with contradictions. Sanctions are right for Nicaragua or Poland, but not South Africa. The MPLA should be pressed to include UNITA in the government, but no pressure should be put on white South Africa to include the ANC in government. It was hardly surprising that constructive engagement and linkage pleased Pretoria.’ One Johannesburg newspaper correspondent talked of ‘South Africa’s new ally, Mr Ronald Reagan’.31 It was soon clear that constructive engagement under Reagan was wholly one-sided in support of South Africa. His instinctive sympathies lay with a global philosophy of assisting and installing pro-Western governments and holding back the Soviet threat. ‘All he knows about Southern Africa,’ one of his own officials privately commented, ‘is that he is on the side of the whites.’32 By the end of 1984 it was clear that Western policies were buying time for South Africa while it was impossible to continue the fiction that US engagement was constructive. On the other hand, the Soviet threat or ‘total onslaught’ was always exaggerated by the South Africans. Although Moscow had had a long-standing interest in the region through the South African Communist Party’s early involvement with the black union movement and the ANC, that interest rated a lower priority than either the Middle East or the Horn. Already by 1986 a shift in Soviet-South African policy was discernible when Russia began to make plain its determination to achieve a rapprochment with the United States and consequently wished to eliminate points of confrontation, whether in Africa or elsewhere.
THE CRUCIAL YEARS: 1983–87
Following the 1983 referendum that established Coloured and Asian ‘parliaments’ and at the same time split the National Party, The Economist commented: ‘No government which has recently introduced a racially classified parliament, segregated local government, and a segregated welfare state can seriously expect the world to believe it is intent on dismantling apartheid.’ The attempt to have tame council elections in the townships was a fiasco: there was a 5 per cent poll in Soweto, 11 per cent in Port Elizabeth, 15 per cent in the Vaal Triangle, 19 per cent in Durban, 20 per cent on the East Rand. Few respected black leaders put themselves forward for election and most of those el
ected were regarded as quislings. The government also proposed that townships should be financially self-supporting since they had their own councils and that they should raise their own revenue from rents, which was asking for trouble. ‘And so it was that while the whites applauded the reforms, the blacks mobilized opposition to them. In August 1983 more than five hundred community, church, professional, sports, workers’, students’, women’s, and youth organizations formed an alliance called the United Democratic Front (UDF) to campaign against the new constitution and the “Koornhof Bills”.’33 Piet Koornhof, the Minister of Cooperation and Development, had introduced three bills that set up black councils to run their ‘own affairs’ of the townships, granted urban status only to those who had jobs and ‘approved accommodation’. Under the new constitution there were to be three uniracial chambers: a House of Assembly of 178 whites voted by whites; a House of Representatives of 85 Coloureds elected by Coloureds; and a House of Delegates of 45 Indians elected by Indians. A joint session meant an automatic white majority. A cabinet drawn from the three chambers would deal with general affairs while uniracial ministers’ councils were to be responsible for ‘own affairs’. The State President, elected by a college of 50 whites, 25 Coloureds and 13 Indian members of Parliament, appointed the cabinet and the ministers’ councils. He could dissolve parliament at any time and was responsible for the ‘control and administration of black (that is, African) affairs’. When the elections under this new constitution were held in August 1984 only 18 per cent of the Coloureds and fewer Indians voted.
Botha’s clumsy attempts at divide and rule led, predictably, to revolt. ‘The 1984 insurrection was more intense and lasted longer than any previous one. For three years it raged, resulting in more than three thousand deaths, thirty thousand detentions, and untold damage to property and the national economy. The government had to mobilize the army and declare two states of emergency to bring it under control, and even then it was only partially repressed.’34 Black anger was met with white repression and escalating violence and it was Botha’s good fortune that ‘The Thatcher government in Britain, the Reagan administration in the United States, and Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats in West Germany were all disposed to share in some measure Botha’s contention that the black nationalists in his country were violent radicals being manipulated by Moscow and to look favourably on a reform programme that would neutralize them and bring in the “moderates”.’35 The Botha cabinet now split between the reformists and the securocrats. The former – Chris Heunis, the Minister of Constitutional Affairs, and Pik Botha, the Foreign Minister – overpersuaded Botha to commit himself to reform in a clear statement; believing they had succeeded, Pik Botha flew to Vienna for a June meeting with American, British and West German diplomats at which he told them to expect a dramatic statement from Botha at the Natal Congress of the NP the following August. Meanwhile, there were vigorous demonstrations against apartheid in every city and nearly every homeland. At the end of 1984 official figures listed 175 dead in the disturbances and many strikes and acts of sabotage. The figures for 1985 were far worse: 879 deaths and 390 strikes involving 240,000 workers. The protests continued into 1986 and in the townships many of the newly elected councillors resigned to be replaced by informal groups. Between July and December 1985 the rate of killing was 3.3 persons a day.
At Durban on 15 August 1985 with the largest-ever international press corps in attendance Botha delivered his much-heralded ‘Rubicon’ speech and contrary to the expectations that had been aroused conceded nothing at all, telling the assembled press that he was not to be ‘pushed around’. At that time 67 per cent of South Africa’s US$16.5 billion foreign debt was made up of short-term loans that could be called in at any time. The US Chase Manhattan Bank now did so and its example was followed by other banks; South Africa faced demands for US$13 billion in loans to be repaid by December. The rand fell in value by 35 per cent in 13 days and South Africa became a siege economy. Later in 1985 the Commonwealth Heads of Government met in Nassau (Bahamas) where Thatcher stood alone against the rest of the Commonwealth in resisting demands for sanctions against South Africa. It was however agreed that an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) led by Malcolm Fraser of Australia and Gen. Obasanjo of Nigeria should visit South Africa to meet all shades of opinion and try to move the country towards real reforms. When the EPG appeared to be making significant progress in 1986, Botha ordered attacks on ANC bases in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe on 19 May and the EPG at once left the country. Even so, ‘Its results were surprising. The EPG quickly established that there was both a widespread desire among ordinary people for a negotiated settlement and, on the face of it, enough potential common ground among all major political groups to get negotiations going.’36 As the violence began to subside, Adriaan Vlok, the minister of law and order, admitted (12 February 1987) that 13,300 people, many of them children, had been detained under the emergency. Other estimates suggested 29,000 while 43 people had died in police custody and 263 had been hospitalized. There had been widespread use of torture and violence against detainees, including children.
The violence of these years had given new impetus for demands to apply sanctions to South Africa. In mid-1985 the front-line states Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe backed the call for sanctions against South Africa and called upon Western countries to broaden and intensify pressures on South Africa. Lesotho also made clear its support for sanctions although Malawi and Swaziland maintained silence. Then on 31 January 1986 the annual SADCC conference called for co-ordinated pressure, including sanctions, to be mounted against South Africa. The argument that had arisen in the early 1970s that US companies could stay in South Africa and promote reforms wore increasingly threadbare during the 1980s as pressure groups – churches and students for example – persuaded an increasing number of institutions such as universities to disinvest from companies operating in South Africa and by the end of 1985 disinvestment by US state and local governments had led to US$4.5 billion being withdrawn from companies involved in South Africa. Substantial sanctions were imposed in late 1986 by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the Scandinavian countries, while lesser measures were adopted by the EEC. In 1987 Sweden and Norway imposed full trade embargoes while 48 Commonwealth countries agreed to ‘widen and tighten’ sanctions. Reacting to these growing anti-apartheid pressures, US companies began to disengage from South Africa: 40 in 1985, 50 in 1986. In 1985, President Reagan said South Africa had ‘eliminated the segregation we once had in our own country’ but the anti-apartheid movement was so incensed that he felt obliged to impose limited sanctions on South Africa in order to pre-empt demands for more. The strategy did not work for in October 1986 Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over the president’s veto to ban new investments, bank loans, to end South African-US air links and to prohibit a range of South African imports. Congress also threatened to cut off military aid to allies suspected of breaching the international arms embargo on South Africa.37
The whole apartheid structure was imploding and so one National Party MP with the impeccable Afrikaner name of van der Merwe wrote an article in 1985 entitled ‘And what about the black people?’ in which he said: ‘It has long been clear that political rights cannot be withheld from black people forever… Large numbers of black people (as many as 60 per cent) will not be able to be accommodated physically or politically in the homelands and will, therefore, have to exercise their political rights in South Africa.’38
The ANC had represented the core opposition to the apartheid regime throughout the years: the oldest black political party on the African continent, dating from 1912, it had always believed in a democratic multiracial society and during the worst oppressions of the apartheid era stuck to that ideology. In the 1980s it found its position outside South Africa becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Once in power in Zimbabwe, Mugabe had turned on ZAPU, which was a close ally of the ANC and had close South African links
, while following the Nkomati Accord Mozambique and Swaziland were closed to it as well. The ANC, therefore, began to concentrate more upon operating inside South Africa where two powerful allies in the form of the UDF and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) became formidable anti-apartheid organizations during the decade. The ANC shifted its position during the second half of the1980s but did not change its ideology about the type of democracy and society that it favoured. Its strategy, to reach the ‘new South Africa’ through negotiation was about the only thing the ANC had in common with the government. The NP, on the other hand, had elaborated a democratic vision that was anathema to the ANC. It was founded on concepts such as ‘group rights’ and ‘minority protection’ from ‘majority domination’ and NP ideas for a new South Africa would do little to redress the legacies of apartheid. The ANC, then, came to embrace the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the trade union federation (COSATU), a tripartite alliance that symbolized the unity forged by different groups in the struggle against apartheid. ‘Formed in 1985 by a merger of a number of smaller unions, the UDF-aligned COSATU became instrumental in the latter half of the 1980s in the mobilization of workers for strikes, boycotts and stay-aways.’39
In September 1985 a group of South African businessmen led by Gavin Relly, chairman of Anglo American Corporation, flew to Lusaka to meet Oliver Tambo and other ANC leaders to talk of the future South Africa. Then in July 1987 61 white South Africans led by F. van Zyl Slabbert went to Dakar for three days of talks with members of the ANC led by Thabo Mbeki. Such contacts broke through the absolute divide that had existed up to that time between the ruling whites and the ‘demonized’ ANC. COSATU, like the UDF, was formed on 1 December 1985 and was born out of the political turmoil of the time. It began its existence, after four years of negotiations, with 33 black unions and a membership of 558,000. It proclaimed its non-racial, anti-apartheid credentials and demanded the repeal of the pass laws and the existing state of emergency, the withdrawal of troops and police from the townships, the unconditional release of Mandela and other political prisoners, the dismantling of the homelands and the end of the migrant labour system. It worked closely with the UDF and by 1989 had a paid-up membership of 925,000.