The End of Apartheid

by Robin Renwick

  May 1980

  Margaret Thatcher found it sad that Zimbabwe ended up with a Mugabe government, but political and military realities were on the side of the guerrilla leaders. She shed some tears as she watched on TV the British flag being lowered over Salisbury. I shared her sentiments about Mugabe. But she recognised that the Muzorewa government could not have brought peace to the country and had insufficient support to survive.

  She was proud of the role we had played. She had not, initially, wanted to negotiate with Nkomo and Mugabe, but ‘unpleasant realities had to be faced’. Britain, she declared, had demonstrated its ability, through ‘forceful diplomacy’, to settle a particularly intractable international dispute5 – a success that would not have been possible without her willingness to face all the risks associated with assuming direct control in Rhodesia, which none of her predecessors had been prepared to do.

  When, seven years later, I arrived in South Africa as British ambassador, Pik Botha greeted me with the words: ‘That was a terrible thing you did at Lancaster House!’ Mugabe’s victory, he claimed, had set back the cause of reform in South Africa by a generation. I reminded him of his own statement to us at the time that Rhodesia was on its beam ends. The longer negotiations were delayed, the more radical the outcome was likely to be – a principle that did not apply only to Rhodesia.

  Notes

  1 Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, HarperCollins, 1993, p. 73.

  2 The military wing of Zanu was the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla). The military wing of Zapu was the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (Zipra).

  3 Peter Carrington, Reflect on Things Past, HarperCollins, 1988, p. 277.

  4 Thatcher Foundation papers, PREM 19/116, 14 August 1980.

  5 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 78.

  CHAPTER I

  ‘This time we have locked up all the right people!’

  July 1987

  Despatched by Margaret Thatcher to be the British ambassador to South Africa, I found the country in the grip of severe repression under the regime of President PW Botha. Nelson Mandela and his senior colleagues were in prison with no prospect of release. The other leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) were in exile. The ANC and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) were banned. Two and a half thousand people had been detained without trial. The press were censored and a state of emergency was in force.

  It had to be said that, in the short term, these tactics were working, in the sense that the crackdown was effective and ‘order’ had been restored. When I asked General Johann van der Merwe, head of the security police, why, at this point, the country was quiet, he replied cheerfully: ‘This time we have locked up all the right people!’

  Intensely frustrated by the obstructionist attitude of PW Botha, in sending me to South Africa Margaret Thatcher wanted to see us playing a more activist role than the embassy hitherto had done, having been encouraged by the Foreign Office to engage in her least favourite activity – damage limitation. As we had a large number of British citizens in South Africa, by far the largest investments and close links with the English-speaking business community, she found it frustrating that Britain apparently had so little influence on the regime.

  She had been subject to attack, in a series of Commonwealth conferences, for her resistance to more extensive sanctions against South Africa. We had, in fact, imposed military, nuclear, oil and sports sanctions, but she was adamantly opposed to blanket sanctions which, in her opinion, would further reinforce the siege mentality of the Afrikaners as well as destroy the livelihoods of large numbers of black South Africans. She regarded many of the leaders calling on her to take these steps as a bunch of hypocrites, given, as she put it, their own imperfect records on human rights and dependence on trade with South Africa.

  As for her own views on apartheid, she had alarmed the South Africans by writing in 1983 to the Conservative MP Ian Lloyd that the exclusion of blacks from the political process was ‘a powerful factor in compelling black politicians to seek by violence what is denied to them by the laws under which they live’.6

  June 1984

  Three years earlier, President Botha had travelled to Europe for the fortieth anniversary of the 1944 Normandy landings – ironically, as he had opposed South Africa’s participation on the side of the Allies in the Second World War. Being a believer in engagement rather than ostracism, Margaret Thatcher invited him to meet her at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s official country residence. The veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, met her to urge her not to see Botha. She replied that she wanted to tell Botha face to face that South Africa must change, which is what she proceeded to do.

  In her briefing notes, heavily underlined by her, she was forewarned that PW Botha was hard, dour, belligerent and intolerant of criticism. In their private meeting, he complained that he never received any credit for the improvements he had made in the conditions of black South Africans. In return he got a forthright lecture about the continuance of forced removals of black South Africans from areas reserved for the whites. She pressed him on the continued detention of Nelson Mandela, subsequently confirming in parliament that she had done so.

  PW Botha demanded that the ANC office in London should be closed. Mrs Thatcher said that we could not do this under our law. There was no evidence that the office personnel were guilty of illegal activities.7 In fact, the UK authorities were more worried about the actions of South African embassy personnel, two of whom had just been expelled for organising break-ins at the offices of the ANC and the South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo). In March 1982, there had been a bomb explosion at the ANC office, which subsequently turned out to have been the work of Craig Williamson, a senior figure in the security police.

  Pik Botha’s summary of what the South Africans took away from the meeting was that, ‘while her manner remained sympathetic, Mrs Thatcher went on to say very firmly that the key issues were still pressing: apartheid had to be dismantled, Mandela and other prisoners released and the front-line states should be spared further attacks by the South African armed forces. The forcible removal of urban blacks had to stop.’ But they did get the impression, correctly, that Mrs Thatcher was sympathetic to the linkage between South African withdrawal from Namibia and the withdrawal of Cuban forces from Angola.8

  Her Foreign Secretary, Geoffrey Howe, observed that the Bothas probably were surprised to be pressed by her on all the key issues: ‘Apartheid must go. Mandela (and others) be set free and the front-line states no longer exposed to attack from South Africa.’ Forced removals also must come to an end.9

  Having heard Margaret Thatcher’s remarks on television immediately after the meeting, Trevor Huddleston sent her a handwritten note, thanking her in fulsome terms and saying that her public statement had given him encouragement and hope: ‘It was truly all I could have wished for.’ She replied that she had expressed her concern at the continued detention of Nelson Mandela and the need for early progress on this.10

  Margaret Thatcher had, for a while, entertained the hope that PW Botha was serious about reform, for he had stated in 1979 that South Africa must ‘adapt or die’. The pass laws, intended to keep the black population from establishing permanent residence in the urban areas, at last were abolished, as they had proved simply unenforceable. The prohibition of mixed marriages was lifted as well. But Botha’s objective was to modernise apartheid, not to get rid if it. His much-heralded constitutional reform involved the creation of new separate chambers in parliament for the Indian and coloured communities. The exclusion of the black community from the so-called tricameral parliament triggered a wave of unrest within the townships which had led to the imposition of a state of emergency. Opposition to the proposed constitutional reforms led to the formation of the United Democratic Front (UDF) to organise black resistance within the country.

  August 1985

  PW Botha was due to make a speech in Durban on 15 August that was advertised
in advance by Pik Botha as representing the ‘crossing of the Rubicon’. Rejecting the reformist language in the text presented to him, PW Botha delivered instead a characteristically finger-wagging performance. ‘Don’t push us too far,’ he declared. He was not, he said, prepared to lead white South Africans ‘on a road to abdication and suicide’.

  Immediately following the ‘Rubicon’ speech, a consortium of US banks, led by Chase Manhattan, announced the decision, already taken in principle, to refuse to roll over the country’s debts or to make any further loans to the government. A host of other international banks followed suit. FW de Klerk observed subsequently that the Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Gerhard de Kock, regarded the speech as having cost South Africa one million rand for every word.11 This was a massive underestimate. For these market sanctions were to prove far more effective than any other measures against South Africa, apart from the arms embargo.

  October 1985

  The Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in the Bahamas, had decided to send a group of ‘eminent persons’, led by General Olusegun Obasanjo of Nigeria and the former Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Fraser, to South Africa to explore ways of trying to get negotiations under way with representatives of the black majority. On 31 October, Margaret Thatcher wrote to PW Botha urging him to accept the Commonwealth mission and stating that the release of Mandela would have more effect than any other action he could take. The seven-member Eminent Persons Group received some encouragement from Pik Botha and met Mandela in prison. But PW Botha had been persuaded to allow them to visit only under pressure from Thatcher. Adamantly opposed to outside interference, he decided to ‘get rid of these people’. On 19 May 1986, he did so by ordering the South African Defence Force (SADF) to launch air attacks on Gaborone, Harare and Lusaka, ostensibly against ANC targets, bringing an abrupt end to the Commonwealth’s negotiating efforts.

  July 1986

  Margaret Thatcher had tried to persuade Geoffrey Howe to join the Commonwealth mission, untactfully suggesting that she could do his job as well as hers while he was away. He had resisted successfully but, extremely reluctantly, he was pushed by the Prime Minister to try again, this time on behalf of the European Community (EC). His reluctance, as she acknowledged, proved justified, as he was berated on television by Kenneth Kaunda and received boorishly by PW Botha, who was beside himself, denouncing ‘damned interfering foreigners’.12

  Notes

  6 Theresa Papenfus, Pik Botha and his Times, Litera, 2010, p. 341.

  7 Thatcher Foundation papers, PREM 19/1392, April 1984.

  8 Papenfus, op. cit., p. 348.

  9 Geoffrey Howe, Conflict of Loyalty, Macmillan, 1994, p. 479.

  10 Thatcher Foundation papers, Margaret Thatcher to Archbishop Huddleston, 13 June 1984.

  11 FW de Klerk, The Last Trek: A New Beginning, Macmillan, 1998, p. 105.

  12 Howe, op. cit., p. 490.

  CHAPTER II

  ‘The greatest risk is not taking any risks’

  It was made clear to the South African government that I was being sent there as the Prime Minister’s appointment. That, I hoped, would give me some leverage with the regime. For they could hardly afford the complete withdrawal of her support, though they had been doing precious little to deserve it.

  Margaret Thatcher, at the time, was riding high, having just won a third consecutive election victory in Britain. Having formed a special relationship with the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev – whom she famously had declared in 1984 a man she could do business with – she had made, before the election, a triumphal visit to Moscow, where the British press could not believe the size of the crowds that had turned out to greet her. She had used her visit to tell Gorbachev that she was looking to him to change Soviet foreign as well as domestic policy. She found it all the more exasperating that the South African government was so impervious to her influence.

  July 1987

  On the day before leaving for South Africa to take up my post, I was summoned to meet the Prime Minister. She had been urged by, of all people, Robert Mugabe to visit South Africa. There was no point, she agreed, in doing so unless conditions fundamentally changed, including the release of Mandela. Only if she could get the kind of results achieved in Moscow with Gorbachev would she be prepared to go to South Africa.

  Margaret Thatcher agreed that, while we should continue to defend our economic interests, we should never put ourselves in the position of appearing to expect, still less to rely on, the present South African government to do the right thing. They were far more likely to do the wrong thing.

  On Senator Robert Dole’s advocacy of support for the Renamo rebel movement in Mozambique, the Prime Minister said that she would tell the Americans that the right policy was to support President Joaquim Chissano, who had replaced Samora Machel following the latter’s death in a plane crash. Samora Machel had been effusive in thanking Thatcher for her success in resolving the Rhodesia dispute and had won her support for Mozambique to join the Commonwealth. She commented that the South Africans had been playing a double game over Renamo.

  She agreed with my main suggestion, which was that I should tell PW Botha on her behalf in the clearest terms that any major cross-border raids in the run-up to the next Commonwealth conference would make her position intolerable and result in the withdrawal of her support. She concluded grimly that there was no early prospect of political progress.

  In her sole meeting with him, she had found PW Botha charmless and inflexible, but she remained convinced of the importance of dialogue with other members of his government. As in her dealings with the Soviet Union, she was looking for a successor who might be prepared to set out on a different course. If I found anyone who fitted that description, I was to give him all possible encouragement.

  * * *

  Arriving in Cape Town, I was greeted by Pik Botha, the irrepressible South African foreign minister, with recriminations about Lancaster House. I said that, without an agreement, there would have been a military collapse in Rhodesia, and that had been the South African assessment as well.

  Pik Botha, changing tack, cheerfully agreed. He thought Mugabe would have preferred to come to power by military means and probably would have succeeded in doing so. The South African government had told the Rhodesians that they were not prepared to take over the war. Smith should have negotiated earlier. But Britain must understand the fundamental differences between South Africa and Rhodesia.

  I said that we did understand them. Wherever the South Africans ended up, it was not going to be at Lancaster House. Britain had no constitutional responsibility for South Africa. A settlement could only be achieved between South Africans.

  On the Commonwealth conference, I said that the Prime Minister was never worried about being alone when convinced that our position was right, but any more actions like the ones that had scuppered the Eminent Persons mission would produce a reaction from her. Pik Botha said that he had been trying to improve relations with Mozambique. I warned against continuing South African support for Renamo, which of course he denied was taking place.

  August 1987

  Before presenting my credentials to PW Botha, I arranged to have a drink with Ton Vosloo, head of the leading Afrikaans press group, the Nasionale Pers (now Naspers). I did so because, before arriving in South Africa, I had resolved to concentrate my efforts on the Afrikaners and the black leadership, rather than falling into the easy trap of consorting mainly with the more liberal elements of the English-speaking community, who, despite their best efforts, clearly were not able to have a decisive influence on events.

  I told Vosloo that Margaret Thatcher did understand the concerns of white South Africans and the historic dilemma confronting the Afrikaners. But, as friends of South Africa, we were concerned that PW Botha was driving his country into a cul-de-sac and at the increasing militarisation of the regime. In making public statements about the kind of changes we would like to see come about, I hoped that these mig
ht be carried in the Afrikaans press, especially Beeld and Die Burger, and not only in the English-speaking papers. Vosloo promised that the Afrikaans press would carry the Prime Minister’s views. He advised me to make some gesture to the Afrikaners. This I attempted to do, despite my own imperfect knowledge of the language, by delivering part of my credentials speech in Afrikaans. It duly was carried on the state-controlled television.

  In this, my first encounter with PW Botha, he expressed appreciation for the phrases in Afrikaans, which he took as showing that we had some understanding of the Afrikaner predicament. I said that the Prime Minister did understand this, but was no less concerned about political rights for the black population. At the Commonwealth conference in Vancouver, scheduled for October, she would be facing pressures for general sanctions. If there were further raids of the kind that had put an end to the Commonwealth mission, he should not count on her support. There should be no misunderstanding between us about this.