South Africa witness seminars

Witness Seminars:

The Role and Functions of the British Embassy/ High Commission in Pretoria: 1987–2013 Britain and South Africa: 1985–91

gov.uk/fco

South Africa Witness Seminars:

The Role and Functions of the British Embassy / High Commission in Pretoria: 1987-2013 Held in 2013 and organised by the Institute of Contemporary of British History (ICBH), the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Arts and Humanities Research Council

& Britain and South Africa: 1985-91 Held in 2009 and organised by the ICBH in conjunction with IDEAS at the London School of Economics.

ISBN: 978-1-910049-07-5

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Contents The Role and Functions of the British Embassy / High Commission in Pretoria: 1987-2013

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Introduction

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Brief chronology

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Session One – From Apartheid to Free Elections

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Chair: Professor Philip Murphy, Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

Witnesses: Lord Renwick of Clifton, KCMG: Ambassador, 1987–91; Dr David Carter: Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission, Cape Town/Pretoria, 1992–96.

Session Two – Relations with the Rainbow Nation

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Chair: Dr Sue Onslow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies.

Witnesses: Andrew Pearce: First Secretary (Economic), 1996–2000; Andrew Turner: First Secretary (Political), 1998-2001; Dame Nicola Brewer, DCMG: High Commissioner, 2009-2013.

Britain and South Africa: 1985-91

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Chair: Professor Shula Marks, OBE, FBA, former Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1983-93.

Witnesses: The Rt. Hon. Lord Howe of Aberavon, CH, PC, QC: Foreign Secretary, 1983–89; Lord President of the Council, Leader of House of Commons, and Deputy Prime Minister, 1989–90; Lord Powell of Bayswater, KCMG: Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, 1984–91; Sir Patrick Moberly, KCMG: HM Ambassador to South Africa, 1984-87; Mrs Patsy Robertson: Former Director of Information at the Commonwealth Secretariat and spokesperson for Sir Sonny Ramphal, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

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The Role and Functions of British Embassy/ High Commission in Pretoria: 1987-2013

Tuesday 26 November 2013 Map Room, Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Edited by Dr M.D. Kandiah Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH), King’s College London

Additional editing assistance by Dr Matthew Glencross, ICBH, King’s College London

Transcript produced by Ubiqus UK

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Introduction

This Witness Seminar examined the history, role and functions of the British Embassy / High Commission1 in Pretoria, principally from the testimonies and perspectives of those who served there.

This was the penultimate in a series of six witness seminars sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. It is part of the Witness Seminar Programme of the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH), King’s College London. Previous seminars covered the High Commission in New Delhi (held on 17 November 2011), the Embassy in Beijing (held on 7 June 2012), the High Commission in Canberra (8 November 2012), and the UK Mission to the United Nations New York (22 May 2013).

Since 1986 the ICBH Witness Seminar Programme has conducted nearly 100 witness seminars on a variety of subjects: two in particular have related to the functions of British Embassies: in Washington (held in 1997)2 and in Moscow (held in 1999).3 Both of these witness seminars were chaired by Lord Wright of Richmond and both have been published.

These witness seminars have been well received by the academic community, who have increasingly come to see that it is important to examine and analyse how Embassies and High Commissions have worked historically in the promotion of British policy overseas, and also by practitioners.

A recent volume (2009) on The Washington Embassy, edited by Michael Hopkins, Saul Kelly and John Young, demonstrated precisely why it is necessary to know more about how UK Embassies operate and has suggested why Embassies will continue to be important for those who study diplomacy. The volume, as the introduction suggested, offered ‘valuable insights into change and continuity in British diplomatic practice’ over the period; it also showed ‘how the balance of attention … varied according to the pressure of circumstances, the current priorities of the government in London and the preferences of individual ambassadors’; and, importantly, confirmed ‘the pivotal role’ played by the Embassy and the Ambassadors in maintaining healthy bilateral relations. However, the editors have also pointed out that ‘there are real difficulties in studying the broad work of the embassy’—how it interacted with local staff; precisely how it performed day-to-day necessary social tasks; and so forth.4 The significance of history and the importance of gathering and utilising oral history interviews were identified in the report of the Foreign Affairs Committee, The Role of the FCO in UK Government (29 April 2011). In oral evidence the then Foreign Secretary 1

When in June 1994 South Africa re-entered the Commonwealth, the Embassy went back to being designated a High Commission.

2 G. Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of the British Embassy in Washington: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol12 No3 (1998), pp. 115-38.

3 G. Staerck (ed), ‘The Role of HM Embassy in Moscow: Witness Seminar’, Contemporary British History, Vol 14 No3 (2001), pp. 149-61.

4 M.F. Hopkins, S. Kelly and J.W. Young, The Washington Embassy: British Ambassadors to the United States, 1939-77 (2009), p. 2.

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William Hague stated: ‘history is vitally important in knowledge and practice of foreign policy’. He further stated, ‘One of the things that I have asked to be worked up is a better approach to how we use the alumni of the Foreign Office, [and] … continue to connect them more systematically to the Foreign Office.’ He went on to say: ‘these people who are really at the peak of their knowledge of the world, with immense diplomatic experience, then walk out of the door, never to be seen again in the Foreign Office.’

With the notable exception of Lorna Lloyd’s Diplomacy with a difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006,5 there have been few studies focusing on the work on High Commissions and none specifically on the Pretoria. The British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, based at the Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge, contains a number of important interviews of those who served at this mission. To name just four: Sir Ewen Fergusson; Sir John Leahy; Peter Longworth; and Lord Renwick of Clifton.6 Sir John Leahy7 and Lord Renwick8 have also written about their experiences about their time in South Africa.

An ICBH witness seminar in 2009, explored the UK government’s policy towards South Africa during the final years of the apartheid regime. Sir Patrick Moberly commented upon the role the Embassy played when he was Ambassador (between 1984 and 1987). That witness seminar is published here and provides useful additional testimonies from nondiplomats like the Foreign Secretary during the 1980s, Lord Howe of Aberavon, and the Prime Minister’s Foreign Policy Adviser, Lord Powell of Bayswater.

However, testimony relating to the Embassy / High Commission in more recent period is absent and needs to be collected. Hence the Witness Seminar in 2013 was held to gather the memories of those FCO alumni who had worked at the Pretoria Embassy / High Commission over the past 30 or so years—a period that has seen the UK’s relationship with South Africa evolve as the country has moved from an apartheid nation to a multi-cultural democracy.

Dr M.D. Kandiah Director, Witness Seminar Programme Institute of Contemporary British History King’s College London

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L. Lloyd, Diplomacy with a difference: the Commonwealth Office of High Commissioner, 1880–2006 (2007). http://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/BDOHP/ [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 7 J. Leahy, A Life of Spice (2007).

8 R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (1997) and A Journey With Margaret Thatcher (2013).

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Brief Chronology9

NOTE: The following chronology was provided to all participants and attendees in advance of the Witness Seminar. It was intended to help refresh participants’ memories by covering significant events and milestones in the history of South Africa, with reference to Britain and to major world events.

1795

The Dutch Cape Colony occupied by British forces after the Battle of Muizenberg.

1803

The Colony was returned to the Dutch under the terms of the Peace of Amiens 1802.

1806

The Battle of Blaauwberg (also known as the Battle of Cape Town) established British rule in South Africa (Jan).

1815

Congress of Vienna: British rule formally ratified.

1835-40

Boers’ ‘Great Trek’ from the eastern Cape to the future Natal, Orange Free State and Transvaal.

1852

Limited self-government granted to the Transvaal.

Late 1850s

Boers proclaimed the Transvaal a republic.

1867

Diamonds discovered at Kimberley.

1877

British annex of the Transvaal.

1879

Zulus defeated in Natal.

1880-81

First Anglo-Boer War.

Mid 1880s

Gold was discovered in the Transvaal.

1899-1902

Second Anglo-Boer War.

1902

Ending of the Boer war: Treaty of Vereeniging. The Transvaal and Orange Free State made self-governing colonies of the British Empire.

1910

Formation of Union of South Africa consisting of: the Cape Colony, Natal, Transvaal, and Orange Free State.

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Compiled by Michael Kandiah and Sue Onslow using a variety of printed and open access online sources, which have been acknowledged where appropriate.

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1912

African National Congress (ANC) founded.

1914

National Party (NP) founded.

1918

Afrikaner Broederbond, a secret and self-selecting society, was formed to further Afrikaner interests.10

1919

South Africa given mandate over South West Africa (later Namibia).

1947

The Royal Family, including HRH Princess Elizabeth, visited South Africa.11

1948

National Party gained power. Policy of apartheid (separateness) adopted.

1955

Simonstown Agreement.

1960

Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s Wind of Change speech.12 Sharpeville shootings.

1961

South Africa’s departed the Commonwealth: became the Republic of South Africa.

UK official representation became the Pretoria Embassy.

1963

Voluntary UN arms embargo against South Africa.

1964

Rivonia trials: ANC leaders sentenced to life imprisonment.

1965

Southern Rhodesia: Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

1968

Mandatory UN economic sanctions against Rhodesia.

1969-70

‘Stop The Seventy Tour’ campaign disrupted tours by the South African rugby union and cricket teams.13

1973

The Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) (AWB) founded.

1975

South Africa’s invasion of Angola, against MPLA. Cuban and Soviet assistance to MPLA forces (Oct).

1976

Soweto and other townships uprisings (June).

1976-81

Nominal independence of homelands: Transkei (1976); Bophuthatswana (1977); Venda (1979) and Ciskei (1981).

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http://sahistory.org.za/dated-event/afrikaner-broederbond-formed [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] http://www.britishpathe.com/search/query/South+Africas+Royal+Visit [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 12 http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/apartheid/7203.shtml [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 13 http://nvdatabase.swarthmore.edu/content/british-citizens-protest-apartheid-south-african-sports-tours-stopseventy-tour-1969-1970 [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 11

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1977

Steve Biko’s death in detention.

Commonwealth Heads of Government issued the Gleneagles Agreement on apartheid sport.14

1977

United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 418 imposed a mandatory arms embargo against South Africa. Embargo subsequently tightened and extended by Resolution 591 (Nov).15

1978

UNSC Resolution 435 on South West Africa/Namibia.

‘Muldergate’ scandal: BJ Vorster resignation; PW Botha becomes Prime Minister.

Prime Minister Botha introduced ‘total strategy’ policy. (Subsequent spending on defence and the security forces escalated; disruption of Front Line States if any assistance was believed to be given to ANC; South African support for UNITA and RENAMO).

Foundation of Azania People’s Organisation (AZAPO).

Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev letter to UK Prime Minister James Callaghan, informing him of Soviet satellite information of South African construction of nuclear bore site in Kalahari Desert.16

1979

Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher won UK General Election.

Sir John Leahy appointed British Ambassador to South Africa.

Carlton Conference meeting of government and business leaders: Riekert Commission recommended easing employment colour bar, permitting blacks with Section 10 rights to own homes, and greater freedom of movement; Wiehahn Commission recommended recognition of African trade unions.

Lusaka CHOGM Conference (Aug).

1980

Zimbabwean independence: South Africa assumed responsibility for financial and logistical support of RENAMO, against FRELIMO government in Mozambique.

British Lions rugby tour of South Africa.

Ronald Reagan elected US President.

1982

UK pressured South Africa not to sell advanced weaponry to Argentina during the Falklands Crisis.

Ruth First assassinated in Mozambique by letter bomb sent by South Africa government agents.17 Formation of Conservative Party by Andries Treurnicht (following his expulsion from National Party).18

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http://thecommonwealth.org/sites/default/files/history-items/documents/GleneaglesAgreement. pdf [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 15 http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/418 16 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/4044826/Britain -learned-of-South-African-nuclear-programme-from-USSR.html [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 17 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/ruth-first-assassinated-mozambique [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 18 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/conservative-party-formed [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013]

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1982-90

Rebel cricket tours.

1982

The first rebel team from England played in South Africa under the captaincy of Graham Gooch19 (Mar).

1983

Constitutional changes: Tri-cameral parliament (whites, Coloureds, Indians). Multi-racial electoral college to elect State President, who was to be advised by multi-racial President’s Council.

White referendum approved new constitution.

Foundation of National Forum (NF).

Formation of United Democratic Front (UDF) intended to unite all black resistance groups (2m members by 1985).

International businesses and banks began disinvestment in South Africa.

Bishop Desmond Tutu awarded Nobel Peace Prize.20

1984

Nkomati Accord, signed by South Africa and Mozambique.

PW Botha’s tour of Europe.

British Anti-Apartheid Movement (AAM) mass demonstration in protest at visit of President PW Botha to the UK.21 (Archbishop Trevor Huddleston, President of AAM, met with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on evening prior to Botha’s arrival) (June) South African-born Zola Budd represented Britain at the Los Angeles Olympics (July).

6 UDF leaders sought asylum in the British Consulate in Durban to avoid police detention and to publicise their cause. (In November, there was an agreement that they would leave, provided they were not immediately detained) (Sept).

South Africa refused to enforce the return of 4 South African citizens to stand trial in Coventry, on charges of attempting to break the UN arms embargo.

1984-87

Township Uprisings, sparked by rent rises. Violent rivalry between Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), led by Chief Buthelezi, and UDF, and ANC and AZAPO.

1985

Declaration of partial State of Emergency (36 magisterial districts).

Botha delivered his ‘Rubicon’ speech in Durban (Aug).22 Meetings of ANC intelligence (led by Jacob Zuma) with South African National Intelligence Agency representatives in London; subsequent meetings in Switzerland 1986/87.

Meetings of ANC representatives with leading South Africa businessmen in Lusaka, Zambia (Sir Timothy Bevan, Chairman of Barclays, & Gavin Relly, Chairman of Anglo American, discussions with ANC).

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport3/cwc2003/hi/newsid_2710000/newsid_2719100/2719133.stm [Accessed 30 Sept.

2013] 20 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/bishop-desmond-tutu-awarded-nobel-peace-prize-oslo [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 21 http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2013/04/09/thatcher-the-commonwealth-and-apartheid-south-africa/ [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 22 http://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv01538/04lv01600/05lv01638/06lv01639.htm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013]

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Foundation of COSATU (Congress of South African Trade Unions).

International bank loans called in, new loans refused, and sanctions intensified.

US disinvestment campaign continued. (From US$2.5bn in 1982, to approximately US$1.7bn in 1985. South Africa experienced capital outflow of US$2.2bn in 1984 alone).

Conflict in Natal broke out.

Major strike organised by National Union of Mineworkers (led by Cyril Ramaphosa).

Financial crisis in South Africa (Chase Manhattan cut links; value of the rand dropped by 35 per cent; and Johannesburg Stock Exchange closed for 4 days).

Nassau CHOGM: South Africa dominated proceedings – resulted in the Nassau Accord 23 (Oct).

AAM protest at Prime Minister Thatcher’s ardent opposition to the imposition of economic sanctions against South Africa.

The final communiqué announced a programme for common action: This included: o the reaffirmation of all members for the strict observance of the UN arms embargo and the Gleneagles sports agreement; o the ban on the import of Krugerrands (worth approx. £500,000 pa to Britain); o Britain’s agreement to end official funding of trade missions to South Africa (9 in 1985); o more stringent measures would be considered after 6 months if no further ‘concrete’ progress; o agreement to call on all parties and organisations in South Africa to suspend violence; o agreement to call on Pretoria to initiate a process of dialogue across lines of colour, politics and religion, with a view to establishing a non-racial and representative government.

Establishment of 7-member Eminent Persons Group (EPG): o Lord Barber (UK) o Dame Nita Barrow (Barbados) o Malcolm Fraser (Australia) o John Malecela (Tanzania) o General Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria) o Swaran Singh (India) o Archbishop Edward Stott (Canada) Decision to send this delegation of ‘Eminent Persons’ to investigate whether sanctions were the most appropriate tool.

Thatcher wrote to Botha informing him of the Nassau Accord. She urged him furthermore: ‘I continue to believe, as I have said to you before, that the release of Nelson Mandela would have more impact than almost any single action you could undertake’24 (Oct)

23 24

http://thecommonwealth.org/history-of-the-commonwealth/8th-chogm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111650 [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013]

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1986

PW Botha’s reform speech25 (Jan) Eminent Persons Group (EPG) made several visits to South Africa: interviewed wide range of South African leaders including: PW Botha, RF Botha and other ministers; Oliver Tambo and other ANC leaders (in Lusaka) (Feb-May) Partial State of Emergency lifted; Pass Laws and Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act were repealed (Mar).

After meeting with Nelson Mandela, the 7 member Commonwealth delegation aborted following South African raids on Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe (May).

Publication of EPG Report. EPG presented the South African government with ‘possible negotiating concept’, requiring meaningful steps to reform (which included removal of military forces from townships, restoration of black political activity, lifting of bans on ANC and PAC, and the release of political prisoners. Black political leaders required to renounce violence and to enter into negotiations) (June).

Extension of State of Emergency to entire country.

Archbishop Trevor Huddleston shared platform with Thabo Mbeki for Anti-Apartheid Movement march demanding Nelson Mandela’s release.

US Congress passed Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act (CAAA),26 which imposed mandatory trade sanctions on South Africa.

Dutch Reform Church declared apartheid ‘an error’.

The Sunday Times ran the headline: ‘Queen dismayed by “uncaring” Thatcher’. The accompanying article claimed that the Queen feared for the future of the Commonwealth because of Prime Minister Thatcher’s consistent refusal to implement sanctions.27 UK Foreign Secretary Geoffrey Howe (then also President of EC Council of Foreign Ministers) visited South Africa (July).

Meeting of 7 Commonwealth leaders in London.

UK agreed to ban new investment, future sales of coal, iron and steel (subject to EC agreement) and the promotion of tourism in South Africa (Aug).

EC Foreign Ministers meeting. Eventual EC agreement on ban on new investment; on imports of iron, steel and Krugerrands.

Japan announced ban on imports of iron and steel imports, and tourist visas for South Africans (Sept).

US Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto on sanctions against South Africa. Prohibition on import of South African coal, iron, steel, uranium, arms and ammunition, textiles and agricultural products; also new investment and export of oil, and South African Airways landing rights revoked. US$40m allocated to victims of apartheid (Oct).

Barclays Bank – the largest UK investor in South Africa – began disinvestment in South Africa (Nov).28

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http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/his-opening-speech-parliament-president-botha-outlinesgovernment-policy-restoration-sou [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 26 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/99/hr4868 27 According to a commentator in the Independent newspaper, 16 April 2013, as a result of this public rift, ‘Unintentionally, the Queen and Prime Minister formed a double act which pushed South Africa towards change’. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/margaret-thatcher-and-the-queen-the-two-mostpowerful-women-in-the-world-8575664.html [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 28 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/disinvestment-moves-two-major-companies

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1986-89

Widespread conflict between Inkatha and UDF in Natal.

1986-90

The City of London Anti-Apartheid Group maintained a Non-Stop Picket outside the South African Embassy on Trafalgar Square, calling for the release of Nelson Mandela.

1987

Robin Renwick appointed British Ambassador to South Africa.

South African Embassy pressured UK Government to end the non-stop picket outside their premises. The Metropolitan Police used an obscure bylaw to remove protesters (May to Jul) but the police stopped enforcing this ban after 4 MPs joined protestors.29 Major strike by NUM (largest union within COSATU) (Aug).

Escalating bomb attacks against urban targets. South African government covertly bombed HQ of COSATU. Establishment of Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB).

Renewed Angolan/Cuban offensive against UNITA/SADF forces in Angola (Oct).

Vancouver CHOGM30 (Oct).

No new sanctions adopted. All members (except UK) agreed to set up Committee of Foreign Ministers to monitor developments and to commission study on South Africa’s relationship with international financial institutions.

By year end 143 American companies (approximately 50 per cent of the total) had left South Africa, 94 since beginning of 1986.

(In contrast Japan and Taiwan substantially increased their trade with South Africa in the same period).

1988

Anti-Apartheid Movement initiated Nelson Mandela ‘Freedom at 70’ campaign.

KwaNdebele, one of the African homelands setup by the South African government: ‘independence’ resisted.

South African government covertly bombed HQ of South African Council of Churches.

South African security raids against neighbouring frontline states.

Fighting in Angola’s Cuando-Cubango province, which boarded South West Africa. Military stalemate followed by new round of negotiations, beginning with meeting in London (May). Subsequent protracted negotiations in Cairo, Brazzaville, Geneva and New York.

Fourteen Principles ‘for a peaceful settlement’ accepted (Jul).

The main London office of South African Airways occupied by members of the Anti-Apartheid Movement as part of their campaign, ‘No rights; No flights’.31 New York Accords on Namibia (simultaneous Cuban withdrawal (approximately 50,000) from Angola, and South African troops (over

29

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cD0tJvzSQ4 [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] http://thecommonwealth.org/history-of-the-commonwealth/10th-chogm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 31 http://nonstopagainstapartheid.wordpress.com/2012/07/02/south-african-airways-closed-occupied-threetimes-in-one-day/ [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 30

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50,000) from South West Africa/Namibia) by July 1991. UN central role supported by USA and USSR (Dec).

1989

Mrs Thatcher’s African tour (Nigeria, Zimbabwe and Malawi). Ended tour in Windhoek (April).

PW Botha replaced by FW de Klerk, following former’s mild stroke.

Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) launched civil disobedience campaign.32 Emergence of non-communist reforming governments in Hungary and Poland.

Elections in Namibia. Victory of SWAPO movement.

Kuala Lumpur CHOGM33 (Oct).

Communiqué agreed the following: that banks would be asked to offer South Africa only 90 days credit; there would be a strengthening of the arms embargo; and South Africa would no longer be eligible for cover by Commonwealth members’ official export-credit schemes.

Fall of the Berlin Wall and the beginning of the end of the Cold War (Nov).

1990

Mike Gatting’s Rebel English cricket tour of South Africa.34 President FW De Klerk announced in Cape Town Parliament the unbanning of ANC, PAC, South African Communist Party, and 31 other anti-apartheid organisations; Nelson Mandela released from jail (Feb).35 The National Party renounced apartheid.

The Groote Schuur Accord (May).

Namibian independence.

Following release, Mandela went on an international tour, including a visit to the UK and met Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Jul).

State of Emergency lifted by De Klerk.

Return of Oliver Tambo to South Africa.

1990-91

Repeal of Group Areas, Natives’ Land and Population, Registration and Separate Amenities Acts.

1991

ANC announced end of armed struggle.

CODESA (Convention for a Democratic South Africa) formed to negotiate with ANC for a new democratic constitution.

Government backing of Inkatha vigilantes against ANC.36 White referendum supported CODESA negotiations, but ANC withdrew from negotiations (May). (ANC wanted multi-racial one-person-one-vote democracy as soon as possible. Nationalist Party preferred a power-sharing arrangement between racial groups, and for arrangements safeguarding white rights, together with moderated transition to full democracy).

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http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/mass-democratic-movement-mdm-begins-their-defiance-campaign [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 33 http://thecommonwealth.org/history-of-the-commonwealth/11th-chogm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 34 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/mike-gatting%C3%A3%C2%A2%C3%A2%C2%82% C2%AC%C3%A2%C2%84%C2%A2s-rebel-cricket-tour-curtailed [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 35 http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/fw-de-klerk-announces-release-nelson-mandela-and-unbanspolitical-organisations [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 36 http://www.sahistory.org.za/codesa-negotiations [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013]

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Intensification of Inkatha-ANC conflict. (Boipatong and Bisho massacres.)

Goldstone Commission concluded that the South African Government used covert force against its enemies.

De Klerk and Mandela agreed on 1994 as the date for the first national election.

South African Airways allowed to fly over the bulge of Africa to destinations in Europe (Jun).37 European Community announced ending of sports boycott.

1992

Negotiations resumed in April at Kempton Park to form interim Constitution.

Assassination of Chris Hani (Secretary General of SACP) by member of AWB.38 Death of Oliver Tambo.

Massacre in Bisho, in the nominally independent homeland of Ciskei in South Africa (September).

The South African restaurant chain Nandos opened its first UK restaurant in Ealing, west London.

1993

Constitutional agreement (Nov).

Universal suffrage election April 1994. 400 MPs were to be elected by proportional representation. A government of National Unity was to hold office for 5 years, while the President was to be elected by new MPs. Any party with more than 80 seats elected the Deputy President, and any party with more than 5 per cent of the national vote were to have a position in the national government. Nine new provinces replaced old provinces, and the Bantustans.

President FW De Klerk announced the dismantlement of South Africa’s stockpile of six operational nuclear weapons.

1994

Failure of AWB invasion of Bophuthatswana.39 South Africa re-entered the Commonwealth: the British Embassy returned to being designated a High Commission (Jun).

Democratic elections in South Africa (Nov).

Government of National Unity elected with ANC majority. Nelson Mandela inaugurated as State President.

1995-96

Test cricket resumed: England v South Africa.

1995

HM Queen Elizabeth II visited South Africa (Mar).

South Africa hosted Rugby World Cup (May).

1996

First public hearings of Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

Nelson Mandela paid a State Visit to Britain (Jul).

Prime Minister John Major visited South Africa (Jul).

37

For 28 years previously South African Airways did not have permission to fly over African countries en route to Europe. http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/south-african-airways-given-permission-fly-over-bulgeafrica-negotiations-end-apartheid- [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 38 http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/thembisile-chris-hani [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 39 http://sabctrc.saha.org.za/glossary/bophuthatswana_invasion.htm?tab=victims [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013]

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1998

Truth and Reconciliation Commission report branded apartheid a crime against humanity and found the ANC accountable for human rights abuses.

1999

ANC won general elections. Thabo Mbeki President.

Prime Minister Tony Blair visited South Africa (Jan).

HM Queen Elizabeth II visited South Africa and attended CHOGM in Durban40 (Nov).

2000

Ann Grant appointed High Commissioner.

2001

39 multi-national pharmaceutical companies halted a legal battle to stop South Africa importing generic Aids drugs (Apr).

Official investigation in South Africa of allegations of corruption surrounding a 1999 arms deal (involving British, French, German, Italian, Swedish and South African firms) (May).

South African government cleared of unlawful conduct (Nov).

2002

Bomb explosions in Soweto and a blast near Pretoria: Boeremag (Boer Force) claimed responsibility (Oct).41

2003

Walter Sisulu died (May).

CHOGM in Abuja, Nigeria (Dec).

Call for Zimbabwe to be expelled from the Commonwealth.

2004

Ruling ANC won landslide election victory. Thabo Mbeki began a second term as president (Apr).

2005

Paul Boateng appointed High Commissioner.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigated disappearances of hundreds of people during the apartheid era (Mar).

Geographical Names Committee recommended that the Culture Minister should approve a name change for the capital from Pretoria to Tshwane (May).

2006

Former Deputy President Jacob Zuma acquitted of rape charges by the High Court in Johannesburg: he was reinstated as Deputy Leader of the governing African National Congress (May).

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao visited South Africa and promised to limit clothing exports to help South Africa’s ailing textile industry (Jun).

Corruption charges against former Deputy President Zuma dismissed (Sept).

South Africa becomes the first African country, and the fifth in the world, to allow same-sex unions (Dec).

2007

As crime and corruption escalated, President Mbeki urged South Africans to bring rapists, drug dealers and corrupt officials to justice (Apr).

40

http://thecommonwealth.org/history-of-the-commonwealth/16th-chogm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/boeremag-bomb-blasts-rock-soweto-and-bronkhorstspruit [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 41

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Cape Town Mayor Helen Zille elected new leader of the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) (May).

Hundreds of thousands of public-sector workers take part in the biggest strike since the end of apartheid. The strike lasted for four weeks and caused widespread disruption to schools, hospitals and public transport (May).

Nelson Mandela’s statue was officially unveiled in Parliament Square, London, by Prime Minister Gordon Brown (Aug).

Zuma elected chairman of the ANC. Prosecutors brought new corruption charges against him (Dec).

2008

Wave of violence directed at foreigners hit townships across the country.

Dozens of people died and thousands of Zimbabweans, Malawians and Mozambicans returned home (May).

Corruption case against Zuma dismissed (Sept).

President Mbeki resigned over allegations that he interfered in the corruption case against Zuma.

The Congress of the People (Cope), made up largely of defectors from the ANC and headed by former Defence Minister Mosiuoa Lekota, launched in Bloemfontein (Dec).

2009

Nicola Brewer appointed High Commissioner.

UK revoked visa-free status for South Africans; began to charge £80 for entry visas.

South Africa’s Appeals Court ruled that state prosecutors could resurrect corruption case against Zuma (Jan).

Corruption case against Zuma dropped (Apr).

ANC won general election.

Zuma elected president (May).

South African economy went into recession for first time in 17 years.

Township residents who complained about poor living conditions mounted violent protests (Jul).

In London South African wines industry awarded the most trophies and prizes in the Fairtrade Wine Committee’s competition for best wines of the year and won the 2009 Ethical Award from the influential UK trade publication The Drinks Business (Dec).

Nando’s UK awarded Three Stars in the Best Companies Annual Accreditation Awards.

2010

Jacob Zuma visited the UK. He said Britain had helped ‘free’ South Africa (Mar).42 South Africa hosted the World Cup football tournament (Jun).

Estimated that half of the members of the English cricket team were born in South Africa (e.g.: Andrew Strauss, Matt Prior, Craig Kieswetter, Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen).43 Estimated 212,000 British nationals living in South Africa.44

42

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8545456.stm [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] http://www.thefulltoss.com/englands-south-africans-the-ultimate-ringers/ [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 44 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/7903228/The-changing-lives-of-expats-in-South-Africa.html [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 43

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2011

Prime Minister David Cameron visited South Africa (Jul).

The ANC suspended its controversial and influential youth leader, Julius Malema, for five years for bringing the party into disrepute.

National Assembly overwhelmingly approved information bill accused by critics of posing a threat to freedom of speech. The ANC said the measure was needed to safeguard national security (Nov).

HRH the Prince of Wales and HRH Duchess of Cornwall visited South Africa. On various occasions he prominently brought up environmental issues and climate change (Nov).

UK Census of 2011 revealed that 140,201 people of South African were lived in the UK, the majority of whom were white.

2012

HRH the Princess Royal visited South Africa as part of HM Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations (Apr).

Member of white extremist group found guilty of plotting to kill Mandela and trying to overthrow government (Jul).

Police opened fire on workers at platinum mine in Marikana, killing and injuring many and arresting more than 200. Prosecutors dropped murder charges in September against 270 miners after a public outcry, and the government sets up a judicial commission of inquiry in October (AugOct).

Former ANC youth leader Julius Malema charged with money laundering over a government tender awarded to a company partly owned by his family trust. Malema said the case was a politically motivated attempt to silence his campaign against President Zuma (Sept).

Anglo-American Platinum (Amplats)45 dismissed 12,000 striking miners following waves of wildcat strikes (Oct).

Zuma re-elected as leader of the ANC (Dec).

Over the year 438,023 UK tourists had visited South Africa, an increase of 4.2 per cent.46

2013

UK announced cutting £19million development aid to South Africa.

South African government considering imposing an £80 visa fee for UK visitors, who comprise the largest overseas tourist market to the country47 (Apr-May).

International Development Minister Lynne Featherstone visited South Africa as part of a regional focus on HIV/AIDS strategy (Jul).

David Willetts, Minister of State for Universities and Science, visited Cape Town for the UK-South Africa Bilateral Forum (Sept).48

45

www.angloplatinum.com/ http://www.ttgdigital.com/news/south-africa-sees-102-rise-in-tourist-numbers-in-2012/4687451.article [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 47 http://www.citypress.co.za/news/state-may-ask-uk-tourists-for-visas/ [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 48 http://www.ukti.gov.uk/export/countries/africa/southernafrica/southafrica/premiumcontent/ 613480.html [Accessed 30 Sept. 2013] 46

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The Role and Functions of British High Commission/ Embassy in Pretoria Session One: From Apartheid to Free Elections Chair: Professor Philip Murphy, Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London Witnesses: Lord Renwick of Clifton, KCMG: Ambassador, 1987–91 Dr David Carter: Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission, Cape Town/Pretoria, 1992–96 Contributors from the floor: Sir Peter Bottomley: MP for Worthing West, 1997-; for Greenwich, Woolwich West, 1975–1983; for Eltham, 1983–97.

Professor Saul Dubow: Queen Mary, University of London Dr Alexander Hardie: Counsellor, Pretoria Embassy/High Commission, 1993–7 Keith Somerville: Institute of Commonwealth Studies Professor Jack Spence: King’s College London DR RICHARD SMITH: Ladies and gentlemen. First of all, welcome to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. My name is Richard Smith; I am from FCO Historians. Welcome to this witness seminar on the High Commission in Pretoria. It is part of a series that we are running, as ever, in conjunction with the Institute of Contemporary British History at King’s College London and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. We are also pleased, on this occasion, to collaborate with the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Both our Chairs this afternoon, Philip Murphy and also Sue Onslow, come from the Institute.

We have two sessions today. The first one is looking at the Apartheid era and taking the history of the High Commission up to the free elections. The second session will look at relations with the Rainbow Nation. Everything today is on the record, and can I say that if you are making a comment or posing a question from the audience, can you please identify yourself, as a transcript will be produced and published in due course?

Thank you very much. Without further ado, I will hand over to Philip.

PROFESSOR PHILIP MURPHY: Just to set a good example and introduce myself, I am Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. Welcome, everyone; thank you very much for coming. I just wanted to start with a little tribute to Michael Kandiah and his colleagues at the Institute of Contemporary British History, who have organised this. This is the fifth in a series of seminars co-sponsored by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but it is the latest in nearly one hundred witness seminars that the ICBH have organised since 1986. As a contemporary historian I can testify to how very important and valuable these exercises are and a record is. The trouble you take today, coming and participating, will be of tremendous value to scholars, to historians, for many generations to come. It is a wonderful thing that the ICBH have been doing and it is a real example of how scholars from the humanities can enhance policy-making by helping to preserve a kind of institutional memory in Whitehall, which is tremendously important. It is something that we are also doing at the Institute of

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Commonwealth Studies, through our current Commonwealth Oral History Project, which I would be happy to enlighten people about, if you want to talk to me later on.

Let me introduce our two speakers in this panel. Lord Renwick of Clifton joined the Foreign Service, I believe, 50 years ago this year. He had a series of postings which took him to New Delhi and Paris. He was very directly involved in finding a solution to the problem of Rhodesia in the late 1970s, both here at the Foreign Office and also as political advisor to the last Governor of Rhodesia. What he is going to talk about today is his time as Ambassador in South Africa from 1987-91. He was subsequently, of course, Ambassador to Washington. He has written extensively about foreign affairs, most recently with his wonderful book, Journey With Margaret Thatcher – which I do recommend people read; it is an enormously good read.

With him on the panel we have Dr David Carter, who joined the Diplomatic Service in 1970. He spent part of his childhood in Zambia and then was posted back there in the 1980s as Deputy High Commissioner and Counsellor in Lusaka. He was Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission in South Africa from 1992-96; he subsequently served as Deputy Director for the Centre for Security and Diplomacy at Birmingham University and Bursar of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge.

Without further ado, I will hand over to Lord Renwick.

LORD RENWICK OF CLIFTON: Thank you very much. I think we would all like to express appreciation to the Institute of Contemporary British History, to King’s College London, and to the Historians at the Foreign Office for conducting these seminars, because I think the historical record is extremely important. It is great to have this opportunity to make my contribution to it.

I tried to do so at the time, not long after I came back from South Africa, by publishing a book, because it is easy to write accurately close to the time. It is called Unconventional Diplomacy;49 it is about the Rhodesian settlement50 and change in South Africa. It is out of print but it is in the libraries. The book about Margaret Thatcher,51 which is about her foreign policy, is, strangely enough, the only one of its kind. It was intended to address a question which is relevant to South Africa: how is it that this lady, who was really heavily criticised by a large section of the press and the foreign policy establishment at the time, was actually able to accomplish more in foreign policy over the period of her time as Prime Minister – in a number of areas, including South Africa – than most of her critics combined?

I was sent by her to South Africa in 1987, at a time when the situation was extremely bleak. PW Botha52 was in charge with a bunch of ‘securocrats’ around him, and the ANC leadership were all in exile or in jail. There was heavy repression internally, censorship of the press and 2,500 people in detention without trial. I would like to describe how we tried to set about tackling the problems around us, and also to try to dispose of one or two myths. When I went there, it seemed to me that the easy thing to do was to spend most of our time with the English-speaking liberal groups, like the Progressive Federal Party. They thought and behaved like us, but they did not, unfortunately – with one spectacular exception – have any real influence. The spectacular exception was my closest friend and best ally, Helen Suzman.53 What I tried to do was to try to get to know the Afrikaner elite as well as I could 49

R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (1997).

The ICBH held a witness seminar on this issue: see M. Kandiah and S. Onslow (eds.), Britain and Rhodesia: The Route to Settlement: Witness Seminar (2005).

51 Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, 1926-2013), Prime Minister, 1979-90; R. Renwick, A Journey with Margaret Thatcher (2013).

52 P.W. Botha (1916-2006), South African President, 1984-9.

53 Helen Suzman (1917-2009), Member of the Parliament of South Africa, 1953-89.

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and, in particular, the key figures. These were: the head of the Afrikaans press group, Mr Tom Vosloo;54 the head of the Broederbond,55 Pieter de Lange;56 the head of the reform church, Professor Heyns;57 the head of the reserve bank, who was Gerhard de Kock;58 and the leading Afrikaner business figure, Anton Rupert.59 I was very encouraged by the meetings I had with them, to find that they all thought that South Africa under Botha was on the wrong track. They very strongly disliked the way in which, as they saw it and as I saw it, he was busy turning the country into a sort of Latin American, military junta type regime. They were, within Afrikanerdom, reformers themselves. The head of the Broederbond was saying to his fellow members, ‘We have to change. The greatest risk is not taking any risks.’ Of course, all documents circulated by the Broederbond were secret at the time, although one of them fell into our hands. Professor Heyns, who later was assassinated for being too liberal, had actually denounced apartheid as a heresy. These were very good allies to have. Specifically, Vosloo ensured that every speech I made criticising apartheid was heavily featured in the Afrikaners’ press.

At the same time, we had to make a huge effort to establish better relationships with the black leadership. The way we did that was by developing the programme in the townships; we ended up by supporting over 300 small projects in the townships. Chris Patten60 and then Lynda Chalker61 made the funds available for this. Every younger member of the embassy was asked to give a priority to this, above and beyond all the other work they were doing. The consulates and the younger people in the embassy did this absolutely admirably, I have to say. That programme brought us into contact with the entire internal leadership of the ANC throughout the townships across South Africa. Some of the ANC leaders were complaining, as you all know, about our opposition to some sanctions. I emphasise ‘some’ sanctions because it is often forgotten that we had already imposed nuclear, military and oil sanctions, etc., on South Africa. The areas in which the Prime Minister was heavily resisting sanctions, and I personally agree with her, were sanctions of a kind that would have put tens of thousands of black South Africans out of work – for example, banning South African agricultural exports, with no social safety net and no other employment available to them.

I went to see the head of the TUC, Norman Willis,62 to ask him to tell his Union friends that I was not a lost cause as far as they were concerned, which he did. I went to see the Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie,63 to ask him to tell Archbishop Tutu,64 who had been boycotting my predecessor not to boycott me. I had many meetings with Archbishop Tutu; like everybody else, I was a huge admirer. By those means we sought to establish more influence within the Afrikaner world, to the extent we could, and also better contacts with the black leadership.

Here, I would like to counter myth number one. Myth number one is that we were not talking to the ANC. This is far from being the case. Oliver Tambo,65 at the time, was living in 54

Tom Vosloo, editor, Beeld, 1977-83, see fn. 70; CEO, Naspers Ltd (South Africa), 1984-92.

See chronology (1918).

56 Pieter de Lange, Chairman of the Broederbond, 1984-94.

57 Johan Heyns (1928-94), Moderator of the General Synod of the Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk.

58 Dr Gerhardus de Kock (1926-89), Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, 1981-9.

59 Anton Rupert (1916-2006), South African billionaire entrepreneur.

60 Chris Patten (Lord Patten of Barnes), Minister for Overseas Development, FCO, 1986-9.

61 Lynda Chalker (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey), Minister for Overseas Development, FCO, 1989-97.

62 Norman Willis (1933-2014), General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), 1984-93.

63 Robert Runcie (Lord Runcie, 1921-2000), Archbishop of Canterbury, 1980-91.

64 Archbishop Tutu, Archbishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of Southern Africa, 1986-96.

65 Oliver Tambo (1917-93): Secretary General ANC, 1954; Deputy President ANC, 1958; Acting President ANC, 1967; President ANC, 1985; lived in exile in north London, 1959-90.

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Highgate with his family; I used to go and see him regularly. I did not ask for permission to do that; I just did it. Tambo, who was a really good man, never let me down. It was a great sadness to me that by the time he went back to South Africa he was ill and was not able to play the role he should and could have done. We never talked about these meetings to anybody else, but they took place nevertheless. I was very touched when he came back to South Africa. He arrived at the airport; I did not go to the airport because I knew he would be tired, and wanting to rest. One of my more officious European colleagues went to the airport to meet him and was told, ‘No, no, no; we want to see our Ambassador’: and ‘our Ambassador’ meant me. It was not only, or mainly, because of my relations with him; it was because the police here had protected him and his colleagues against all the attempts by the apartheid regime to literally blow them up. So, that relationship was for real. Meanwhile, in Lusaka, the people we called our friends – namely SIS, MI6 or however you like to describe them66 – had a senior officer especially designated in Lusaka, to spend his time doing nothing other than talk to the ANC. He was in constant contact with Thabo Mbeki,67 with Jacob Zuma68 and most of the names which are familiar to all of you. So, the idea of diplomacy often, quite frequently, is not what it seemed. The idea that we were not talking to the ANC was incorrect.

We got a bit of additional credibility because Botha, in his desire to crack down on everything, proceeded to ban the internal wing of the ANC, the United Democratic Front. I had to make a speech in Johannesburg to something called the Urban Foundation.69 I made a speech which would have got me thrown out of every other African country forthwith, in which I said that we did not want to isolate South Africa, but we could not stop them isolating themselves. I said, ‘If you want to get out of a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.’ That was all over the Afrikaans press, producing great indignation from the government, but it did help us, obviously, with the ANC. Not only that, but the Afrikaans press in one case published an editorial saying, ‘We agree with this; it is absolutely right.’

They were denounced by Botha and published another editorial, saying, ‘We are not withdrawing what we said. We stand by it.’ I proceeded to invite that editor to London, to see Margaret Thatcher for an interview. I encouraged him to ask her the question, ‘What is the difference between the IRA and the ANC?’, to which her reply was, ‘The IRA have the vote; the ANC do not.’ That was the banner headline across the Beeld,70 Die Burger,71 and so on. It reflected what she genuinely believed.

Myth number two is a combined myth: Thatcher was a racist and she called Mandela72 a ‘terrorist’. I worked with her over Rhodesia, in the first instance. In order to try to resolve the Rhodesia problem, which none of her predecessors had ever looked like doing, she had to accept a plan which we dished up to her and which was far riskier than any of them would have been prepared to contemplate. It involved intervening ourselves to organise the elections and a ceasefire in Rhodesia, sending British troops into a very exposed situation, 66

‘Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), often known as MI6’: https://www.sis.gov.uk// [Accessed 10 Sept. 2014].

Thabo Mbeki (1917-93), ANC leader who lived in London until 1990.

68 Jacob Zuma, President of South Africa, 2009-.

69 ‘The Urban Foundation/Stedelike Stigting was established in reaction to the 1976 unrest in South Africa and the dwindling economy. Its aim was to unite business in managing urbanisation so as to curb political unrest, improve the lives of urban blacks and to provide blacks with a role in the economy’. It was set up by Harry Oppenheimer (of Anglo-American) and Anton Rupert and closed in 1995. S. Hoogenraad-Vermaak, ‘The Contribution of the Urban Foundation to Political Reform’, Historia, Vol56 No2 (2011), pp. 133-53.

70 Beeld is the largest Afrikaans-language newspaper in South Africa. http://www.beeld.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

71 Die Burger is a daily Afrikaans-language newspaper with a large circulation. http://www.dieburger.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

72 Nelson Mandela (1918-2013) was imprisoned between 1962 and 1990; President of South Africa, 1994-9.

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and so on and so forth. She did that because she believed that it was our job and duty to decolonise Rhodesia like the other countries we had done. In my experience, she never was a racist. Although, it is perfectly true that she thought that the contribution of white South Africans to the South African economy was indispensable and needed to be protected as did their rights generally. It was also true that she was fairly sceptical about the actual competence of a number of black African governments she was in touch with – including that, for instance, of Kenneth Kaunda,73 though she liked him personally.

On calling Mandela a ‘terrorist’, what actually happened was that at the Vancouver Commonwealth Conference, she opposed additional sanctions of the type I have described.

The local ANC representative, without any instructions from his leadership, said that if she continued like that, British companies in South Africa would become legitimate targets of attack. There was a journalist in Vancouver called Colin Legum74 and when it came to her press conference, he quoted this at her, saying, you know, ‘If you do not stop doing this, our companies will become legitimate targets for attack. What have you got to say about that?’ At which point, not surprisingly, she exploded. She said, ‘That shows what a typical terrorist organisation this is.’75 When she got back to London, I recall telephoning her private secretary, Charles Powell,76 who was a friend of mine. I said, ‘Look, Charles, you know perfectly well that we are in touch with external leadership in the ANC and the internal leadership in the ANC and we intend to go on doing just that. Is there any objection?’ The answer, when she had calmed down, was, no. So that was what was happening, through our eyes at any rate. In this period with Botha there, as I told her, there was no way he was going to release Mandela; we had to concentrate on trying to help secure a settlement in Namibia.

This was an example of the very strange states that Foreign Ministers sometimes get themselves into, because our doctrine, according to our foreign ministry, was that there must be no linkage between South African withdrawal from Namibia and Cuban withdrawal from Angola – a position, I thought, was barking mad, actually. Firstly, we wanted to get the Cubans – or, we ought to have wanted to get the Cubans out of Angola – and, secondly, there was no way I was going to be able to help the South Africans to leave Namibia unless the Cubans did leave Angola. The full credit has to be given for that negotiation to a friend and colleague of mine, Chet Crocker,77 who led the negotiation for the United States. We supported it, because they had no embassy in Angola; we had to do all the communication with the Angolans for them. They did not actually have that much influence in South Africa at the time, for various reasons but partly because Congress had imposed all sorts of sanctions. So we had to do some of the heavy lifting in Pretoria. South Africa had a Foreign Minister78 who, despite his flamboyance and erratic nature, did want to try to achieve a settlement, and an absolutely first class senior civil servant called van Heerden.79 Van Heerden and Crocker are the two people who did most to achieve this agreement. The Cubans 73

Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, 1964-91.

Colin Legum (1919-2003), anti-apartheid activist and journalist (for the Observer in the UK).

75 In response to a question from a journalist at a press conference at the Vancouver CHOGM who asked if the British government would be funding the ANC to help speed up the process of the ending of apartheid, Thatcher responded: ‘the ANC says that they will target British companies [operating in South Africa]. This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism. They will if they believe in democracy.’ In response to another question later, she said: ‘I will have nothing to do with any organisation that practices violence. I have never seen anyone from ANC or the PLO or the IRA and would not do so.’ http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp? docid=106948 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

76 Lord Powell of Bayswater, Private Secretary and Adviser on Foreign Affairs to the Prime Minister, 1983-91.

77 Chester Crocker, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, 1981-9.

78 R.F. ‘Pik’ Botha, Minister for Foreign Affairs, South Africa, 1977-94.

79 Neil van Heerden, Director General of the Department of Foreign Affairs, South Africa, 1987-92.

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suddenly decided to be more realistic than the European Foreign Ministries and say that, ‘Yes, by the way, we are prepared to get out of Angola – if the South Africans will leave Namibia.’ At that point, it looked as if we could really make an agreement, especially as Professor Heyns, meanwhile, was saying publicly that it was outrageous to ask young South Africans to fight SWAPO,80 200 miles inside Angola.

All of those pressures combined, more or less, to work: we got an agreement to the ceasefire. The first day of the implementation of the UN plan was 1 April 1989. Margaret Thatcher was on a trip to other African countries, ending in Malawi. I told her that I hoped she would spend an extra day visiting Namibia on the first day of the implementation of the agreement, because all of my experience with Rhodesia had convinced me that negotiating these things is one thing but implementing them is even harder, and we would need her support. Again, there were worries whether that was a sensible thing to do – but she was a born risk-taker, so she liked the idea. I went ahead to Windhoek and reported that it was okay for her to arrive, and she did. The press were told on the aeroplane that instead of going to Heathrow, they were heading for Namibia. When she got there, we visited the British Military Contingent; she went on to visit the Rio Tinto81 mine at Rössing.82 By this stage, the ceasefire was breaking down around us: huge numbers of armed SWAPO columns were crossing the border in contravention of the agreement, and the South Africans were getting ready to fight them.

We had to support the two really admirable UN representatives there. One was the Force Commander, a trained Sandhurst Indian – more pukka than most of the British – called Prem Chand,83 and Martti Ahtisaari,84 subsequently President of Finland. Thatcher told them, ‘You have to get permission from the UN Secretary General to let the South Africans contain these incursions, and I will resist any more dramatic action by them.’ Ahtisaari, who had some real guts, did ask Perez de Cuéllar85 to do that. We had the highest regard for Perez de Cuéllar; he was UN Secretary General and had been in Rhodesia with us. He also had some guts, and did authorise the South Africans to take containing actions. We had a huge fracas at the airport with Pik Botha, under pressure from his leader, wanting to bomb the SWAPO columns. This is described in both of my books. Thatcher said, ‘If you do that, the whole world will be against you – led by me.’ It was very fortunate, actually, that she was there on that crucial day. The SWAPO leaders thanked us afterwards for what she had done to keep the settlement in place. There were further twists and turns after that; there was an attempt by the dirty tricks brigade of the South African military to say there was going to be another coup d’état by SWAPO. Since we controlled the UN’s communications, we told the South Africans that this was rubbish. We ended up with an independence ceremony a year later, attended by de Klerk86 and Douglas Hurd87 in Namibia. So, Margaret Thatcher did make a contribution to that outcome and so, more generally, did we – or, we tried to.

That left the key issue which was of course the ANC, and how to overcome that deadlock. The Embassy was able to act as a neutral place. I by then had gotten to know a

80

South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO). http://www.swapoparty.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Headquartered in London, Rio Tinto is an Anglo-Australian mining and metals extraction company. http://www.riotinto.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

82 http://www.rossing.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

83 Lieutenant-General Prem Chand (1919-2003), Commander, United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia, 1989-90.

84 Martti Ahtisaari, Head of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group, 1989; President of Finland, 19942000.

85 Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1982-91.

86 F.W. de Klerk, President of South Africa, 1989-94.

87 Douglas Hurd (Lord Hurd of Westwell), Foreign Secretary, 1989-95.

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large number of Robben Islanders88 who had been released from prison and who used to come regularly to the embassy. I used to invite the verligte MPs89 to the same functions. I would not tell either side in advance who else was coming; once they had met, however, they found they had a lot to talk about. In a small way, that helped. What helped in a much bigger way was that the appalling P.W. Botha suffered a stroke – a, sort of, divine intervention, if you like. De Klerk became leader of the party, first of all, and eventually President. Before that, I had the unpleasant experience of having to go to see P.W. Botha. He had bad eyesight and a domed, bald head. He used to see me in this office with one green table light, dark glasses. It was like visiting Hitler in his bunker. This was to argue for the lives of the Sharpeville Six, who he was getting ready to execute. I did, upon that occasion, manage to get Professor Heyns and the entire synod of the Dutch Reformed Church to descend on him in Cape Town. Helen Suzman, who had sworn never, ever to speak to him in her whole life, except to insult him in Parliament, waived this principle to go and see him herself. He did commute the sentences, but he was never going to release Mandela, because he knew that, at that point, the situation would escape his control.

When de Klerk took over, when I arrived in South Africa, he was reputed to be a deeply conservative leader of the party in Transvaal. But I will never forget my very first meeting with him. I went to see him and as I was leaving, he said, ‘You were in Rhodesia. I just want you to know that if I have my way, we will not make the same mistake they did.’

And I said, ‘Well, that is very interesting, but what do you think was the mistake?’ He said, ‘Leaving it much too late to negotiate with the real black leaders.’ After that, I spent a lot of time trying to get to know de Klerk better and he did become a personal friend, as he still is.

It is very much easier to deal with a President if you knew him before he became a President.

So when de Klerk became first Acting President, and then President, I was able to see him on a very regular basis. We asked him to stop overseas raids and to give orders to stop support for RENAMO90 in Mozambique, which he did. That did not stop the support, by the way, because the South African military continued anyway. He did try to stop it. I also told him about some of the death squads, which he also tried to stop.

What people forget about that period is that the military and the security police were extremely strong and a law unto themselves. As de Klerk started taking the country in a Reformist direction, there was a real danger, and people like Thabo Mbeki used to keep saying to me, ‘Are you sure there is not going to be a coup?’ And there was a very real possibility that there could have been revolt by the military. He said to me himself, ‘I have to manage these people with a velvet glove.’ Anyway, you know much of the rest of the story.

First of all, we did work with him to help secure the release of all the ANC leaders, except Mandela. They were released shortly before the Commonwealth Conference in Malaysia.91 If you re-read the record of that conference it does seem truly bizarre, in retrospect, because most of the other delegations turned up wanting additional sanctions against South Africa, even though de Klerk was already embarked on a Reformist path. That was also fiercely resisted by Margaret Thatcher, producing headlines here: ‘Thatcher isolated yet again’, etc.

But if you actually look at what happened and what de Klerk was doing, it is very difficult to resist the conclusion that she was right. If we had piled on additional sanctions against de Klerk, that would really have simply reinforced the very strong resistance to him from the 88

For nearly 400 years Robben Island was used to detain prisoners.

Afrikaans: Verligte – supporter of ‘liberal’ attitudes in South African Government policy during the apartheid period.

90 Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (RENAMO) was founded in 1975, with support from the Rhodesian Government, as an anti-communist organisation and was militarily active during the Mozambique civil war and against Zimbabwe.

91 CHOGM in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Oct. 1989. See http://thecommonwealth.org/history-of-thecommonwealth/10th-chogm 89

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right-wing conservative party and, also, from elements of his own party.

On the evening before he made his great speech announcing the un-banning of the ANC and the South African Communist Party, the release of the prisoners and the return of the exiles, de Klerk rang me at midnight to say, ‘You can tell your Prime Minister that she will not be disappointed.’ Thatcher met him at Chequers:92 we invited him to Chequers and the anti-apartheid movement did not like that. There was a little demonstration outside and so on. But, with her customary lack of ambiguity she said to him, ‘You have to release Mandela, otherwise there is no normalisation of the situation in South Africa, and nor can we do anything to assist you.’ And, I will never forget, as he was leaving, I was standing with her in the doorway at Chequers, and she said to me, ‘He is quite cautious; I am not sure how far he will go.’ And I said, ‘I think you will find he will go a lot further than you think.’ Well, he did go a lot further than many thought. One of my friends in the ANC, Cheryl Carolus,93 was organising a huge demonstration in Cape Town at the time. She was making a fiery speech, saying, ‘Let us march on Parliament.’ Somebody handed her a little note, saying, ‘De Klerk has un-banned the ANC.’ Cheryl could not believe a word of it; she continued with her fiery speech. Eventually, however, the news penetrated the crowd. De Klerk warned me that he would not be able to announce Mandela’s release on that day because they had to make practical arrangements to manage his release, and he was also insisting on this himself. He was released ten days later, as you all know.

After that, Mandela knew perfectly well what we had been doing to try to secure his release, because Helen Suzman, who was allowed to visit him in jail, had told him that Margaret Thatcher was personally heavily involved in trying to help achieve this. I got an extraordinary letter from Mandela on prison note paper saying to me that he did not agree with her about sanctions and he would have liked the chance to explain his position to her, himself, but, ‘Thank you for all the help to the townships and please give my very best regards to the Prime Minister.’ When he came out of jail, I met him in front of the assembled press and he said to me, ‘Please give my best regards to the Prime Minister’, much to the surprise of some of the press, who thought that she was a bête noire. I had a series of meetings with him, in a tiny house in Soweto. He did not initially want to move into his wife’s house which was known, desirably to the Sowetans, as Beverly Hills. In those meetings we went through all the things we could do to help him, including over the new constitution.

After one of the meetings I said to him, ‘Look, it is 27 years since you went to a restaurant: why do we not have the next meeting in the best restaurant in Johannesburg?’ This was called Linger Longer,94 believe it or not. I will never forget when we arrived. Only then did we tell the owner who the guest was, and there was a sort of horrified gasp. Mandela walked into this assembled throng of mining barons, pretty much all of whom had voted to keep him in jail for 27 years, and he went from table to table, greeting every single one of them by name, because he knew them from the press and so on. He was doing his characteristic ‘let’s win everybody over to my side’, before diving into the kitchen to thank the staff for preparing the meal. That is just an early demonstration of Mandela. Initially, the ANC apparatchiks did not want him to meet Thatcher – bad show, anti-sanctions and so on.

He got very cross about that because he did want to meet her; he told me he was going to meet her.

He then was going to be off to a trip to the US and he was already suffering from exhaustion; he asked me to see him in a clinic in Johannesburg. There was a date for his meeting with Thatcher. He wanted to know, as always with Mandela, not, ‘How do I fight 92

Chequers, in Berkshire, the country house retreat of the UK Prime Minister.

Cheryl Carolus, anti-apartheid activist and later High Commissioner to the UK, 1998-2001.

94 http://www.lingerlongerrestaurant.co.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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with her?’ but, ‘How do I get her on my side?’ So, I said to him, ‘Fine. Let us have a dress rehearsal. You can be Mandela and I will be Thatcher.’ He thought this was a great idea; he had a keen sense of humour. So he explained to me about how he had been fighting for human rights forever and how he had had no result with this ghastly government, and so on.

He explained how he had eventually tried to blow up an electricity pylon unsuccessfully, but that he was not prepared to compromise any of his principles. I said, ‘That is absolutely fine, Mr Mandela; now stop all this nonsense about nationalising the banks and the mines.’ So, he said to me, ‘When I went into jail, it was fashionable then, and we got these ideas from you.’

I said, ‘Well, they are not fashionable now. And do not try that in Number 10.’ So, I then have to go to Number 10 and see Thatcher before she sees Mandela, and I say to her, ‘Please remember, Prime Minister: he has waited 27 years to tell you his side of the story.’ So she glared at me and said, ‘You mean I mustn’t interrupt?’ And I said, ‘Not for the first hour, please, no.’ She proceeded to listen, for the first hour, to everything he had to say – until he got into the second hour, at which point she said, ‘We agree with you on all of that, Mr Mandela. You can count on our support for a decent constitution. Now, stop all this nonsense about nationalising all the banks and the mines.’ At which point, he burst out laughing, looking at me; there was then a hilarious exchange which went on. She was trying to teach Economics 101 to Mandela. It went on so long, this very cheery lunch, that the press outside in Downing Street started chanting, ‘Free Nelson Mandela.’ He came out and warmly thanked her for having done her best to help him out of jail which, by the way, she had done.

So, that is the story, really. We had a very close relationship with Mandela because we had to train his body guards; he did not want to be protected by the South African police.

We had to build a little wall around his house to improve the security in his house. We used to see him a great deal. The ANC was very chaotic at the time. On one occasion, I had arranged to see him at their headquarters in Johannesburg. When I got there, I was told that he was busy meeting me at the Embassy in Pretoria, where the staff were all very pleased to meet him, of course.

One thing I did try to help get him to agree to, with Helen Suzman, was to lift the sports boycott because, actually, that sanction really did work; it really did bring home to white South Africans the extent of their isolation on a subject which they care quite passionately about. I remember going to see him and saying to him and Steve Tshwete,95 who was in charge of sport at the time, ‘You need to do something to help de Klerk win the white referendum’, which he had just promised on reform. And he agreed. Mandela was a fanatical sports enthusiast himself, as he subsequently showed at the Rugby World Cup. He was a very big fan of the Pollock brothers96 and Barry Richards,97 and all these people, so he did agree to lift the sports boycott. It was an extremely lucky time to be there, because, you know, however hard my predecessors tried, they were up against a really horrible regime. You know, they did their best, but it was not very easy to make any impact. In this period, it was possible to make an impact. That, however, did derive to a significant degree from Thatcher – because, whether you agree with her or not, and I was never involved in any aspect of her domestic policy, she could not be ignored. She was a force to be reckoned with, and they knew that. They also knew, and I told them, that, ‘So far she has been, to some degree, supporting you. You have done precious little to justify that support and do not count on it continuing indefinitely.’

She did have some leverage with them, and because we had leverage with the government, the ANC were more interested in talking to us than other governments that did not have any leverage with de Klerk, and so on. So, it was a fortunate time to be there.

95

Steve Tshwete (1938-2002), Minister of Sport and Recreation, South Africa, 1994-9.

Peter and Graeme Pollock, South African cricketers.

97 Barry Richards, South African cricketer. He also played for Gloucester and Hampshire during the 1960s.

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Certainly, what we should also be proud of is that there were a lot of relationships with the ANC through people helping here in London, which they do not forget. The relationship between most of the ANC I know – in fact, virtually every ANC I know – that the closest overseas links are actually with this country.

Okay. Thank you very much indeed.

MURPHY: Thank you very much. Dr Carter?

DR DAVID CARTER: Echoing Lord Renwick’s comments, thank you very much for organising this seminar and for the invitation. Lord Renwick has been able to give a strategic view; mine will be more, I suspect, of a nuts and bolts view. I certainly do not want to get into the realms of Mrs Thatcher, with whom not all of us were quite as comfortable. Working to the brief that I was sent, I will be quite short and just comment on my own, as it were, South African CV. I will then give a bird’s eye view of life in the Mission of Pretoria/Cape Town 1992-96, when I was there.

My involvement in South Africa began in the 1950s when I emigrated with my parents to what became Zambia.98 I made frequent visits to South Africa. One of my earliest memories is of being taken sharply to task for walking over the black side of a segregated railway bridge – it seems, now, quite ridiculous, but at the time such events were taken seriously – and of being there at the time of Sharpeville and the tremendous tensions. My involvement in South Africa continued when I found myself researching on non-violent resistance in South Africa for my doctorate. One of my principal mentors, Professor Jack Spence, is here this afternoon; he should really be here on the panel, rather than me. Having joined the Foreign Office and spent several years in Ghana99 I went, as a junior official, on a familiarisation visit to South Africa and neighbouring countries in the dark 1970s. There were some excellent and thoughtful interlocutors in our Embassy in South Africa at that time. I shall never forget though the chill of a particular evening in Durban, at the residence of the Consul General. It was an all-white affair, everybody was in dinner jackets and my fellow guests all very conservative. In their eyes I was on the wrong side of an argument about the merits, or demerits, of segregated bus queues in Durban. It was both profoundly depressing and illuminating and such a stark contrast, to be confronted with these opportunistic advocates of apartheid having come straight from racially relaxed Ghana!

Subsequently, I was involved in the Foreign Office on the issue of South Africa’s nuclear ambitions and activities. Somewhat to my surprise, in the mid-1980s – from 1983-85 – I found myself as Head of the South Africa Section within the Southern Africa Department.

It was a very uncomfortable but thought-provoking period and one which, in retrospect, I do not regret having had. At the time, it was like having one’s teeth being pulled out on a regular basis. There were real tensions, between an essentially verligte Southern African department in the Foreign Office and a quite considerable number of, what I at least, would have viewed as verkrampte100 elements within the British Embassy in Pretoria/Cape Town. Of course, there were plenty of tensions within Whitehall on South Africa at that time as well.

From 1986-90 I moved to the so-called front line, to be in Lusaka.101 While I have heard everything that Lord Renwick has said about the links that there were here in London with the ANC, there was a great deal of bridge building and repair work to be done in Lusaka in the High Commission of maintaining links with the ANC and trying to allay some of their concerns about being branded as a terrorist organisation. This is a viewpoint from the cutting 98

It would then have been called Northern Rhodesia.

British High Commission in Accra, 1971-5.

100 Afrikaner: Verkrampte – opposed to any relaxation of racial barriers in apartheid era South Africa.

101 Deputy High Commissioner and Counsellor, Lusaka, 1986-90.

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edge of being in Lusaka and of being closely involved, along with other colleagues here today, with the ANC in exile. In Zambia in particular but doubtless in other front line states, I think that the role of the High Commission in maintaining links with the ANC was absolutely crucial for the future of a good relationship between this country and South Africa. That we were there quite sharply focused on the ANC – rather than other organisations, such as the PAC,102 which in the end, essentially blew up and disappeared – was fortunate. I think we were right to continue to make very clear to London the priority of maintaining a relationship with the ANC. It was certainly, for us in the Mission in Lusaka, often a very uncomfortable position to be in. We were in a sense under attack from all sides, but that was part of our job.

But, on a personal level, being in Lusaka gave me the opportunity to resume links with South African exiles that I had known when I was doing my research. I think I had the first official link between HMG103 and Joe Slovo,104 whose assassinated wife105 happened to be one of my PhD examiners.

Then, of course, I had the great privilege of being in South Africa from 1992-96 for its transition to democracy and having a job associated with that process. I have to give full marks to the Foreign Office for its career planning, for although I suspect my posting was as much down to chance!

I will now give some general impressions, about the mission in Pretoria/Cape Town in the period 1992-96. Continuing from the days when Lord Renwick was Ambassador there, there was a small group in the mission of tremendously dedicated and able officers, inevitably called ‘Milner’s Kindergarten’!106 They were working with my High Commissioner, Anthony Reeve,107 assessing the path to democracy and the immediate follow-up to that. They were exceptionally well plugged-in, right across the political spectrum, from the far-left, if you like, to the far-right. That was critical.

I think it is also worth emphasising that particularly in the period from 1992-94 there was terrible uncertainty about the political prospects. We in the Embassy, like South Africans themselves, lived on a knife edge of doom and near-euphoria. It was usually the former.

There were things like: the invasion of the far-right into the World Trade Centre of Kempton Park, where the constitutional negotiations were going on; the incursion of the far-right into Bophuthatswana in a fruitless endeavour to prop up Mangope;108 the Bisho massacre;109 bloodletting in KwaZulu; Buthelezi’s110 cliff-hangers; and the murder of Chris Hani.111 The tension, you know… I remember going to the funeral; I mean, it was absolutely electric: if things had entirely split asunder at that moment, I think few people would have been surprised. The principal interlocutors, the ANC and the National Party, were themselves riven. So, there were many issues there. The economy was also in recession. Of course, there were occasional good surprises where you least expected them. For example, in October 1992, Joe Slovo suddenly comes up with his ‘sunset clause’ to allow for a period of power

102

Pan Africanist Congress was founded in 1955.

Her Majesty’s Government.

104 Joe Slovo (1926-95), Minister of Housing of South Africa, 1994-5.

105 Ruth First (1925-82), anti-apartheid activist.

106 ‘Milner’s Kindergarten is an informal reference to a group of Britons who served in the South African Civil Service under High Commissioner Alfred, Lord Milner’: www.oxforddnb.com/public/themes/93/93711.html [Accessed 6 May 2014].

107 Sir Anthony Reeve, Ambassador, 1991-4, then High Commissioner, 1994-6.

108 Lucas Mangope, President of the Bantustan of Bophuthatswana, 1977-94.

109 See chronology (1991).

110 Inkosi (or Chief) Mangosuthu Buthelezi, South African Zulu leader; Chief of the Buthelezi, 1953-.

111 Chris Hani (Martin Thembisile, 1942-93), leader of the South African Communist Party and Chief of Staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe. Assassinated 10 April 1993.

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sharing.112 That was one of those rare bright moments!

Building on what Lord Renwick and his team had done, Tony Reeve and his senior staff promoted a new framework of bilateral relations for the future and trying to ensure that British interests were registered and protected across the board – often in very unpredictable circumstances. We saw as our primary objective the retention of effective links with all the key players in the negotiations, obviously to promote the achievement of a genuinely democratic South Africa, in its and our interests. We were a friend at court; we were not muscling in on the negotiations themselves. That could be a fine dividing line but I think, on the whole, it was one we maintained. We certainly were involved in trying to keep the constitutional process on the rails, but it had to be a South African show and I think we understood that very clearly. We had particular challenges in keeping lines open to Buthelezi, which the Mission, and London, certainly recognised was absolutely essential if there was going to be a sustainable outcome in South Africa. That was very difficult to achieve.

Other aspects, of course, of life of the Mission also had to go on: promoting new bilateral business links and investment arrangements in the face of increasing international competition and promoting a new developments assistance relationship. There had long been small projects, on a quite considerable scale in South Africa, which I believe played a critical role in helping to maintain a good relationship between this country and South Africa even in some of the darkest times. We were very much involved in path-breaking work, to reach agreements on supporting military integration. We had an absolutely key role in trying to achieve integration between the liberation forces and the South African defence forces. And, of course, we were much involved in election managing and monitoring but, again, providing advice not running the show. And we were building, all the time, on our range of relations with individuals in South Africa, from the Presidents and Ministers down.

I have to say that my own experience of direct contact with Mandela had one slightly less comfortable element than Lord Renwick’s. As you may know, Mr Mandela had the habit of waking up extremely early in the morning. One Saturday morning at about 05.00 when I was fast asleep, the phone went in my modest Cape Town residence and I was told that the President would like to speak to me. I thought this was probably a joke, but it was not!

Within a dangerously short space of time, it was indeed Mandela on the phone, courteous as ever, but with some specific questions that he would appreciate having answered and rather rapidly!

Also, yes, the memories of that special relationship Mandela had with almost any group of people in the spirit of reconciliation: his jailors, his known enemies and, of course others, like schoolchildren. It was astonishing.

So yes, we certainly had good relations at the highest level but also we were seeking to broaden them in many others. For example, with people like Justice Goldstone,113 whose Commission on Violence114 we helped.

Otherwise, we were involved in keeping our local EU-US-Commonwealth Diplomatic relationships in good order. Crucially, we were involved in ensuring an effective communication with the 450,000 or so UK passport holders in South Africa at this time of crisis. I mean, let us be realistic: we did not want to see a sudden influx of people to this country back from South Africa. That would have been extremely difficult and would have, in many respects, been a huge loss for South Africa. So, there was quite a lot of quiet work going on to keep in touch with the British community and try and allay some of their 112

http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/negotiations-toward-new-south-africa-grade-12-1 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

113 Richard Joseph Goldstone, Transvaal Supreme Court, 1980-9; the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of South Africa, 1990-4.

114 Goldstone Commission investigated political violence in South Africa, 1991-4.

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concerns about the security redistribution and many other things. And, of course, we found ourselves dealing with a flood of high-level visitors as I am sure all subsequent Heads of Mission and Deputy Heads of Mission did. Some of those were tremendous, like the State Visit of The Queen; it was completely chaotic but wonderfully good-natured and I think it achieved a huge amount. John Major’s visit, as Prime Minister, did too, though we wished he hadn’t made his misjudged comments about the High Commissioner’s residence. Some of the visits, however, had little to do with benefits to bilateral relations or the UK taxpayers.

I remember that at the time of the successful outcome of the elections, there was a tremendous sense of excitement elsewhere in the Mission. A quotation, or a misquotation, that Thabo Mbeki made at that very time: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn, to be alive; but to be there was very Heaven.’ He was right, or almost right. Even then, however, we as a mission were careful to voice cautionary words to London about the future, in particular on managing expectations; the expectations were so high. I think one has to recall that the constitutional negotiators were increasingly desperate to avoid the very real prospect of civil war and of economic meltdown and, arguably, left too much to future good will – in particular, on this critical issue of the redistribution of resources. I was reading a book recently by Hlumelo Biko115 on this subject; one understands where he is coming from in his deep criticisms of the actual negotiating process, but there was a limit to what could be achieved in those pivotal years when we could, easily, have found ourselves embarking on a further period of bloodshed rather than of peace. Really, much of the onus for taking up the reins and ensuring that there was a successful, subsequent redistribution of resources lay with the successors to those negotiators.

So, being in the Embassy from 1992-96 was a real rollercoaster of a ride. I do believe that we laid a good foundation for the subsequent growth of UK interest and our successor representatives, but they will, doubtless, let us know. Thank you.

MURPHY: Thank you very much indeed. We have until quarter to three for questions and comments, so the floor is now open, and I might take one or two at a time. So: Saul, Keith and Sir Peter.

PROFESSOR SAUL DUBOW: Thank you very much for clarifying the matter of Mrs Thatcher referring to Mandela as a ‘terrorist’. I nevertheless think it is true that there were people around her in her circle who believed that the ANC was entirely dominated by communists and this may explain some of the context of ‘terrorist’ accusations. One of the reasons the ANC so disliked Mrs Thatcher was not just her position on sanctions but, in particular, her support – and this seems to be a personal support – of Chief Buthelezi, whom Dr Carter has mentioned. So, I wonder whether you might say something about the British Embassy’s position with regard to Inkatha and how that might have changed over time.

Another person whom you did not mention, although you did mention Mrs Suzman, is opposition figure Frederick van Zyl Slabbert.116 He was very, very active as an internal broker himself, and I wonder whether you had any particular contact with him?

KEITH SOMERVILLE: Lord Renwick, I wondered what your view was, or is, on the effects that PW Botha’s infamous Rubicon speech117 had on Margaret Thatcher’s thinking? I have read various accounts that said she was so angry, as was the American government, at the way British and American willingness to offer certain levels of support in return for gradual change suddenly changed. Also that she was willing to take a harder line when it was 115

Hlumelo Biko, The Great African Society: A Plan for a Nation Gone Astray (2013).

Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert (1940-2010), leader of the Progressive Federal Party, 1979-86.

117 See chronology (Aug 1985).

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necessary because she felt, basically, that Botha had not come up with the goods they had expected.

SIR PETER BOTTOMLEY: I was first in South Africa for Smuts’s118 funeral. On the verkrampte Ambassadors: when my father119 was in the CRO,120 which had maybe become the FCO by then, had helped explain to Ted Heath121 at a shotgun meeting what South Africa was all about, the Permanent Under-Secretary proposed my father to be Ambassador for South Africa in 1972 and 1973. The Prime Minister said, ‘Was he so much against apartheid he would be of use to us as an Ambassador?’ So things may have changed, but I suspect there was a common line running through most of our representatives at the Mission. In 1975, I was elected to the House of Commons. Upon going to see Margaret Thatcher, one of the things I explained to her was that Ian Smith122 in Southern Rhodesia was a military loser and morally wrong and he should not be supported by Conservatives. She was not very shocked by that. So, I think that she is a far more realistic person than some people give her credit for.

I do not want to suggest too much of an extra element.

By the way, I do love this and the British Oral Diplomatic History Project in Churchill, Cambridge,123 which is I think, again, a great source of history. The role of South African ambassadors in London, at some stage, I think deserve some attention – Dawie de Villiers124 used to try to bring people from South Africa and get a bit of education when they came through.

The last point is anecdotage from when my wife,125 as Heritage Secretary, went with Nelson Mandela to plant a tree in St James’s Park. As they were walking back across Trafalgar Square, he said, ‘You do know how grateful we are to those big businesses that stayed in South Africa and that resisted the pressure to come out completely? Because they are the ones who helped to train up a new cadre of people who could take the country forward, and they would be necessary for the economy of the country.’

MURPHY: Thank you very much indeed. Lord Renwick?

RENWICK: I used to see Buthelezi on a regular basis. When Mandela came out of jail, I spent a lot of time trying to persuade him to meet Buthelezi sooner rather than later, because Buthelezi had always refused to negotiate with the government until Mandela was released.

There was a little civil war going on at the time between Inkatha and the ANC in Natal, and it is, sort of, fashionable to blame Inkatha for that but actually the ANC had their own war lord in Natal, in the shape of Harry Gwala126 – who, to my lasting regret, I helped to get out of jail, actually. The meeting with Buthelezi did not take place as soon as it should have done, making things worse. The dialogue with Buthelezi was important because, at that time at any rate, you could have had a much wider conflict. What also happened, of course, as you know, is that the hostel dwellers in Witwatersrand, who were under pressure from ANC youth, were being armed by elements of the military as well, a very murky story. But Buthelezi, in my 118

Jan Smuts (1870-1950), Prime Minister of South Africa, 1919-24; 1939-48. Bottomley’s father was posted to Pretoria, 1948-50.

119 Sir James Bottomley (1920-2013), Ambassador to South Africa, 1973-6.

120 Commonwealth Relations Office was merged with the Foreign Office in 1968.

121 Sir Edward Heath (1916-2005), Prime Minister, 1970-4.

122 Ian Smith (1919-2007), Prime Minister of Rhodesia, 1964-79.

123 British Diplomatic Oral History Programme, based at the Churchill Archive Centre, Cambridge. https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/archives/collections/bdohp/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

124 Dawie de Villiers, South African Ambassador to UK, 1979-80.

125 Virginia Bottomley (Baroness Bottomley of Nettlestone), Secretary of State for National Heritage, 1995-7.

126 Harry Gwala (1920-95), in Robben Island 1977-88.

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experience, was not an impossible person to deal with.

It is perfectly true that Laurens van der Post127 had explained to Margaret Thatcher that the Zulus are the most important people in Africa, and that Buthelezi is the answer to these problems. I used to explicitly say to her, ‘Buthelezi is part of the solution, but there is no solution without Mandela.’ She never contested that; she understood perfectly well that Buthelezi’s support outside the Zulu realm is very small. Mandela had got to be the key figure and was the key figure.

Van Zyl Slabbert was a very close, personal friend of mine; absolutely wonderful character. Helen Suzman was very cross at what he did when he left Parliament. He said to her, ‘I have been here for nine years.’ And she said, ‘Nine years? I have been here 36 years fighting these so-and-sos.’ They were both great friends of mine, actually, and he did make a major contribution through the contacts he organised between verligte Afrikaners and people in the ANC and people close to the regime.

You are absolutely right about the Rubicon speech. Thatcher was furious that that opportunity had been missed, because it resulted in the imposition of what she saw as the really effective sanctions against South Africa, which were market sanctions. That is to say the banks; Chase Manhattan refused to roll over the debts. South Africa had to export its savings rather than import other people’s savings to develop the country, and the head of the reserve bank understood that that was getting them deeper and deeper into a cul-de-sac.

There is one more thing on Rubicon. She did not like making idle threats but when I went to South Africa, the first thing I said to P.W. Botha is that, ‘If there are more cross-border raids of the kind that sabotaged the Eminent Persons Group, do not count on us to protect you. Do not count on her to protect you.’ This seemed to have some effect on him.

You are absolutely right about Ian Smith. As you know, at the time, he was quite a potent political force in Britain; he had Julian Amery,128 the Marquess of Salisbury129 and all these people descending on Peter Carrington130 and me at the time, to tell us what terrible people we were. Margaret Thatcher was not fooled by all that, actually. When we set up the Lancaster House Conference,131 we both said to her, ‘He will try to see you every day of the week and half of your back benchers, not you, but some of the others will try to do the same.

You must not see him, because if you do, that will completely undermine the negotiating team.’ She never saw Ian Smith once, during three months at Lancaster House. He was told he had to deal with Peter and the rest of us.

Dawie de Villiers, yes; he was a verligte act. He did build some bridges and he was a verligte element of the de Klerk government.132 As for the companies staying, that was the point which we were always making. Whenever I needed support for something or other, I would ring up the head of Shell, the head of BP, the head of Unilever or the head of Rio Tinto – and get it. And when the regime tried to close down the Weekly Mail,133 the Weekly Mail was bailed out by us, the British government, and Shell. Those companies, because they were training lots of people, needed managers and were doing good jobs. That was very true, by 127

Sir Laurens van der Post (1906-96), author (notably The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958) and The Heart of the Hunter (1961)) and BBC television personality.

128 Julian Amery (Lord Amery of Lustleigh, 1919-96), Conservative MP and leading figure in the Monday Club, which was formed by backbench Conservative MPs in the aftermath of and in response to Macmillan’s ‘Wind of Change Speech’ (which was delivered to the South African parliament on a Monday).

129 Robert Edward Peter Gascoyne-Cecil, the 6th Marquess of Salisbury (1916-2003), Conservative politician and a leading figure in the Monday Club.

130 The 6th Baron Carrington, Foreign Secretary, 1979-82.

131 The Lancaster House Conference in 1980 led to the independence of Zimbabwe.

132 Dawie de Villiers, Minister of Trade, Industry and Tourism, 1980-6; Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs, 1989-91; Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 1992-6.

133 Now known as the Mail and Guardian. http://mg.co.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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the way, in Namibia, where the Rössing mine was an absolute model. When the SWAPO representatives came back from Angola, I said to them, ‘We have a Conservative government. I do not expect you to agree with them, or them to agree with you, but if you win the election we will help you get established, as we did in Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, please go and visit the Rössing mine.’ They all came back extremely impressed and actually, explicitly glad that it had not been closed down.

So, those arguments, whatever the rights and wrongs – and everybody is entitled to their point of view – were much more multi-faceted, or whatever you like to call it, than most people pretended.

CARTER: I think it is important to emphasise that we were not, in the Mission in 1992-96 or the Government in London, under the thumb of any particular party to the negotiating process. As I said, we were quite clear that we needed to have links with all participants in that process. We certainly saw the importance of maintaining channels to Buthelezi, and we did. I think they became increasingly difficult and challenging. Of course, Buthelezi withdrew from the process; I think he became more and more immured at Ulundi.134 His reactions became increasingly unpredictable. While we needed to keep all those lines open, I would say, from a personal point of view, that Buthelezi came very close indeed to derailing the whole process which led to the successful election in 1994. In my view, it could so very easily have gone wrong at that final critical phase, because of Buthelezi and his alliances more than anything else. It could have led to a period of protracted violence.

On other issues mentioned: yes, Van Zyl Slabbert, of course, was one of a number of key people that the Mission kept in touch with, as well as Roelf Meyer,135 Cyril Ramaphosa136 and General Viljoen.137 Also, across the board, I think we had very good relationships and at different levels, and people worked at that extremely hard.

Just to, perhaps, clarify a comment: I was not suggesting that it was necessarily the former Ambassadors or High Commissioners who were verkrampte, it may have been people within their staff.

Finally, I have a slightly less comfortable point in response to Sir Peter’s reference to his wife’s conversation with Nelson Mandela. Mr Mandela, in some senses, was the ultimate diplomat: very good, indeed, at making people feel at ease and letting people hear what he knew would bring them some inner warmth. I do not think that we should entirely downplay the challenges of the relationship between the British government and the ANC during the years prior to the democratic elections.

MURPHY: Thank you very much. Then, we have two more questions, please.

DR ALEXANDER HARDIE: My comment is on the importance of good communication between the High Commission in Lusaka in the late 1980s and the Embassy in Pretoria/Cape town. Of course, we were not seeing things from the same perspective; we were seeing them from the exiles’ perspective. The Embassy was seeing very much the internal picture, but I have no doubt at all that one of the reasons that the ANC had for staying in touch with us was precisely the credibility of Margaret Thatcher but also the quality of our political contacts 134

The capital of KwaZulu.

Roelf Meyer, Minister of Constitutional Affairs and Communication, 1992-4, and the National Party Government chief negotiator during the Multiparty Negotiating Forum 1993.

136 Cyril Ramaphosa, in his capacity as Secretary General of the ANC, led negotiations with the National Party government.

137 General Constand Viljoen, Chief of the South African Army, 1976-80; Chief of South African Defence Force, 1980-5; Leader of the Freedom Front Plus, 1994-2001.

135

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inside South Africa, with the government and the townships. The ANC wanted to get the benefit of that quality of knowledge that the UK had. In turn, I am sure that there was some interest in South Africa and the quality of our contacts in exile.

So that is by way of comment. The question is this: I wonder if Margaret Thatcher, in her own mind, drew a distinction between Nelson Mandela and the ANC in exile?

PROFESSOR JACK SPENCE: I am delighted to be here, if I may say so, Chairman, and thank you very much for the invitation. I am sure I speak for everyone here when I say that I enjoyed immensely what you both had to say. You restored my faith, certainly, in diplomacy as a vital instrument of political intercourse. It is fashionable in some quarters to downgrade diplomacy these days, but I think you certainly have demonstrated that it has immense utilities. For that, I am truly grateful.

Would it be fair to say that you both engaged in what is now fashionably called ‘soft power’ diplomacy? You went about talking to the various protagonists, trying to get them to talk to each other, trying to get them to agree on compromise, etc. I suppose you had in your toolbox the threat of hard power, which was the presumption of sanctions, if for some reason things fell apart in the period before 1990 and particularly in the years after 1990. I wonder how far you had to make that threat explicit, or if it was simply taken for granted on both sides.

I was struck by the fact that in the late 1980s, before the great speech by De Klerk and the release of Mandela, what was happening was most interesting. South Africans, from all sorts of groups and representing very different ideological positions, were in fact talking to each other. Here I suspect you both, and your colleagues in other diplomatic embassies, were crucial in encouraging this kind of conversation to take place. Just think of all those visits that businessmen made to Africa to talk to the ANC counterparts; there was a stream of people steaming across the Limpopo to talk to their counterparts abroad. Those conversations were not diplomacy in the orthodox sense at all, but they served, did they not – and I would like your view on this – to break the ice. They enabled people to recognise that the people they were talking to, who had long been seen as enemies, were not monsters but were people like themselves who shared many assumptions about life in general. I think that is something that, if I may say so, you both and others like you contributed to. That was a very important part of getting some kind of ultimate settlement in South Africa. I welcome your comment on that.

Just one last bit of anecdotage, here. I remember being invited by the South Africa Foundation representative here in London to have lunch with him. I was a bit cautious about that because I was not altogether enthusiastic about the Foundation’s role; I saw myself as a true liberal and they were rather conservative. My wife said, ‘You have got to go. Do not be silly; you have got to go.’ So I went and to my astonishment, when I turned up, there was my good friend running the Foundation with two leading ANC spokesmen. So we had a very interesting and, if I may say so, a very convivial lunch. It demonstrates the principle that all sorts of people were talking to each other about all sorts of things. Thank you, Mr Chairman.

RENWICK: Thank you. On communication with Lusaka, we saw the diplomatic traffic all the time, obviously. I also saw all the reports from a head spook in Lusaka, who was designated as a main point of contact with the ANC in Lusaka; that was invaluable. I also used to occasionally get messages of ‘thanks’ from the ANC because I was, at the time, showing support quite publicly for Enos Mabuza,138 who was a homeland leader who was under pressure by the regime – by the ANC. Your question about Margaret Thatcher drawing a distinction between Mandela and 138

Enos Mabuza (1939-1997), Chief Minister of the Bantustan of KaNgwane, 1984-91.

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the ANC is a very shrewd question. I think you are absolutely right. She did. Just as Mandela was about to walk into the room, she said to me, ‘Is he anything like Robert Mugabe?’ I said to her, ‘There are no two human beings on this planet less like each other than Mandela and Mugabe.’ She did not believe me before he came in, but he has this wonderful old world courtesy, charm, etc., so by the end of the three hour meeting she was completely won over, actually. She did think that Mandela was a wholly good thing. She did differentiate, to some degree, between Mandela and some of the others – not entirely wrongly, by the way, as one can sometimes see to this day, actually.

Professor Spence, it is very nice to see you here and it is very kind of you to come along. You are absolutely right. There were far more contacts taking place in various guises.

For instance, Pieter de Lange, head of the Broederbond, had a secret, five-hour meeting with Thabo in New York.139 The National Intelligence Service, led by Dr Barnard,140 had one or two contacts with the ANC in Switzerland. Within the country, the Embassy was a very useful forum because we did have quite a lot of meetings between Robben Islanders. I will never forget Dikgang Moseneke:141 these days Deputy Chief Justice but then a youthful firebrand. I introduced him to Professor Heyns of the Reform Church. He said to Professor Heyns, ‘What are you doing?’ And Heyns said, ‘I am seeking to change the hearts and minds of my people.’ Moseneke said, ‘That is no good. We want power now.’ And Heyns said to him, ‘You are not going to get the power until I change the hearts and minds of my people.’

For those of you who are interested in South Africa and you clearly are: Helen Suzman was a great friend of mine, and before she died, she said I could have access to her papers if I would write a book about her. I have written a book about her, which will emerge in February.142 It is a very interesting story because she was such a wonderful character, full of biting wit, as those of you who knew her will recall. The story of this extraordinary lady is also the story of the rise and fall of Apartheid; she fought its rise every inch of the way and she really did contribute, also, to its eventual collapse.

Thank you very much indeed.

CARTER: By the time I was in South Africa in post, there was a great deal of soft power diplomacy: talking to the protagonists, as I indicated, and looking for ways to improve understanding. It did not go beyond that. I do not recall any occasion, but others may know better, where we raised the threat of sanctions if the talks failed. By that stage, we were beyond that. What united us all who were in some form engaged in the negotiation process was a concern about the risk of breakdown of law and of economic order, as I said, and how to avoid that. While the international community, obviously, could help, as we sought to do by facilitating links, I do not think any of us were really in a position to be making too many threats of what we might do if the South Africans failed to reach an understanding themselves.

Certainly, building on previous periods, yes; we were always looking for ways of bringing people together who were unlikely bedfellows. That was one of the astonishing things about being in South Africa from 1992-96: it was happening at the time; there was a real momentum to bridge building. The Embassy in Cape Town at that time was right by Parliament and I would sometimes look out of my window and you would see old enemies, arms around one another, obviously talking quite happily. A few years previous they would have shot one another. But of course ‘nation healing’ as a whole is a much longer and deeply challenging process.

139

See S. Dubow, Apartheid, 1948-1994 (2014), pp.245-6.

Dr Niel Barnard, Head of South African National Intelligence Service (NIS), 1980-92.

141 Dikgang Moseneke, Deputy Chief Justice of the Republic of South Africa, 2002-.

142 R. Renwick, Helen Suzman: Bright Star in a Dark Chamber (Jonathan Ball, 2014).

140

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One final slightly less comfortable point about the Embassy. While it used every sinew to be at the cutting edge of promoting dialogue and links, in the period of 1992-96 it also needed to make its own transition. In the times past, as I have mentioned, it had in some measure reflected prevailing sentiments in South Africa itself. To take one ‘nut and bolt’ example: if one looked at the composition of the local staff in the Embassy, most of the front line jobs were held by whites, even in such junior positions as receptionist. The number of blacks who were in professional jobs within the Embassy was really quite low, certainly when I arrived in 1992. So, we were a part of the transition too in changing that.

MURPHY: Thank you very much indeed. I was reading, just the other day, an advertisement for a workshop which suggested that contemporary historians need to think more about the very complex, theoretical issues around historical causation. So, it was very nice to hear ‘divine intervention’ invoked as being on our side in this building. I am sorry we have gone over a little bit, but it has been such an absolutely fascinating discussion. I am sure we would all like to thank our two speakers.

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The Role and Functions of British High Commission/ Embassy in Pretoria Session Two: Relations with the Rainbow Nation Chair: Dr Sue Onslow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London Witnesses: Andrew Pearce: First Secretary (Economic), 1996–2000 Andrew Turner: First Secretary (Political), 1998-2001 Dame Nicola Brewer, DCMG: High Commissioner, 2009-2013 Contributors from the floor: Professor Barbara Bush: Sheffield Hallam University Professor Saul Dubow: Queen Mary, University of London Sir John Johnson: Assistant Under Secretary of State, FCO (Africa); Vice-President: Royal African Society, 1995-2005 Dr Jatinder Mann: King’s College London and University College London (now University of Alberta, Canada) Professor Philip Murphy: Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies Dr Judith Rowbotham: SOLON Keith Somerville: Institute of Commonwealth Studies DR SUE ONSLOW: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the second part of this fascinating seminar on what we are now going to describe, of course, as the British High Commission in Pretoria, since South Africa re-joined the Commonwealth in 1994. It gives me great pleasure to chair this session. I would like to second Professor Philip Murphy’s thanks to Dr Michael Kandiah as the Director of the Witness Seminar Programme and to underline the value that I, as an oral history historian and also a researcher, attach to such discussions. We had a fascinating discussion earlier on both the strategic view, and the nuts and bolts view of the British Embassy in the first session. What I would like to do is to look at ‘the bookend’ of this period: to look at the nuts and bolts view, but then with Dame Nicola Brewer, to look at the strategic view, so that there is a neat symmetry, in fact, to the discussion that we are going to be covering now.

It gives me great pleasure that our panel participants include Andrew Pearce, who was First Secretary Economic at the Pretoria High Commission from 1996 to 2000. Andrew joined the Foreign Office in 1983. He served as Third Secretary in the Near East and North Africa Department of the Foreign Office, 1983 to 1984. Then he did a short stint at SOAS143 between 1984 and 1985. Then he went as Second Secretary Political to Bangkok. He became Head of the Chemical Weapons Section, Arms Control and Disarmament Department of the Foreign Office between 1988 and 1990, served as Iberian Secretary, South European Department, here at the Foreign Office, from 1990 to 1992, then served in Tel Aviv as First Secretary before joining the Pretoria High Commission in 1996 as First Secretary Economic Affairs. After his time in South Africa, he served as Counsellor and Deputy Head of Mission in Bucharest, from 2001 to 2003.

I will then ask Andrew Turner to speak. Andrew was First Secretary Political, based in Cape Town - not Pretoria - between 1998 and 2001. Andrew is an Arabist. He joined the 143

The School of Oriental and African Studies, one of the institutions comprising the University of London.

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Foreign Office in 1986. After postings in Muscat and Damascus, he went to Pretoria, as I said, in 1998. After his post at the mission in Cape Town, he joined the mission as Deputy Head of Mission in Riyadh.

Finally, I am pleased to welcome Dame Nicola Brewer, who was High Commissioner in South Africa between 2009 and 2013, which brings us admirably up to date. Dame Nicola Brewer joined the Foreign Office in 1983, served as Second Secretary in Mexico City, 1984 to 1987. She became First Secretary here at the Foreign Office between 1987 and 1991, and I would like to congratulate her on getting her PhD at Leeds in 1988. That is a truly impressive combination of work and study! She spent time in Paris, then, from 1991 to 1994. She was Counsellor again at the Foreign Office from 1995 to 1998; New Delhi, 1998 to 2001; Director of Global Issues at the Foreign Office, 2001 and 2002; Director General, Regional Programmes, at DFID,144 2002 to 2004 on secondment; Director General, Europe at the Foreign Office, 2004 to 2007; Chief Executive, Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2007 to 2009; before then going down to South Africa. She has also served as a member of the Advisory Panel on Judicial Diversity at the Ministry of Justice, 2009 to 2010, and became an honorary bencher at the Middle Temple in 2011.

In contrast to how we organised the first session, what I would like to do is to invite each of the panellists to comment for five to 10 minutes, giving their observations of their time at the British Mission, as I say, both in Pretoria at the High Commission and then down in Cape Town. But please, I would also like them to reflect on the extent to which by their time in South Africa it had become ‘just another country’. So, rather than the exceptionalism of South Africa in the earlier period, to what extent, then, were Britain’s diplomatic relations in post comparable with other Commonwealth missions and with other diplomatic missions?

Was there a degree of normality and regularity in covering trade, political and commercial issues, and the question of South Africa as a key strategic player? In other words, the aim is to offer points of comparison about this particular high commission so that we may use it in policy practitioner terms against other high commissions in this oral history series. So, if I could begin please, with Andrew.

ANDREW PEARCE: Thank you very much. I worked in Pretoria. As you said, I was the First Secretary Economic, and I was responsible for economic affairs there, monitoring the way South Africa developed its economic policy, trying to help guide it with advice from more expert people than me back in London and within the Mission, and also the trade policy side of things in South Africa, which was a particularly live portfolio, as there were a number of blocks and countries looking to start free trade relations with South Africa.

I think for me, the main thing I remember as somebody who was new to economics and new to trade policy – a sort of typical Foreign Office generalist diplomat – was the sheer fun of arriving in South Africa and working there. It was still very soon after independence, or rather the democratic elections, and there was a palpable sense of excitement in the country on all sides of the spectrum, even the Afrikaner constituency, whom one might have expected to be more cautious about it all. But there was a real excitement as a diplomat and there was tremendous access. I had come to South Africa from Israel, where obviously we have a deep relationship with Israel too, but there was a much greater caution about our relations with Israel. There was a much greater shadow, I think, in some respects over us and much less sense of real openness in the dialogue, I felt, but in South Africa there was almost – and I do not mean this as a patronising comment – a sort of adolescent excitement about entering a new world and a new era. As a diplomat, you had really tremendous access. As a First Secretary, you could quite regularly get access to ministers and they would sit and have 144

Department for International Development https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-forinternational-development

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a conversation with you, not as equals, clearly, but in a very open and frank way. So, it was a hugely enjoyable job there.

I think to my mind, trying to answer Sue’s opening question there about shifts in the mood, and this might be a clearer impression looking back at it than at the time, I felt there was a palpable shift, or the beginnings of a shift, about midway through my four years. At about the 1998 point, there was a sense perhaps that some of the newness of it all was beginning to wear off on the South African government, quite understandably. As you will always see in these sorts of situations, the pressures of having to bring progress to a country and bring progress to all parts of the country, manage their economy in particular, against a sort of rather subtle expectation around the world that it might fail. There was a sort of shadow around a lot of what they were doing. It began to wear on some of the figures.

Patience began to get a little bit thinner and a sense of perhaps slight disappointment in what diplomats can and have delivered in the first two years for them. So, I sense that the mood began to close a little bit. The second half of my posting was still tremendous fun and still very, very enjoyable and exciting, but there was a bit of a shift towards a slightly more worldweary and I suppose more normalised relationship. But overall, my abiding sense and my abiding feel for the South African posting was the sheer fun and enjoyment of working with people who had new hands on the tiller and really thought they could make a difference and were ready to try. Is that enough as an opening comment, Sue? I am happy to say some more.

ONSLOW: If you could elaborate, please, yes. Were you also collaborating with other Commonwealth High Commissions, because I know that in other posts, the Commonwealth network has been enormously beneficial and supportive? Or were you looking more at a British-South Africa bilateral relationship in your work?

PEARCE: Well, in those times, despite the obvious sensitivities and historical tensions in our relationship, Britain was really seen as the big player on the street, and as a result, the High Commissioner has particular weight and access. It was a big, big team in British terms there, and it was really a tremendous privilege to have the rest of the diplomatic community quite often come and look to us for coordination and input, and in particular, our access. We did have very exceptional access there, including quite regularly to presidents and top people in all walks of life. So, one felt when one went into meetings with the EU team or with Commonwealth partners, that you had a sort of particular extra weight to give and that also was a very happy experience as a diplomat.

I think rather than the Commonwealth side, the organisation that played the biggest part on my side of it was the EU. It was because of the EU-South African free trade negotiation. This was seen as the first really big free trade negotiation that South Africa would have. Also, their SADC – South African Development Community – partners were going to join, so it was a complex challenge for both sides. As far as the UK was concerned, it brought into play, frankly, our own particular poll within the EU, wanting and looking for openness in trade, and minimal fuss and streamlining of bureaucracy, whereas some others on the wings of the EU were looking for a more traditional approach and a cautious approach, particularly as regards access for South African products. There were a lot of quite protracted and at times quite bitter arguments over access to things like South African sherry and issues of that sort, over which the EU was very sensitive. The Europeans were feeling quite cautious about the impact of the specialist spirits which South Africa produces very tastily and cheaply.

The UK had to play quite a careful, balanced role. Obviously, we had a loyalty and a corporate responsibility within the EU, but we also had our own interests and we had our own agenda bilaterally with the South Africans, and treading that path in a way that was fair but

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actually helped move things forward was perhaps one of the most complex challenges. Also, I think in terms of winning South African confidence, there are certain techniques in diplomacy where you can, without breaking confidences and behaving dishonourably, work with the South African government in that sort of situation. You can give them a bit of inside information about the tactical development and evolution of the negotiations and how they might position themselves or play to particular strengths. So, I think the UK privately got quite a lot of credit for the hand it played there, actually on both sides, really, particularly with the South Africans.

There were also some trickier parts of that portfolio. Right at the start – I think it was the autumn of 1999145 – the UK rather suddenly decided it would sell a large amount of its gold reserves, and that had a huge impact in South Africa. Many South Africans thought it was a serious strategic mistake and were not shy in telling us about that. The mining unions were also quite concerned. At one point, they besieged the High Commission in Pretoria to level protests. Obviously, we played back the reasoning behind the government’s decision, but I do not think that one ever really won the day with the hard-nosed South African business people and mining experts who right until my last day in my posting were telling me that the UK had made a strategic error and could have sold that gold in a much smarter way: deferentially, quietly, without announcing it in advance. There are arguments on both sides and I am not at all an expert, but that carried through as a theme, that Britain had been a bit unsophisticated and unthinking in the way it had gone about that.

Things seemed to go really rather well, I think the Embassy felt and the High Commission felt, for South Africa in the first two years. There were some very capable ministers such as Trevor Manuel146 and Alec Erwin,147 who were particularly skilful in the economic portfolios. Partly because there was a shadow that South Africa had in some parts of the world, I do not think they got full credit for that, but they achieved the soft landing out of a recessionary period. They brought South Africa through two or three years of quite difficult economic territory and a pretty good standard or shape. So, something clicked in psychologically around that midway point and the rand took a dive, and the international mood turned a little bit against South Africa’s prospects, just at the time when the government was beginning to develop and implement the black empowerment agenda. So, that made the second half of the posting much more challenging and have a little less feeling of success about it.

ONSLOW: But to what extent, in your view, did the advent of a Labour government enhance your cause? Peter Hain148 has described that given the historic contacts between Labour and the ANC, that the Blair government had more of an ‘in’ with the South African government. Did that in any way influence trade policy in your brief down in Pretoria?

PEARCE: I do not think, in all honesty, I felt that. I will have to be careful, going against a Minister’s impressions, but I did not feel in all frankness at our end of it. There was clearly some individual closeness by the different ministers, but if anything, I think the sense of excitement slightly faded. That was probably nothing to do with the particular complexion of a British government; it was just one of these sort of evolutionary cycles about these things 145

Between 1999 and 2002, HM Treasury sold 60% of the UK’s gold reserves (395 tonnes), when gold prices were at their lowest in 20 years (an average of $275.6 an ounce), in order to reduce the portfolio risk of the UK’s reserves by diversifying away from gold. See https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-sale-ofpart-of-the-uk-gold-reserves-1999-2002 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

146 Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance, 1996 -2009.

147 Alexander Erwin, Minister of Public Enterprises, 2004-8.

148 Peter Hain, South African-born Labour politician, who held various government portfolios between 19972010.

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and the real hard economic knocks that countries inevitably get. Plus there was the sense that the Promised Land, which by that time had had four years, practically, for a lot of disadvantaged people was not feeling true at all. Ordinary township life was actually, if anything, even harder and there was a feeling of a disenfranchisement. So, that was much harder. It put the South African government much more on the back foot and there was a greater sense of fragility about it.

ONSLOW: Andrew, thank you very much. Andrew, could I ask your viewpoint from Cape Town: what was the emphasis of your work and what your particular post was responsible for?

ANDREW TURNER: Certainly. So, it was a new era for South Africa; it was a new era for the British High Commission as well. In the old days, everybody had travelled backwards and forwards between Pretoria and Cape Town, to be in Cape Town when Parliament was in session and Pretoria for the rest of the year. So, with the new dispensation, we had abandoned that set up and we had posted three or four diplomats permanently to the High Commission in Cape Town and the rest to Pretoria. Certainly during the time of my arrival there in 1998, our High Commissioner, Maeve Fort,149 was resident in Cape Town and we were therefore the team around her on the spot, whereas the Deputy High Commissioner up in Pretoria had a certain amount of latitude, I suppose, as the man in charge on the spot up there for governmental relations.

The High Commission in Cape Town essentially looked after the internal side around reporting, press and public affairs, organising visits and especially relations with the new South African Parliament. There was a reasonably extensive programme of support to the new South African Parliament, sharing experience from Parliament here, and a steady stream of visits. We obviously made it our business to get to know as many of the Parliamentarians, especially those who were interesting characters rather than just number 300 on the ANC list, and to talk with them, put across the British perspective, hear their perspective, gossip a little bit and all of that sort of thing. We visited Pretoria, obviously, for meetings and suchlike, but our impressions of Pretoria were very much as visitors, as guests.

The perspective of the old British High Commission in Cape Town, which although not altogether full and buzzing by then, was nonetheless in position A1 right opposite the front door of Parliament, and completely downtown in Cape Town by the sea, was a real contrast to Pretoria, where the High Commission was more of an extended, large suburban house. Parts of it felt like an office, but I remember very much Andy’s office and that of his colleague Richard Morgan,150 who was the other First Secretary, and it was very much walking into a converted front room in a 1930s detached house. I think it has undergone quite considerable work since then. Nicola probably had to put up with some of it. That was how it felt then. So, there was a city/suburban contrast. I suppose also whenever we went to Pretoria we walked into a very modern design of residence where the High Commissioner lived, as opposed to Cape Town, which was a slightly overgrown thatched cottage. You can argue with me later on that one.

So, there were plenty of events going on while we were there. Soon after we arrived, there was the rather shocking bombing of the Planet Hollywood restaurant in Cape Town that killed and injured a number of people, including some Brits. That was the arrival in the

149

Dame Maeve Fort (1940-2008), High Commissioner, 1996-2000.

Richard Morgan, Political and development (First Secretary), British High Commission in South Africa, 1995-2000.

150

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general consciousness of an organisation called PAGAD151 who were something of a cross between an Islamic wannabe terrorist group and local vigilantes on the Cape flats. In 1999, we had parliamentary and presidential elections. There was a big international monitoring effort to assure the genuineness of those elections. I remember an extraordinary day driving around the hills of the Eastern Cape walking into various election stations doing my election monitor thing and I saw everything from traditional African surroundings to buildings that looked as if they were a 1920s village hall from the UK that had been transposed and dropped in the middle of the countryside. We had the Commonwealth Heads of Government Mission in Durban and an associated State Visit by The Queen. So, a huge amount of effort went into those particular things. I will not betray confidences, but I remember spending the weekend at a nondescript motel outside George152 with Alastair Campbell153 and others in Tony Blair’s154 grouping pacing up and down wanting to know what was happening inside the CHOGM leaders’ retreat. Then we had perhaps the most personally disturbing event of my time there, which was a very bad fire at the residence in Cape Town one winter while the High Commissioner was away, and having to deal with that and the aftermath of that was certainly quite affecting for everybody.

With a Labour Government we had visits including some people perhaps referred to by the satirically disposed (outside the HC) as ‘struggle groupies’. We obviously had visits from Clare Short,155 Peter Hain and others, who had been very much involved with the ANC in exile in the UK. We had other visitors who perhaps had less strong links but nonetheless were very keen to ride on their coat tails. Peter Hain came to Cape Town to an enthusiastic endorsement. We sent him to spend the night at a bed and breakfast in Khayelitsha,156 which got him exactly what he wanted, which was some fantastic press coverage, and it was great for us too.

Then I see in the timeline there is a mention of the defence sales and the controversy around that. That was an interesting time for us, because on the one hand, we had been encouraging Parliament to be more assertive and more independent, and then suddenly we found that people that we had been talking with, we had been helping with contacts in Parliament in London, were suddenly at odds with their own government around allegations of corruption on defence sales. So, some delicate diplomacy and careful handling had to go on around that.

I suppose it was about at that time that it became clear to everybody that the balance of interest had perhaps shifted from Parliament passing the major transformational pieces of legislation in Cape Town, back to Pretoria, where the government had to implement successfully. Consequently, it was about at that time when our new High Commissioner Anne Grant157 reflected that actually that was where her base should be, more than in Cape Town, and that the High Commission in Cape Town was in a politically delicate position right in the Parliamentary/presidential compound, and that the sensible thing to do was to 151

People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD) was formed in 1996. See http://www.pagad.co.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

152 George is a city in South Africa’s Western Cape province. The city is a popular holiday and conference centre.

153 Alastair Campbell, Downing Street Press Secretary, 1997-2000, Director of Communications and Strategy, 2000-3.

154 Tony Blair, Prime Minister, 1997-2007.

155 Clare Short, Secretary of State for International Development, 1997-2003.

156 ‘Khayelitsha (meaning “new home”) is one of Cape Town’s largest townships … The township was created in the 1980s under then Prime Minister PW Botha’. See http://www.capetown.travel/attractions/entry/ Khayelitsha_Township_Tour_and_Craft_Market [Accessed 6 May 2014].

157 Dame Anne Grant, High Commissioner, 2000-5. Dame Anne was invited and had intended to come to this event but later found that she could not.

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consolidate onto the Pretoria site. So, that is what happened. I was the last Head of the Political Section in Cape Town. We left a Second Secretary Political attached to our Consulate General down in the commercial district to carry on work with Parliament and moved some other slots back up to Pretoria. Some we just reduced to reallocate money elsewhere in Africa.

What do I remember? Was it just another country by then? Certainly not at the time of the elections in 1999. As people paid more attention to what was happening in Zimbabwe, that reawakened people’s fears of what the medium term future was in South Africa. But there was this enormous buzz and excitement. There were loads of fantastic people to be able to talk to, who had done great things and sometimes suffered horrible things during the struggle. They were absolutely fascinating stories and it was a real privilege to be able to meet and talk to some of those people and hopefully count them as friends.

I also remember on a slightly more frivolous note that 1998 was about the time when the South African food industry was breaking away from the shackles of state control and regulation. There was an enormous explosion of boutique wineries, little cheese makers, and great restaurants that seemed to be really cheap by London standards serving absolutely fantastic food. So, that was a real privilege of being there and something to set against the slight feeling of enclosure by having high security fences and bars on the windows, and so on, which was not something we were used to in the UK. But I was really lucky to be down in Cape Town at a fascinating time. We were very conscious that we were part of the privileged side of society, all living in and around Constantia and so on, and tried to do what we could to reach out to the less privileged. But as I say, it was a privilege to have been there.

ONSLOW: Thank you very much. If I could call upon Dame Nicola to reflect: 22 years after Robin Renwick arrived in Pretoria, how much was the South African-British relationship problematic in different ways after the Iraq War of 2003, the problems in Zimbabwe, the BAE systems controversy, South African pressure for United Nations reform to get a permanent position on the Security Council? These were difficult issues.

SIR JOHN JOHNSON: Sue, can I just say something, because I have got to go? I hate to miss your words, Nicola, because I would be fascinated to hear them and Sue, I worked, of course, directly to your father158 at one stage, when he was Minister for Africa, was he not?

ONSLOW: He was indeed.

JOHNSON: But I am going home, because I am 83 and I do not want to get caught in the rush. Thank you very much.

DAME NICOLA BREWER: I quite understand. ‘Travel safe’, as they say in South Africa. I do not know when current affairs turns into history, but it feels to me like it takes a bit longer than three months, and that is how long I have been out of South Africa. So, quite a lot of the people who I worked most closely with in my four years there are still in elected office, both here and there. So, you will forgive me if I am a little bit circumspect with the first person narrative occasionally. I just want to say a brief word, if I may, Sue, about what I am doing at the moment. William Hague159 and Simon Fraser160 have asked me to set up a diplomatic academy and it strikes me that the kind of event we are having this afternoon is exactly the kind of thing that I want a diplomatic academy to spread and encourage, so it is fabulous to 158

Lord Onslow of Woking (Sir Cranley Onslow, 1926-2001), Minister of State, FCO, 1983-4.

William Hague, Foreign Secretary, 2010-14.

160 Sir Simon Fraser, Permanent Under-Secretary of State, FCO, and Head of the Diplomatic Service, 2010-.

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be part of it. I would like not to reinvent the wheel, but to make more of this happen and more of it to reach more people. I think the connection between policy makers and academics and practitioners is entirely to be encouraged, so thank you for inviting me to be part of it.

Getting back to South Africa and to the British High Commission’s role in what I think of as a beautiful and complicated and self-critical and resilient country, I think the relationship has probably always been complicated. I am not going to give a history lesson.

People in this room know more about the history than I do, but you forget it at your peril. I also think it is worthwhile remembering the geography as well, certainly in the run-up to the World Cup.161 When I was asked for advice about the World Cup I would say, ‘Remember, first of all, that South Africa is five times the size of the UK with 10 million less people in it.

It takes a long time to get around. The second is that when it is summer here, it is winter there, so do not just bring t-shirts.’ You have got to remember your local context.

Robin Renwick said he arrived at a lucky time and Andy and Andy both talked a little bit about how they felt about being in South Africa in the 1990s. Well, if I could have chosen, I probably would not have arrived just at the start of a global economic recession. It is not an easy time to do business. I certainly would not have chosen to arrive a couple of months after we had decided to impose a visa regime.162 Both of those things had a big impact on the backdrop to my four years in South Africa, but I did have one piece of luck. I had colleagues like Richard Wood163 there, who not only had fantastic contacts with many parliamentarians and ministers. He had also served twice in South Africa, so when I needed a reality check, I’d ask – ‘How is it different, Richard?’ – I had, if you like, my own personal historian on the spot. As a High Commissioner, one of the things you have to learn to do is to reach into and make more than the sum of its parts the whole team you have got. We have got 10 government departments and agencies there, but it was to the Foreign Office colleagues I looked for that historical perspective, and it was invaluable.

I am going to try to organise my thoughts in terms of similarities with what I have been hearing so far this afternoon and then differences, to try to get a sense of perspective.

One of the things I was hearing when all the previous speakers were talking was how important those people-to-people contacts are. Robin Renwick talked about Anton Rupert, because it was important to understand the white Afrikaner mindset. Well, Anton was sadly no longer around in South Africa but Johan Rupert164 was one of the people from whom I learned to understand that perspective. FW De Klerk continues to be a really close friend of the British High Commission. Cheryl Carolus,165 who had been the South African High Commissioner in London, Trevor Manuel, Prince Buthelezi, Dikgang Moseneke – a lot of these leading figures who were mentioned are still active players and hugely help us to understand not only the modern South Africa and where it is going but also how the UK can be a long-term partner in that development.

So, one of the things I learned very early on, whenever I was meeting new people, is that you have got to understand what they did in the struggle. You have got to understand who they were with. Were they in exile? Were they in jail? Did they stay and fight as an ‘insile’? Were they somebody who sat by and said nothing? Because they were damaged too?

They were traumatised by that experience. Or were they somebody who might have committed some of the atrocities? Everybody was touched. Mamphela Ramphele166, a former

161

See chronology (2010).

See chronology (2009).

163 Richard Wood, Consul General in Cape Town, 2007-11.

164 Johan Peter Rupert, eldest son of South African businessman Anton Rupert.

165 Cheryl Carolus.

166 Mamphela Ramphele, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Cape Town; Chancellor, 1996.

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academic and World Bank official and now leader of new party, Agang,167 in South Africa, says that it is a society that is psychologically damaged or traumatised.

When you read, as I did, about the experience of Mac Maharaj,168 and you think about what it is like to be living, working and operating in South Africa where you were subjected to torture, you just have to realise how unlike it is our experience here in the UK. I think you really have to take time to understand that if you are going to try to understand South Africa today. I would say that another similarity is that as High Commissioner you really have to invest a lot of time in making sure that the leading players in South Africa and the leading players in the UK are in as much touch as possible. So, you work to develop those channels.

It meant that after I had been in South Africa less than a year, there was a general election here and a change of government. I had to spend quite a lot of time coming back to the UK to make sure that my channels to the British government were as open as they were becoming to South African government officials and ministers, in order to encourage that two-way flow. You could not take it for granted. You had to recreate that relationship. A whole thesis, a whole history, perhaps could be written on the one question that Sue rather sneakily asked Andy about, when the Labour government came into power in the UK did that not transform relations with the ANC. The short and the political answer is that it was not that simple, and you need to understand that backdrop as well.

In terms of other similarities, Robin Renwick was talking about the projects in the townships and people getting out and about. One of my mantras when I was there was to say to people in the High Commission, both in Pretoria and in Cape Town: get out more. You are not paid to be sitting looking at your computer. Your job is to get out there. With much less project money at our disposal, that was harder, but you could do it if you worked at it, and you had to do it in order to understand modern South Africa. Obviously, you needed to develop the government to government relations, and I will come back to that in a minute.

But I was really keen that we understood the sentiments of people who had to get up at four o’clock in the morning to commute in to start a job in central Pretoria at seven o’clock. It is really quite hard to do. You have got to make a real effort. But we started and I will come back to this too, if I may, which is David Carter’s point about the profile of our local staff.

But quite a lot of our local staff had to do that, and getting to know them and understand their experience of South Africa and the modern South Africa, I felt, was critical to us being grounded in the reality. So, ‘get out more’ was one of my mantras.

Sport was a similarity. I do not know how many buttons it pressed when Robin Renwick and David Carter were in South Africa. But I used to joke in my first year in South Africa that being High Commissioner was not nearly as important as being the daughter of a former Welsh rugby international.169 That opened many doors for me in my first year. So, sport continued to be a great opener of doors. While I was there, of course, there were infinite numbers of games of rugby, cricket and other sports, but the big event was the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Then, of course, in 2012, our own Olympic Games170 was a nice ‘bookend’ for my posting which spanned both of those. They really did help open doors and I think they helped both countries understand the other better as well. I could say more about that if we have got a bit more time.

David Carter talked about swinging from doom to euphoria. I do not know if he also felt the swing happening the other way. In fact, it felt like an oscillation from time to time.

You never had to look far before you could find a South African being intensely self-critical 167

http://www.agangsa.org.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Mac Maharaj, ANC activist; later Minister for Transport, 1994-9; Official Spokesman for President Zuma, 2011-. See P O’Malley, Shades of Difference: Mac Maharaj and the Struggle for South Africa (2007).

169 Trevor Brewer, Welsh national rugby team player, 1949-50.

170 The London Olympics were held in July 2012.

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about South Africa. It was one of the joys, paradoxically, about operating in the relatively open and vibrant civil society, including a very noisy media, which I think is one of the things that South Africa really has going for it. So, people did oscillate. The euphoria during the World Cup had to be felt to be believed. It was most amazing and positively Wordsworthian to be there at the time. But in the run up to the World Cup, both in the UK and in South Africa, the doom mongers said it was going to be a disaster. There was going to be blood on the streets, they claimed. None of the stadia would be ready. There would be all sorts of consular mess-ups. We had fewer consular problems to deal with during the World Cup than at any other time, with the exception of one very nasty incident on the eve of the World Cup where there was a big coach crash and tragically three young British students died. I have to say that the support and backup I had from the South African system at the time and from my colleagues in the High Commission across South Africa was just first class, because we had exercised for exactly that kind of scenario. But that oscillation between doom and euphoria still absolutely goes on.

Clem Sunter,171 who was author in the early or the mid-1980s of the original ‘high road’/’low road’ scenario, is another person whom we in the High Commission are still in touch with. He said to me not long after I had arrived that although he was the author of that ‘high road’ scenario nobody, himself included, thought that South Africa would attain or would take that high road as quickly as it did. I am told by people who were in the High Commission in the early 1990s that a lot of people were really, really afraid of serious violence and were working to help avert it, but there was that real risk. So, when I say South Africa is a very resilient country, it has a track record of pulling things off against the odds, from the amazing Madiba172 miracle and the World Cup, to something like the COP17 climate change conference in Durban in December 2010.173 Everybody predicted it was going to be another disaster like Copenhagen the year before.174 Well, it was not: South Africa pulled quite a lot of agreement out of a difficult backdrop there.

Dr Carter also talked about the number of British passport holders. One of the bottles of glue that hold the UK and South Africa together is the fact there are a lot of Brits either living in or who are regular visitors to South Africa and vice versa. This is slightly tactless, but I will say it anyway because it is true: I used to advise British visitors not to take too much of a cue from expatriate South Africans living in the UK, because their view of South Africa was kind of out of date, and I think that may still be the case, though updating is happening all of the time.

I will comment on one last similarity and then I will turn to differences. Again, Dr Carter talked about high expectations. I am going to link this, Sue, to your point about whether it is the end of exceptionalism. Is South Africa no longer in the exceptional category? Well, the answer is there are still hugely high expectations of South Africa, both by South Africans and by others of South Africa. That comes absolutely face to face with the fact that governing is by nature, and it is really difficult to govern when you are handed the cards, and by that I mean particularly the economic but also the social cards that the ANC government were handed. I had a long conversation once with a senior minister about whether it might have been better to be honest about the economic mess that the ANC government inherited, to be told that actually, the priority then was getting the markets to feel more comfortable and more reassured. Telling them just how bad it was, was not going to help. I can see why that was a strategic choice that was made at the time, but it did raise the 171

www.clemsunter.co.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

Nelson Mandela was often referred to by his Xhosa clan name, Madiba.

173 The 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) www.cop17-cmp7durban.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

174 en.cop15.dk/ https://unfccc.int/meetings/copenhagen_dec_2009/meeting/6295.php [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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expectations.

Somebody else who was in the university sector said that ministers at the time, in the mid-1990s, should have talked more about the arithmetic of sharing out GDP, which had previously been mostly diverted to support a lifestyle for 10 per cent of the population, and then trying to spread that over the other 90 per cent. Arithmetically, that was always going to be tough. It was not going to be an easy road to the sunny uplands for everybody, with everybody living the kind of lifestyle that previously only 9 per cent or 10 per cent of the population had done. In one way, the high expectations are still there, because South Africa is such an exceptional story, globally. And in another sense, South Africa is simply wrestling with some of the difficulties of governing that a lot of middle-income countries are doing.

The answer is both yes, it is similar, and yes, it has changed quite a lot. Often with South Africa, if anybody gives you a simple answer, it is almost always not true. It is almost always more complicated than that.

I will now comment on some of the differences. I think the memories of the kind of protection that the British police and security forces afforded for a number of ANC exiles in the UK have faded. They have not gone, but they have faded, and they are overlain by other experiences, and Sue rattled through some of them. I was very struck that nobody has mentioned Iraq175 yet. I think that Iraq probably in one of my predecessors’ times, and Libya176 and Syria177 in my period, had a big impact on the relationship. I was going to say that one of the differences between the kind of picture that Lord Renwick and Dr Carter painted of their times in South Africa is that I think the emphasis during my time was very much more on economic and what we call in the Foreign Office the ‘Prosperity Agenda’.178 That was true, but it was true in the sense of rebalancing. It was not that we forgot about foreign policy, because we could not forget about the foreign policy and the security dimension, nor indeed the consular dimension. But they had to be balanced, and I would say that I used to take as a rough estimate that I would spend 33 per cent of my time on business and economic matters and 33 per cent on the classic foreign policy stuff, except when South Africa was on the UN Security Council and that was probably a bit bigger then. I spent roughly 33 per cent of the time on consular and looking after British citizens overseas. So, there was a bit of rebalancing there, but when things got tricky on the foreign policy side, they had to take centre stage, and I do think they had a big impact on the relationship.

Lord Renwick talked about myths. There are a lot of myths about the UK-South Africa relationship. I think a whole seminar could be devoted to that. I will just pick one which, luckily, I think has not really taken hold. I am not a gardener, but I am sure there is a kind of plant that you do not want to take over your garden and you have got to keep digging it up and making sure it does not take root. There was a bit of a sense, for some of the time I was in South Africa, that the UK favoured the Democratic Alliance,179 and this probably took hold after our Coalition government came in,180 and after the local elections of 2011 when the Democratic Alliance, in the Western Cape – remember, one province – broke the 175

The Iraq War, 2003-11, led by the USA and the UK in the initial phase.

NATO forces intervened in the Libyan Civil War in 2011, which led to the downfall of the regime led by Muammar Gaddafi (1942-2011).

177 Starting in 2011-12 civil unrest was brutally suppressed; since 2012 the situation in Syria and the region deteriorated, leading to the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

178 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/the-uk-prosperity-agenda-growth-open-markets-and-goodgovernance [Accessed 6 May 2014].

179 www.da.org.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

180 Following the General Election of 2010, a coalition government was formed consisting of the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats, with Conservative David Cameron as Prime Minister and Liberal Democrat Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister and Lord President of the Council.

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psychologically important 20 per cent vote barrier. But it was a local election, and you generalise from local elections at your peril, and it was really just in one state. You could unpack that issue, but it was that misconception that had to be addressed directly with the ANC, to underline that: our government-to-government relations are with the government that is elected. It does not mean we do not talk to other parties; obviously we do. But we respect the fact that your democratic process has resulted in an ANC government and that is where the government-to-government relationship lies. But those kinds of misunderstandings were partly stoked by the very different way we use language.

Here I will just give one example. It was Richard [Wood] who taught me this. When you use the word ‘liberal’ in the UK, it means one set of things, mostly positive. When you use the phrase or the word in South Africa, it has a host of other connotations driven by history, not necessarily positive, and you have to understand that or you will be talking past each other. That is just one example and there were quite a few others that I tripped over, unless I asked for advice from colleagues.

One other thing that has changed is the role that Madiba plays in public life. When I arrived in 2009, he was still appearing in public. I saw him in my first year two or three times. In my last two to three years, you hardly ever, ever saw him, and instead you had a repeated concern about his state of health, and repeated debate in this very open and selfcritical South African media about what would happen to South Africa when at the age of 95, or whenever, his years finally catch up with him, as they do for everybody. I found over the last year and a half of my time there a slight shift in attitude. Early on, I asked a very senior former politician what he thought would happen when former President Mandela eventually dies. He said he thought it would be a moment of national unity, so he directly contradicted some of the doom mongers. I think that over the last year or so, people in South Africa have sadly come to accept that when you are talking about somebody in their nineties, you have to face the possibility that at some stage, he will not always be around, and to respect the need for his family’s personal privacy. So, the role of Madiba in public life in South Africa has changed quite significantly in my years there.

On the role of the relationship between the UK and South Africa, I was wondering if I was going to be asked the question, and I guess I have been indirectly: do we compete for space and attention more than we used to? Yes, almost certainly. We live in a networked world. We have to do the networking and work harder to keep our place. I think South Africa’s foreign policy very clearly puts its relations with Africa first and its relations with the global South second. But that does not mean, because I do not believe diplomacy or foreign policy is a zero-sum game, that we must necessarily slip down the pecking order. It is a more complex matrix than that. I saw my role in two ways when I was there. One was to act as a two-way interpreter, to explain my country to South Africa and South Africa to my country. Because I do not believe that language is like a pane of glass; a lot happens while you are doing the interpreting. It is not a passive act, as all academics in this room will know.

The second way I saw my role was to make sure that South Africa stayed on the UK’s radar screen and the UK stayed on South Africa’s. I will just quote two examples, and these both come from South African ministers, one in 2010 at the end of President Zuma’s State Visit to the UK.181 The Foreign Minister182 said at a small final lunch party in the South African High Commission, just up the road from here, ‘It feels like we have renewed our vows’. More recently, at the end of the last biennial, bilateral ministerial forum, which took place in Cape Town the week before I left South Africa, both the Foreign Minister of South Africa and the Foreign Minister of the UK used the following adjectives to describe the partnership. They said, ‘strong, reliable and dependable’. Now, that is what you say in public, 181 182

See chronology (2010).

Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South African Minister of International Relations and Co-operation, 2009-.

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but the words were very much echoed on both sides, and they were the result of a lot of hard work.

I think probably the three things that I worked at most hard during my time in South Africa were these. One was to make the 10 government agencies and departments from the UK represented in South Africa act as more than the sum of their parts. The second was to negotiate first with those 10 government agencies and departments and then with the South African government a completely open strategic framework for the relationship, which fits on one page of paper. South African government ministers and senior officials were quoting it back to me before I left, so it felt properly ‘grounded’, and provided a framework for the relationship which was needed especially when we disagreed.

The third one was to revise some of the business structures. When I arrived, for complicated reasons the British Chamber of Commerce was not as active as it could have been. By the time I left, with the help of the Trade Commissioner,183 we had revived it and turned it into a British Chamber of Business with the active support of the top 20 or so British businesses based in South Africa. Secondly, we had established a UK-South Africa Business Council184 to develop more links between the UK and South African business. We had had nothing similar before. I think those are the three things that for me were, if you like, strategic highlights of my time. Do you want any more highlights or is that enough?

ONSLOW: That is enough to be going on with. Thank you very much indeed.

BREWER: Can I say one final thing, which is that the way I think we need to look at this relationship is that we have to be in it for the long term, while South Africa is going through the second and third and fourth decades of its democracy. It is not an easy road. It has not been an easy road for any country in its third decade of democracy, and we need to stick with South Africa while it is happening.

ONSLOW: Thank you very much. As a frequent visitor to South Africa myself, I would underline your points about the complexity, the lasting and varying traumas of the apartheid era on all sections of society, and the importance of that question of geography. Thank you for such an eloquent comparative presentation on similarities and differences. If I could go back on the similarities and differences, Andrew, drawing on what Nicola has said, during your time there, obviously trade was very much your emphasis. Since then, the South African relationship with IBSA (the India, Brazil, South African forum),185 FOCAC186 and the role of China has gained momentum and formal organisation: how much was this presaged in your work? Were you aware of it? Was there discussion within the High Commission of South Africa’s changing trade relationship and what you needed to do to circumvent it? Andrew, from your point of view down in Cape Town, how much did you feel that there was such a fundamental difference between the Cape, with that legacy of British colonial aspects – and particularly a liberal one, to draw on Nicola’s analogy – and indeed the rest of the country?

So how far was, part of British-South Africa’s negotiations was to come to terms with its varying components. Andrew, could I ask you?

PEARCE: Thank you. It is a very good question. Age is impinging on my memory, but I think the frank answer to that is that it was not much in the ether during my time, which of course is nearly 15 years back there. It may have been a certain lack of imagination, perhaps, 183

Andrew Henderson, British Trade Commissioner to South Africa. http://www.southafrica.info/news/international/uk-110913.htm#.U1HPdVca2So [Accessed 6 May 2014].

185 http://www.ibsa-trilateral.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

186 Forum on China-Africa Co-operation. www.focac.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

184

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to some extent on my part or the team’s part. We were very focused on the UK’s trading relationship and the EU’s position and the Southern African development community as a bloc. We were conscious, obviously, of a very big pool of ethnic Indian community in South Africa, but I do not think there was any of the sense of triangulation type relationships which has subsequently come to the fore in a number of our relations with countries in Africa.

We did have a number of very high-quality advisers that we deployed into South African ministries and it was really through them that we had the sense that we understood and had quite a lot of confidence in the way the South African economy was going. Many of their systems that they had in place actually were pretty much state of the art. They were the DFID187 economists’ blueprint for an emerging economy. There was quietly on the UK side quite a high degree of confidence, I felt. I think the short answer is that those were not particularly players on the scene. We did not have particularly strong relationships with their local Embassies or High Commissions. Maybe it was a fault, but we were very, very focused on the UK interest. There have been a number of comments about the shadow that the defence sales episode cast over everything. Looking back at that, I have often thought that we all approached this in too traditionalist a way. There was a strong view that the South African government certainly felt that any sale of that magnitude would need to be accompanied by concepts like offset, so if you sold a certain amount of technology to a country, then you would have to allow that country to develop a certain proportion of that technology itself, offsetting trade. There were all sorts of other complicated associations with it too, so rather than it be a straight sale on its own merits, the idea was that you would bring in accompanying development of particular low-cost housing and this sort of thing. Looking back at that, I think it was a mis-orientation and a mistake to set up the trading relationship in that way. We were all in it together. The South African government was giving a lead in what it wanted. It was the purchaser and obviously you had to respect that. Looking back at it, I think it would have been better to have been more clear minded about that.

ONSLOW: Thank you. Andrew, from your perspective in Cape Town then?

TURNER: Thanks. The Cape was, and is, different; no question about that. The weather is the starting point. It rains in the winter in Cape Town. It rains in the summer in Pretoria. It feels very different. You have a different mix of communities, certainly in the Western Cape, to elsewhere, although that was obviously changing, with more people coming in from the Eastern Cape to the townships around Cape Town. Also, there was a certain amount of ‘white flight’, I suppose, from the Johannesburg area, with people coming down and setting up house in Cape Town and commuting for the week and so on.

While I was there we had the centenary of the start of the Boer War. That was towards the end of my time in 2001. That reinforced in my mind the historic role of Cape Town and who Milner188 was, and all of that sort of thing. It was something that we had prepared for quite carefully, thinking that it could be quite a difficult time. In the event, it was not as difficult as we had feared. Nonetheless, we were very conscious of the politics as well, that they were different. The ANC was, even back then, in a more competitive position or situation in the Western Cape than elsewhere. The mayorship of Cape Town moved, the province moved. But I always reminded myself that the historic Cape Colony is not the same thing as the Western Cape of course. What is now the Eastern Cape was very much part of that picture too. It was always educational, and a good reminder to go travelling out to the 187

Department for International Development. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-forinternational-development [Accessed 6 May 2014].

188 Alfred Milner (1st Viscount Milner, 1854-1925), Governor of the Cape Colony and High Commissioner for Southern Africa, 1897-1901.

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east to remind yourself what that part of the country was like, and the really tough conditions that people lived in out there.

ONSLOW: Nicola, as a lawyer, in respect of the doom-and-gloom merchants on South Africa, and their attitude towards the constitution, South Africa has the most liberal constitution in the world, and I know from talking to friends of mine at the FW de Klerk Foundation189 that they consider their most important work being to support the South African constitution. Was there any part of your work that involved British lawyers, the Commonwealth Magistrates’ and Judges’ Association,190 the Commonwealth Lawyers’ Association,191 to act as a collaborative effort to support the South African constitution from attacks from various quarters?

BREWER: Here is a question I can answer really briefly. Yes, is the answer. We did quite a lot, but of course it was quite sensitive. I tried to take my cue from how South African civil society was trying to tackle this. One South African I admire very much, and whom I’ve known since, was Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Ministry, back in the early 2000s. We were negotiating in a rather tense way, in the run up to the world conference against racism, which was held in Durban in 2001. Sipho Pityana192 is now in the private sector and has set up an organisation called the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution.193 The careful choice of the word ‘advancement’, I thought, was masterly. If you go rushing to the defence of something as an outsider, you could do more harm than good, whereas, as you say, Sue, collaborating with, supporting, working to enhance, to advance, is a much smarter move. I agree with you about the South African constitution. It is just about the most liberal – in the UK sense – and progressive of the world. I think some of the institutions, particularly the Chapter 9 Institutions194 are really important bulwarks of democracy in South Africa. I can tell a short anecdote, and I’ll do it without names. About eight months before I left South Africa, I was talking to a leading commentator after a major speech by the President. I said to this person, ‘Are you worried that there was nothing in there about the judiciary?’ and he said, ‘Oh, no. I am delighted when there is nothing in it about the judiciary. That leaves them alone to maintain their role in defending the constitution.’

So we did quite a lot within the High Commission. But we preferred to do so generally below the radar screen, working with civil society, and working with legal groups.

For example, the Middle Temple used to come out regularly. There were lots of exchanges with judges, where we did not necessarily fund the arrangement, but we gave quiet support to it.

ONSLOW: Excellent. I would now like to open the discussion to the floor for questions.

189

http://www.fwdeklerk.org [Accessed 6 May 2014]. http://www.cmja.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

191 http://www.commonwealthlawyers.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

192 Sipho Pityana, Executive Chairman of Izingwe Capital Limited. http://whoswho.co.za/sipho-pityana-1416 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

193 http://www.casac.org.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

194 There are ‘several independent bodies to support and safeguard [South African] democracy. Informally these bodies are often referred to as the “Chapter 9 Institutions”, because the most important of these are provided for in Chapter 9 of the Constitution. These include the Human Rights Commission, the Commission for Gender Equality, the Auditor General, the Public Protector and the Electoral Commission’. See http://www.parliament.gov.za/live/content.php?Category_ID=11 [Accessed 6 May 2014] and http://www.justice.gov.za/legislation/constitution/SAConstitution-web-eng-09.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2014].

190

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DR JATINDER MANN: My question is mainly directed to Andy and Andrew, but if Dame Nicola has any thoughts I would certainly welcome them. During your period in South Africa, especially the earlier period, you had a lot of white South Africans emigrating to other parts of the Commonwealth, especially to the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Was this an issue that the British High Commission discussed with the South African government?

Assuming it was, can you give a bit more detail on what those discussions entailed?

ONSLOW: A question about white South African migration to other parts of the Commonwealth. Philip, what is your question, please?

MURPHY: It is for Dame Nicola. You mentioned Jacob Zuma’s visit to London, the State Visit in 2010. Whatever you think of Zuma’s record, some of the comments in the British tabloid press about Zuma at the time were fairly disgraceful.195 I wonder whether that made your job more difficult and, broadening it out, whether the sort of coverage and the tone of coverage that often appears in the British press about Africa is a difficulty for British diplomats dealing with African countries.

ONSLOW: On the question about white South African migration, Andy, could I ask you please to respond?

PEARCE: It is a good question. The short answer to it is yes. On the economic side, more my side of the house than other Andy’s, to be frank there was a really serious or strategic concern on the UK’s part. There were roughly, I think, 1,100,000 British nationals, British passport holders in South Africa. There was a very serious concern that if all of them return to the UK in very close order, then this would have a huge impact, leaving aside the fact that they were probably more economically self-sufficient than many would-be refugees to the UK in that situation. There was just a sheer concern about the impact on UK infrastructure and the schooling, and things of that sort. There were discussions. There were particular discussions around ensuring that they were able to keep a stake in the country, in the early stages of discussion of black empowerment. We did have discreet discussions with South African policy formulators around those sorts of issues. Zimbabwe was beginning to cast quite a shadow by 1998 on that.196 The other big driver was crime. Andrew may want to say something more on that. My memory does not quite recall exactly when it was, but during the first year or so of my time, crime was serious.197 Members of staff in the High Commission certainly had to be very careful in how they handled themselves and their families.

There was an absolute surge of really vicious attacks in 1997 through to the end of my tour in 2000, particularly attacks on remote farmsteads around Bloemfontein, and in that area of the Free State, and a string of really vicious muggings of British nationals that kept the High Commission Consulate System on virtually 24/7 alert. That did really come back and get a political profile. It was carried quite regularly in the British media. Once the media get hold of a story, a little bit like some other countries I’ve been in – I had a posting in Thailand where there was something similar – when you just have two, three or four really nasty 195

For a discussion of Zuma’s 2010 visit, see http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2010-03-04-analysisthree-fatal-mistakes-of-president-zumas-uk-visit/#.VGFZaslLeSo [Accessed 11 Nov. 2014].

196 From 1998 the economy of Zimbabwe began to decline. See B Raftopoulos, ‘The Crisis in Zimbabwe, 19982008’, in B Raftopoulos and A Mlambo, Becoming Zimbabwe: A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008 (2009), pp.201-49.

197 ‘How Dangerous is South Africa’, updated 17 May 2010: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8668615.stm [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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attacks on British nationals, then the scent is on. That was certainly the case, with two years of really intense scrutiny. The migration was linked to that, and there were quite a lot of offers from the UK of ways to try and combat crime more effectively, police re-structuring – I forget the name of it, but some sort of rapid response, hard hitting police unit there. But the short answer is yes.

TURNER: You are right, Andy. We were quite involved in giving support. I think they were called the Scorpions at the time. I am not sure that they came to an altogether happy end later on, after we left. But at the time, I seem to remember Bulelani Ngcuka198 was the Attorney General, or in some such role, and we certainly spent quite a lot of time talking to him about how to improve the capabilities of the law enforcement side of things. The other thing that I think I recall is a certain amount of providing a bit of perspective to some white South Africans worried about crime. Statistically, it was clear that the people who suffered the most from crime in South Africa were black South Africans, poor black South Africans living in the townships. Your chance of being the victim of crime as a white person, although higher than elsewhere in the world, was not nearly as high as if you were a black South African. But also, people get mugged in London too. Perhaps in the late 1990s, there were people there (in Cape Town) who were comparing safety as a white person under apartheid to how things now were, rather than safety for a typical person in a democracy in the UK or America or wherever compared to how things were. A certain amount of informal suggesting of the need for proper perspective went on, which may, or may not have had any impact at all.

ONSLOW: Just following up on that, Nicola, while you were High Commissioner, were you in any way involved with the Reverend Barney Pityana’s199 ‘Homecoming Revolution’ to try and encourage young skilled South Africans to return to South Africa from this country?

BREWER: A bit. I met Barney Pityana when he was Vice Chancellor at the University in Pretoria. We did not actively campaign for it. Again, it is something that you were quietly supportive of. I saw my role and that of the High Commission more as putting the facts out there quite clearly. So, if I can link that to Professor Murphy’s question about the British tabloids, I distinctly remember, it was about half way through the State Visit, the morning when we were downstairs in Buckingham Palace, before the President joined the party, and joined Her Majesty. There was a palpable sense of fury and distaste at one headline in particular. A couple of things I would say. First of all, they did not take it out on me personally. Secondly, there was recognition that a free press involves pretty horrific personal assertions being made about individuals. It happens in South Africa too. I do not know how many people are familiar with ‘The Spear’ debate.200 Let us not go there, but political cartoons in South Africa do not pull their punches. So, it was not that alien.

The other thing I would say is that I think there was a deliberate choice, and I would guess it was the President himself, to rise above it. A couple of days later, we made a series of announcements about how the UK and South Africa were going to work together. The thing I would add, which brings me back to Sue’s question, is that in the run up to the World Cup, there were similar hyped up headlines in some of the British tabloids about machetes on the streets and all that kind of stuff. I did think that it was directly my job to come back to the

198

Bulelani T Ngcuka, Director of Public Prosecutions, South Africa.

Reverend Professor Barney Pityana, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of South Africa (UNISA), 2002-10.

200 http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/may/21/jacob-zuma-court-painting-genitals [Accessed 6 May 2014].

199

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UK to counter that. We ran a big campaign called ‘Know before you go’201 about what to do, Including, ‘bring a sweater, it gets cold at night’, in the run up to the World Cup. Because we knew we would get tens of thousands of English football fans. I decided to come back to the UK a week before the start of the World Cup, and to do a series of interviews with Sky Sports, BBC, and so on giving the real picture: ‘Yes, you have to take care. Yes, you have to take precautions, and take out insurance, but come and behave sensibly, and you will have a fabulous time.’

That is what happened. I think the South Africans noted and appreciated that the British High Commission saw it as part of their responsibility to set the record straight. One of the things I would say is, as Mr Turner has mentioned, you can get mugged in London too.

Also, the crime statistics and the violent crime statistics are high in South Africa, but they are coming down. They were horrendously high immediately after the end of apartheid, but the murder rate is coming down.

PROFESSOR JACK SPENCE: May I have another question? I have already asked one. I am being rather greedy, but thank you, Sue, for arranging this really interesting panel. I am grateful to all three speakers, as I am sure everyone else is, for their illuminating comments. I really want to put a proposition, or make a comment to Dame Nicola, whose very interesting discussion of her role in South Africa I found quite fascinating. Many years ago, a very famous American scholar, Annette Baker Fox202 coined the phrase ‘rectitude base’. Some of you who studied international politics all those years ago may recall it. It is rather an unfashionable phrase now, but I think it still has substance. The idea was that if a small power wanted to use its soft power role to influence its immediate region, or the wider context of global politics, because it did not have much by way of hard power, then through its reputation in terms of its domestic political system, record on human rights, economic growth, all that contrived to give that state reputation, it could be trusted to play that Chapter 6203 style role of mediation, arbitration, and diplomatic pressure etc., etc.

In the South African case, that rectitude base certainly did exist, I would have thought, for at least eight or nine years, while Mandela was still active, and busy. He was an iconic President: the most popular, least corrupt politician in the world, I suspect. Also, of course, the reputation was based not simply on his personality, but on the fact that they had devised a constitution that seemed to work, and that the rule of law meant something. When people say to me, ‘You know, South Africa is slipping down, and not really coming good anymore’, I make one point. That is, ‘Okay, problems, difficulties, but at least you do not, as far as I know, have to fear the knock on the door at midnight’, and my God, that was a real fear, a real threat in the days of apartheid. That, to some extent, is reflected in that commitment to the maintenance of the rule of law.

Now, Dame Nicola, forgive that long peroration, but really what I wanted to ask was, do you think that that rectitude base is slipping, or can they somehow maintain it? Can they play the role that states in Scandinavia, Switzerland and others, all who have superb rectitude bases, play? Can South Africa still contrive to play that role, with that rectitude base, governing its soft power strategy? The trouble is South Africa lives in a rough neighbourhood, and the question one wants to know is, what are they going to do in Africa, and how are they going to deploy their soft power advantages? I doubt that they will want to 201

http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20110108023357/youtube.com/watch?v=yYmP_ftJl_Y [Accessed 6 May 2014].

202 Annette Baker Fox (1912-2011), International Relations, Columbia University.

203 Presumably referring to Chapter 6 of the South African Constitution: see http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/21/files/Reports/4th_esr_chap_6.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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employ military force to dishonour protagonists in civil wars. The one thing Thabo Mbeki did was to set his heart and his government, quite rightly, against that kind of strategy. I suppose what I am getting at as well is, South Africa is a brick, but what does that mean? What does that mean? I do not know, but I welcome comments not just from you, if I may, Dame Nicola, but from your two colleagues as well. Thank you very much, Sue. ONSLOW: Thank you very much, Professor Spence – so: does South Africa have moral currency from the point of view of the High Commission?

KEITH SOMERVILLE: This time tomorrow, I am giving a talk at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University,204 in my old guise as a hack, rather than my new one, perhaps, as a ‘hackademic’. The talk is on the framing of death in the media, and part of that will deal with the way the media in South Africa and here covered Mandela’s illness, his current condition, and what happens next.205 One thing I wonder, without remotely suggesting that life support machines will be kept on when perhaps they should not be: I agree with you that his death is probably going to be a moment of great national unity. But after his death, and also taking up your mention of Ramphele206 and Agang, the rise of the EFF,207 the factionalism within the ANC, the factionalism within COSATU,208 which gets out ANC support, is there a possibility that a year down the road, after the next elections, in a post-Mandela South Africa, suddenly a lot of the respect that was accorded the ANC and support from certain sections of society will not only go because of the crisis of expectations, but suddenly, the great symbol of the ANC is no longer there?

ONSLOW: So: the political fragmentation of politics in South Africa.

BARBARA BUSH: I have a question for Dame Nicola. I think you have had a number of very difficult things to respond to in South Africa. I am thinking particularly of the Marikana massacre,209 and I just wondered if there was any policy on the development of those violent incidences in South Africa at that time. That is what I want to ask.

ONSLOW: Dame Nicola, if you would not mind answering those questions, please.

BREWER: We have moral currency and rectitude base, political fragmentation and dealing with violent incident. If I can answer the middle one first, I thought that, as this was a historical session, I was going to get away without making any predictions, because that is where it gets tricky, when you are actually talking about current affairs. When you are dealing with history, you are not asked to make predictions. You are asked to make judgements about what actually happened, and whether you expected it, but not what you think is going to happen in future. I think, and I do need to choose my words carefully, when I first arrived in South Africa, somebody who became an extremely close friend – a black South African with a huge amount of experience – when I asked him about the 2014 elections, and whether that was going to be critical for South Africa, said, ‘Uh, uh. You have got to be thinking about 2019. That is the critical election to watch, where you have to see 204

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism: https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

205 http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/framing-death-how-journalists-report-death-public-figures [Accessed 6 May 2014].

206 Mamphela Ramphele.

207 The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) was founded by Julius Malema (see below), who had been expelled by the ANC, and his supporters in 2013. http://www.economicfreedomfighters.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

208 Congress of South African Trade Unions. See http://www.cosatu.org.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

209 See chronology (2012) and http://marikana.mg.co.za/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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what is happening to trends’.

The story of the last general election was basically the wiping out of the small parties, not completely, but almost. Since then a number have revived, or been established. EFF is one to watch. We have not talked about Julius Malema,210 but he is a very interesting figure in South African politics, and I do not predict he will disappear. He has the ability to speak to and for a very big section of the population for whom nobody else really is. I am talking about the young, black, unemployed. It is one to watch, and I think those who are interested observers of the South African political scene will want to look at things like the abstention level in the 2014 elections, and see what that means projecting forward for 2019.

A lot of people in South Africa say that the ANC of today – I am eliding now into the first question about rectitude base – is not the ANC of the 1980s, or the early 1990s. But why should that be a surprise? I look at this from personal experience of having lived and worked in both Mexico,211 where there was an institutional ruling party in power for nearly 80 years before they were voted out and then have come back,212 and also in India, where something similar happened.213 Any liberation party is having to think, ‘What next for the third decade?’, and the ANC very much still thinks of itself as a liberation movement, and there is a question to what extent it actually has transformed itself into a political party. This is unwritten history. It is going to be quite bumpy. The 2019 election, then, is the one for South African watchers to watch.

In terms of rectitude base, I will just mention an exchange I had with a very senior South African figure. We were talking about Zimbabwe, and we were clearly not finding the common ground I was looking for. At one point, I stopped the conversation and said, ‘Look, I realise that you are looking at this from the perspective of South African history and experience, which says, “You sit down with your enemies and you negotiate for as long as it takes”.’ I said, ‘Our experience as the UK is that sometimes you have to stand up to your enemies’. I am not saying which is right, or which is wrong, but there are two different sets of historical experience. We had a much better conversation after that. So there is something about introducing into the rectitude base a strong dash of realism, and the experience of the difficulty of governing.

The last question was about violent incidents. In terms of defining moments in South Africa’s democracy, the arms deal was one. There is a huge amount that has been written on that. Marikana was another. I would not call it a watershed, though many people have done, because a watershed implies that everything afterwards happens differently. As an external government, your role at a time of intense national pain and tragedy is not to jump up and down on a bandwagon and jump up and down. It is to ask questions, both privately and occasionally more generally and publicly, about what systems and processes are in place in South Africa to deal with this. What would we have done in the UK? We would have set up a judicial review. Well, they did.

While that is going on, you do not jump up and down like the tabloids might, and offer blow-by-comments. Had it not been addressed with seriousness, had it not been seen as a potential huge watershed moment, perhaps we might have had to review our position. But what we said at the time holds water, which is that the South African government is investigating this in an appropriate way. I would also say that others involved have also taken it with huge seriousness.

210

Julius Malema, Leader and founder of the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Second Secretary, British Embassy in Mexico City, 1984–7; First Secretary, 1987–91.

212 The National Revolutionary Party (NRP) dominated Mexican politics for most of the twentieth century.

213 The Indian National Congress has been in power for the majority of the period since Indian independence in 1947.

211

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ONSLOW: Are there more questions from the floor? Then I am going to abuse the privileges of the Chair and put questions of my own to the panel.

DR JUDITH ROWBOTHAM: When I was at SOAS, about the same time that Andy Pearce was, there was a very informal set of academic connections, through people like Shula Marks,214 and other historian colleagues there. I am very conscious now of the extent to which there are actual, much more formal projects. I have recently been involved with a comparative project looking at the management, for instance, of rape, and how that is pursued through the courts between the English or British experience, and the South African experience. How involved has the High Commission been in promoting those more formal networks? Is it simply happening accidentally? Is it not something that has particularly blipped on the High Commission radar?

ONSLOW: Andy, are you able to answer that?

PEARCE: I cannot answer very authoritatively on that, to be honest, because I was posted there some moons ago now. When we were there, though, certainly on the crime side, there was a lot of consultation with different groups of that sort, and a lot of attempts to foster those informal networks. South African presence in the UK is extremely strong. They have been here many years. They have close connections. They are very active in a number of academic institutions here, so we try to play to that, but in my time it was particularly around the crime fighting, as the major strategic threat. When I was at SOAS, I was not doing anything on South Africa. It was Thai related.

ONSLOW: Andrew, do you want to comment?

TURNER: I am not sure I have much to add. From my experience since, I can think of several cases where South African academics are now coming over, working in London, are part of teams, are doing work for DFID. These are all things that were not perhaps happening so much in 1998, when it was more of traditional set up, I suppose – a country in transition, and the UK trying to support that. There are cases now where we are actually benefiting on things like African work on conflict resolution perhaps from the experience of some South African academics who have been involved with that sort of thing.

More generally, education has been one of those tough nuts to crack in some ways.

When I was there, we had a very close relationship with Dr Kader Asmal215 who was the Minister of Education in that time, and I think DFID had a substantial education programme.

Yet the stories which I believe have not gone away around what the education system was actually delivering to children were legion and was one of the big ‘countries going to the dogs’ type examples that people would throw at you in conversation.

BREWER: Yes, there was a very conscious effort to increase and support both formal and informal contacts. I mentioned that one of the things that we established through a process of open, not so much negotiation, but discussion with the South African government, was this strategic framework for the relationship. It was not just with the Foreign Ministry. They convened a big round table discussion of all of the relevant departments. There were three pillars. One was prosperity, economic stuff; one was security, foreign policy stuff; the third we called governance and society. There was a positive determination to increase exchanges between the UK and South Africa and all of that pillar. Andrew talked about DFID. They 214 215

Professor Shula Marks, Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, 1983-93.

Kader Asmal (1934-2011), Minister of Education, 1999-2004.

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have focused in recent years, mostly on economic development and on health. But the British Council have stepped in to working much more with South Africa on education, in basic, vocational, and higher education.

Not long before I left, I jointly launched with the Minister for Higher Education,216 the South African equivalent of the UK Association of Colleges, with a huge amount of effort, because my analysis was that people of my generation, or maybe the one before had an automatic reflex if you were British, you thought about South Africa. If you were South African, you thought about Britain. We cannot take that for granted with younger people. We have to change that, and the best way of doing it is through those people-to-people-links.

Finally, I will just add, if there is one challenge that is most critical for South Africa to address at the moment, it is education.

ONSLOW: That pre-empts the questions I have here: education; the British Council; and the extension of ‘soft power’! Professor Dubow at the back, please.

PROFESSOR SAUL DUBOW: Allow me to be just a little provocative, because it is late. I have often thought that the relationship between South Africa and Britain has been a ‘special relationship’; a special relationship defined by a great deal of mutual affinities as well as deep antipathies, going back to the beginnings of colonial settlement. Of course, Britain was until probably some time in the 1970s still South Africa’s biggest trading partner, with a huge volume of investments and trade, until British interests were surpassed by Germany, Japan, America, and so on.

Is the real question, therefore, not so much that South Africa has just become another abnormal normal society, but actually that the diminishing economic standing of Britain has led to a degree of indifference towards Britain on the part of most South Africans? Aside from the interpersonal links and the long historical connections, it is perhaps necessary for the British to understand that they are becoming just another country as far as South Africa is concerned.

ONSLOW: If I could just intervene here, when Alfred Nzo217 became Foreign Minister in 1994, he set out his five priorities for South African foreign policy, first of which was to join the OAU,218 the second was to join the Non-Aligned Movement;219 the third was take up South Africa’s place in the General Assembly of the United Nations;220 then South Africa was to take up the governorship of the International Atomic Energy Association;221 and the fifth was to re-join the Commonwealth.222 Well, in terms of South Africa’s collaboration with Britain, compared with active re-engagement with those multinational organisations, that is pushing us down the list!

BREWER: We have had lots of questions both about the UK and about South Africa. To illustrate the first one, when I presented my credentials to President Zuma, I think I was one of nine, including the US Ambassador. You did have to think quite hard about how to stand out a bit from the crowd. I brushed up on my Zulu clicks, and made sure I gave quite a bit of the speech in Zulu and used several of the President’s praise names. The first bit was 216

Blade Nzimande, Minister Of Higher Education and Training, 2009-.

Alfred Nzo (1925-2000), South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1994-9.

218 South Africa joined the Organisation of African Unity / African Union in 1994. http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/africa/oau.htm [Accessed 6 May 2014].

219 http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/inter/nam.htm [Accessed 6 May 2014].

220 http://www.southafrica-newyork.net/pmun/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

221 http://www.dfa.gov.za/foreign/Multilateral/inter/iaea.htm [Accessed 6 May 2014].

222 See chronology (1994).

217

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expected, the second and third bits were not. You think of ways to make sure it is actually your photograph, not somebody else’s, that makes it into the newspaper, which it did.

One of the things that Jacob Zuma said to me, and to the press, which I was even more pleased about, was that he said Britain is our leading trading partner. It was not quite true, but it was great that he said it. We were actually the sixth. I have not talked much about how I co-operated with other heads of mission, but it is a key part of the way you do the job.

But Andrew mentioned the European Union. The trading relationship between South Africa and the European Union223 is more than three times the size of that between South Africa and China, which is its next biggest trading partner.224 You really have to make quite a lot of that. It is not insignificant: all of those contacts make people-to-people links. More British tourists go to South Africa, nearly half a million, than any other nationality,225 and it is still growing; more than Americans, more than Germans. That contributes a lot to the South African economy, it is realised, and it also creates lots of links.

I would honestly say, I do not think I ever met indifference. I was told that my head of mission colleagues used to complain to the Foreign Ministry that I got better access than almost all of them. It was because of the way we did business as much as the history. You did have to work hard at it, and we have to work harder to keep our relevance in this more networked world. But you can use things, such as the ‘Great’ campaign that was launched by the Prime Minister226 in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.227 It was a fabulous way of selling modern Britain, and that is what you have to do. You have to get across what your country is like these days, and explain why it is still relevant. I found that not hard to do in South Africa, but you have to get out there and do it.

ONSLOW: That suggests then that the discussion here, particularly in the British tabloids, but also in the broadsheets, about the possibility of Britain re-negotiating its relationship with the European Union, would complicate the role of the British High Commissioner down in South Africa. Part of our attraction for South Africa is precisely because we are in the European Union.

BREWER: I think it would complicate the position of any British High Commissioner, or Ambassador anywhere in the world. I do not think that in South Africa the British High Commissioner was seen through the prism of the European Union, and actually, I was asked less often about British policy towards the European Union in South Africa than I was when I was in India.228 It is a factor, though.

ONSLOW: If there are no more questions from the floor, I will draw this session to a close.

My sincere thanks to Andrew Pearce, Andrew Turner, and Dame Nicola for three fascinating and very different perspectives of the role and function of the British High Commission in South Africa from the 1990s right up to the present day. This has offered a unique comparative discussion to the earlier session, but each has emphasised the question of personto-person diplomacy, and the ongoing challenges that face British diplomacy in post with a complex and evolving nation. Thank you very much indeed.

223

http://ec.europa.eu/trade/policy/countries-and-regions/countries/south-africa/ [Accessed 6 May 2014]. http://www.ccs.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/CCS-policy-brief_One-China_RA-SG-YK.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2014].

225 See chronology (2013).

226 David Cameron, Prime Minister, 2010-.

227 ‘The GREAT Britain campaign showcases the very best of what Britain has to offer’: see https://www.gov.uk/britainisgreat [Accessed 6 May 2014].

228 Counsellor, New Delhi High Commission, 1998–2001.

224

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Britain and South Africa: 1985-91

Friday, 23 January 2009 IDEAS, Columbia House, LSE London, WC2A

Edited by M.D. Kandiah & Sue Onslow

This project was funded by a grant the Dean’s Development Fund (DDF), School of Advanced Studies, University of London.

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Chair: Professor Shula Marks, OBE, FBA, former Director, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, 1983-93.

Witnesses: The Rt. Hon. Lord Howe of Aberavon, CH, PC, QC: Foreign Secretary, 1983–89; Lord President of the Council, Leader of House of Commons, and Deputy Prime Minister, 1989– 90.

Lord Powell of Bayswater, KCMG: Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, 1984–91.

Sir Patrick Moberly, KCMG: HM Ambassador to South Africa, 1984-87.

Mrs Patsy Robertson: Former Director of Information at the Commonwealth Secretariat and spokesperson for Sir Sonny Ramphal, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth.

Contributors from the floor: Professor Michael Cox: London School of Economics Professor Michael Parsons: University of Pau Dr MD Kandiah: King’s College London Professor Philip Murphy: then University of Reading; now Institute of Commonwealth Studies Dr Sue Onslow: then LSE; now Institute of Commonwealth Studies Professor Christopher Saunders: University of Cape Town and President of the South African Historical Society.

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Britain and South Africa: 1985-91 Session One PROFESSOR MICHAEL COX: I am not one of today’s speakers, but I am one of the Directors of the Centre which has the rather enigmatic name, ‘IDEAS’. Don’t ask me what it stands for, but everyone thinks that it is an interesting title. We were established as a Centre for Diplomacy and Strategy with that peculiar name at the beginning of last year at the London School of Economics. We have several programmes, one of most active of which has been our southern Africa and South Africa programme relating to the Cold War, driven mainly by Dr Sue Onslow. Congratulations, Sue, on your hard work.

I welcome you all here. We are delighted to host such as highly eminent panel, the Chair of which is Professor Shula Marks. She will do all the hard work this afternoon, Sue having laid all the ground work. With no more ado, I pass over to you, Shula.

PROFESSOR SHULA MARKS: Professor Cox has welcomed you all on behalf of IDEAS, and we welcome you also on behalf of the Centre for Contemporary British History,229 the co-organiser of the seminars. We thank IDEAS at the LSE for hosting this event. As many of you know, the witness seminar is recorded and will be transcribed by the Centre, which means that no one else should be recording the symposium at the same time. Please therefore switch off your recording machines and your telephones! We shall take questions from the floor, but we have a number that we want to ask our eminent witnesses. Will everyone please identify themselves before commenting, otherwise the transcription process will be extremely difficult? Please, at least on the first occasion, say who you are to ensure the correct transcription and attribution. Apropos of that, people will be named in the transcription. We do not have Chatham House rules whereby nothing is ascribed. Here, we say who says what and for historical purposes, that is absolutely crucial. Each speaker must be sure to sign a consent form, extra copies of which are with Michael [Kandiah] or Sue [Onslow]. Before the witness paper is published, the draft manuscript will be sent to each contributor both from the table and the floor so they will have a chance to correct or amend any contribution should they wish to do so. The full-edged transcript of the witness seminar will be published.

The seminar is divided into two sessions. We break at 3 o’clock today until 3.15 pm and go on until 4.30 pm. I imagine that most people in the room know what a witness seminar is but, for those to do not, I shall explain. It is an exercise in oral history about which we have a group discussion, including contributions from eye witnesses and participants. The object of the witness seminar is to investigate the nature of British relations with South Africa from the mid-1980s to the early-1990s and how that impacted on and influenced Britain’s relations with the Commonwealth. Forgive me if I am telling you what you already know, but the Centre for Contemporary British History regularly organises witness seminars the aim of which is to bring participants to re-examine and assess key aspects of recent history, particularly British history.

The Centre’s Oral History Programme has been in existence since the foundation of the Centre in 1986 and nearly 80 witness seminars have been held since then on diverse topics. The titles and, indeed, the transcriptions are available on the Centre’s website. I have looked at the range of the seminars and saw that one has been held for almost letter in the alphabet—sometimes more than one. The range has extended from the ‘Abortion Act 1967’, ‘American Perceptions of the Falklands War’ via ‘Decolonisation in Africa’, the 229

Between 2003 and 2012, the Institute of Contemporary British History (ICBH) was known as the Centre for Contemporary British History (CCBH).

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‘Historiography of the 1960s’, ‘Race Relations’ all the way to UDI, Venture Capital, the ‘Winter of Discontent’ and ‘Yesterday’s Men’.

COX: Zimbabwe?

MARKS: Except that it appears under ‘Rhodesia’. Looking at the titles of the seminars is an illuminating exercise.

It is my pleasurable task to invite the participants to introduce themselves. Let us start with Lord Howe who, as Foreign Secretary, played a key role in the 1980s.

LORD HOWE OF ABERAVON: That is about all you need say, I think, except to add, ‘an antique politician’.

MARKS: Much more than that.

LORD POWELL OF BAYSWATER: I was Margaret Thatcher’s230 Private Secretary for the period, dealing with foreign affairs and defence. I am sorry, but I told Sue Onslow in advance that I have to be out of the room between about 3 pm and 3.45 pm.

MARKS: That is why we changed the break to 3 pm.

SIR PATRICK MOBERLY: I hope to stay for the whole time. I was British Ambassador in South Africa at the far end of it all, 1984-87. It would be nice if other Foreign Office diplomats were here who were there both before and after me, but I am the only one!

MRS PATSY ROBERTSON: I was with the Commonwealth Secretariat when it began in 1965. I was the Director of Information and spokesperson during the period under discussion.

MARKS: I should perhaps have introduced myself because I am clearly not Jack Spence.231 I am an Emeritus Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in the History of Southern Africa. For 10 years, I was the Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at London University.

I wish to introduce our academic experts.

PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER SAUNDERS: I am at the University of Cape Town.

MARKS: We have Professor Philip Murphy and Professor Michael Parsons. Will the experts intervene if they think that we need additional historical information? I hope that you will do so, Sue [Onlsow], if you think fit.

I address my question to Lord Howe in the first instance. When coming into government, what ideas did the Conservative Party have about South Africa? Was a fundamental review, for example, initiated when you arrived at the Foreign Office?

HOWE: I have no idea, of course. I spent the first four years at the Treasury.232 I knew a little about it because South Africa was an ‘always with us’ problem. The top item on the 230

Margaret Thatcher (Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven, 1925-2013), Conservative politician. Prime Minister, 1979-90.

231 Professor Jack Spence, King’s College London, was originally to have chaired this witness seminar but he had to withdraw for unavoidable reasons at short notice.

232 Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1979-83.

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agenda outside Europe and local matters was Zimbabwe – Rhodesia as it then was.233 Peter Carrington234 handled that for several years. It was only thereafter that South Africa came near to the top of the agenda.

POWELL: I want to add to that. By the way, I am not a member of the Conservative Party so what I say about it is my view. I was very much involved in the Zimbabwe independence negotiations at Lancaster House. I was the Special Counsellor in those negotiations, working for Lord Carrington. To be honest, when the Conservative Party came into power in 1979, the focus was entirely on Rhodesia and very little was on South Africa. It was the belief that the Rhodesia situation had gone on long enough, that Bishop Muzorewa’s235 Government — though not perfect — was a huge step forward and had a strong desire to see it recognised internationally and all sanctions dropped. That was the really the main issue.

Of course, South Africa came into such matters because of its role in Rhodesia because, frankly, we needed the help of South Africa to get out of the situation in Rhodesia.

To my recollection, the period was entirely Zimbabwe-focused, not South Africa-focused.

ROBERTSON: I agree that, certainly in the 1970s, Rhodesia was the focus for the Commonwealth as well.

MARKS: In the 1970s and 1980s?

ROBERTSON: By the 1980s, the Commonwealth began focusing on South Africa after Zimbabwe became independent in 1980.

MARKS: Was there a review of the situation in South Africa after the independence of Zimbabwe and how that had changed the issue?

HOWE: It would have been under consideration. As attention turned towards it, there was obviously much more focus.

POWELL: That expresses it well. Many current issues started to come up. I do not remember a great policy review. It was more a reaction to events.

MARKS: One of the things that you, Lord Howe, have written about very eloquently was the differences between Mrs Thatcher’s views and those of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office when you came in.

HOWE: Our backgrounds were very different. In her book, Margaret made an extraordinary observation that apartheid was a subject on which there was more hypocrisy and hyperbole than any other that she had heard. That was different from my view, because in my two years in the Army before going to Cambridge and stationed in Kenya, I was one of the two who secured the admission to the Nanyuki Sports Club236 on the Equator of its first black member, a police inspector. During my time at Cambridge, I was one of those who organised a protest when Gordon Walker237 removed Seretse Khama.238 Later on, I was one of three members of 233

See M Kandiah (ed) Rhodesian UDI 1965: Witness Seminar, September 2000 (2002) and MD Kandiah and S Onlsow (eds), Britain and Rhodesia: Road To Settlement: Witness Seminar, 5 July 2005 (2008).

234 The 6th Baron Carrington, Foreign Secretary, 1979-82.

235 Abel Muzorewa (1925-2010), Prime Minister, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, 1979.

236 http://nanyukisportsclub.com/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

237 Patrick Gordon Walker (Lord Gordon-Walker, 1907-80), Labour Foreign Secretary, 1964-5.

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the committee on anti-discriminatory legislation, under the chairmanship of Professor Harry Street,239 which did much to shape the Race Relations Act of 1968.240 Margaret and I did not discuss those subjects often.

MARKS: You were never tempted to join the Anti-Apartheid Movement? Do you want to add anything to that, Lord Powell?

POWELL: I do not want to add to any disagreements between Margaret Thatcher and Geoffrey Howe; it is for him to speak on that. She had a clear view on apartheid. She thought that it was detestable. Her reaction was very rational, not emotional. I do not think that she was any less hostile to it. She just argued it in rational terms. First, she said it was completely unacceptable that the colour of a person’s skin should dictate whether they had political rights. It seemed a straightforward issue to her. Secondly, she thought that apartheid was complete economic madness, that it could not work and that it could undermine South Africa’s prosperity. From the beginning, she said that fundamental changes simply had to be made but she differed on how best to dismantle apartheid. I could talk about that at some length, but you may want that to come later.

ROBERTSON: The struggles with the Labour Government over Rhodesia had been strong, but there was sympathy for the Commonwealth’s position. Just after Mrs Thatcher came into Government in 1979 – perhaps we were wrong in the Commonwealth – but what set alarm bells ringing was the fact that she went to a G5241 meeting in Japan and stopped off in New Zealand.

HOWE: The first G5 meeting, which she was obliged to attend, was fixed to take place in Tokyo.

ROBERTSON: Mrs Thatcher announced that she was going to advise the Queen242 not to go to the Lusaka meeting. That was a crucial meeting in 1979. Fortunately, Buckingham Palace announced that the Queen would be attending. Alarm bells began to ring. We were worried at the Commonwealth that things might not be easy.

HOWE: To add a rider, Margaret [Thatcher] addressed the issue — as she did many issues — with high emotional content because she believed seriously in her position. On the South African issue, she often waxed emotionally as the public saw it against sanctions. However, she was, in fact, against apartheid, as Charles [Powell] said. One of the many forces that secured an end to apartheid was convincing the South African leadership that Margaret Thatcher hated it as much as the rest of us.

238

Sir Seretse Khama (1921-80), President of Botswana, 1966-80.

Harry Street (1919-84), Professor of English Law, University of Manchester, 1960-1984. The Committee produced Anti-Discrimination Legislation: The Street Report (1967). The other committee member was Geoffrey Bindman and the report was sponsored by the Race Relations Board and the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants.

240 http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1968/71/enacted [Accessed 6 May 2014] and for an oral history collection see http://www.runnymedetrust.org/histories/race-equality/40/race-relations-act-1968.html [Accessed 6 May 2014] 241 During the 1970s, G5 represented the world’s five top industrialised countries: France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America. Mrs Thatcher would have been meeting the G7 (the G5 countries plus Canada and Italy, plus the European Community Representative) Meeting, which was held in Tokyo in 1979. http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/112046 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

242 HM Queen Elizabeth II. 239

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MARKS: How did the Foreign Office see the situation, after you came into it in 1983? What was the rationale?

HOWE: One of the interesting things on sanctions was a booklet produced by Robin Renwick243 for a think tank on the effect of sanctions in Rhodesia.244 POWELL: He had a sabbatical year at the Kennedy School of Government. It must have been in about 1983.

HOWE: I recollect that the booklet concluded that, in Rhodesia at least, sanctions had not had a significant effect. I cannot remember the reasoning behind it, but it was a premise for the argument to start. In 1979, I guess that the Foreign Office would have been pretty strongly critical of it, after all we were replacing a Labour Government.

POWELL: I have talked to Margaret Thatcher many times about the matter over the years. I guess that her starting point was that the worst approach to dealing with apartheid was to isolate South Africa. She thought that that would just build in a ‘siege’ mentality and make it more resistant to change, not more flexible. For example, when she invited PW Botha245 to the United Kingdom in early 1984, the only other country that he had ever visited as President was Taiwan.246 If your whole world perspective comes from a visit to Taiwan, you are probably not deeply in touch with currents in world opinion. She always thought that isolation was entirely wrong.

Margaret Thatcher also thought that there was no strategic sense in bringing South Africa to its knees. We must remember that it was the time of the Cold War. There was Russian influence in Southern Africa. Cuban troops were present in large numbers just north of South Africa. She could not see what conceivable strategic interest we had in bringing about its collapse by imposing draconic sanctions. Margaret Thatcher would also argue that we had some serious economic interests of our own in South Africa. We received important strategic imports and we had to weigh our interests in the balance. She was consistent in her view throughout that sanctions would bear most heavily on the black population in South Africa and that they would not really affect the white population that much. Perhaps sanctions on sports might do so, given their fanatical devotion to sport, but when it came to jobs and the standard of living those who would suffer most were black South Africans.

Mrs Thatcher also took the view that those who were most loudly proclaiming the need for sanctions would probably be the last people ever to apply them. As Geoffrey [Howe] said, she felt that hypocrisy was rampant in the Commonwealth and even more widely.247 That was demonstrated later on, in that between 1985 and 1989 our trade with South Africa had diminished more than any other country in the Commonwealth, which is an interesting thought. Much of it was taken up by Germany and Japan, none the less it did diminish although not because of sanctions, but because that was the business judgment, and she had no quarrel with the business judgment being applied.

243

Lord Renwick of Clifton, HM Ambassador to South Africa, 1987-91. Previously, FCO Rhodesia Department, 1978-80; Adviser to Lord Soames, Governor of Southern Rhodesia, 1980.

244 R. Renwick, Economic Sanctions (1981).

245 Pieter Willem Botha (1916-2006), South African Prime Minister, 1978-84.

246 P.W. Botha made a state visit to Taiwan in 1980. See M Osada, Sanctions and Honorary Whites: Diplomatic Policies and Economic Realities in Relations Between Japan and South Africa (2002), p.178.

247 Cf statement by FW de Clerk on the death of Baroness Thatcher: see http://www.fwdeklerk.org /cgibin/giga.cgi?cmd=cause_dir_news_item&cause_id=2137&news_id=117384&cat_id=1855#Uk9QiRBxnJY [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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Margaret Thatcher argued that the best way in which to get rid of apartheid was stepby-step reform. She thought that, if there was a sudden change towards black majority rule in South Africa if drastic sanctions were applied, the chances were that South Africa would make the same mess of its economy and its system of Government, as most other black African countries had made. She did not see why we should be responsible for reducing South Africa to the level of governance prevalent in many of those countries. Margaret Thatcher believed that the access and the influence that she could gain with the white South African Government by holding back on sanctions would enable her to persuade them constantly that apartheid was wrong, nonsense and needed to be changed. To be fair, she used that access and influence to try to achieve that. In the papers that you kindly circulated are some of her messages to PW Botha. There were more, but I certainly remember those.

Indeed, I remember drafting most of them! I think that they did have some effect. I do not pretend that they alone got rid of apartheid, but they had an effect.

For me, one of the interesting proofs is the fact that, when he was released, President Mandela248 came to Britain and one of the first people he saw was Margaret Thatcher. He recognised—far more than any other people in this country—that she had played a significant role in getting rid of apartheid. It was not by any means a dominant role, but she had played a significant part by her strategy and tactics. That summarises her approach throughout the period.

HOWE: I put matters into the same context. I do not think that Margaret Thatcher ever challenged the continuation of the Gleneagles sanctions on sport,249 and clearly those sanctions had a direct effect. No one has doubted that. Likewise, many of the arguments revolved on whether the sanctions would most harm the black or white minority. The distinction was drawn between sanctions against food exports, which were labour intensive at the other end and thus did the most hard to the black community – and was therefore opposed. And the absence of opposition to the ban of sales of Krugerrand – which did harm the white community.250 I was clear that the importance of Margaret Thatcher’s voice in South Africa was heard very plainly at the Chequers251 meeting attended by PW Botha in early 1984.

Pik Botha252 had visited the UK earlier, in the autumn of 1983, just after I had made a comprehensive speech to the Royal Commonwealth Society setting out our position clearly and our hostility to apartheid,253 I had a meeting with Pik Botha in London shortly after that.

He criticised me for being so critical. The track had thus been laid, but when PW [Botha] came to Chequers. Margaret Thatcher thus set out our clear requirements for giving the ANC the right to exist, for liberating Mandela and attacking apartheid directly. I had the impression that, when PW Botha heard such messages, it was quite a shock to him.

248

Nelson Mandela (1918-2013), South African President, 1994-9.

At the June 1977 Heads of Commonwealth Government (CHOGM) meeting at Gleneagles, Scotland, it was agreed that member countries would discourage contact and competition between their sportsmen and sporting organisations, teams or individuals from South Africa. For details see http://thecommonwealth.org/history-ofthe-commonwealth/gleneagles-agreement-starts-aparteid-south-africas-sporting-isolation [Accessed 6 May 2014].

250 Since 1967 the Krugerrand is a South African gold coin (1 tory ounce).

251 Since 1921 Chequers, in Buckinghamshire, has been the country retreat of the UK Prime Minister.

252 R.F. ‘Pik’ Botha, South African Minister for Foreign Affairs, 1977-94.

253 For the full text of speech, see Parliamentary Archives (London), DEP 4321: South Africa: No Easy Answers.

Speech by Sir Geoffrey Howe at the Royal Commonwealth Society on 17 May 1988 (09-11-1988). In it Howe stated: ‘Let there be no doubt about our abhorrence of apartheid and all the representative measures used to enforce it. Apartheid is unacceptable, unworkable and indefensible. It is contrary to all British and Commonwealth values’. Regarding sanctions, he said: ‘Frankly I do not believe this would be right. We remain firmly opposed to economic sanctions of any kind.’

249

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The sanctions issue became out of proportion. No one was arguing for apartheid. No one was arguing against any of the remedies that had been suggested, except sanctions. That was the touchstone, more than anything else.

POWELL: I agree.

MOBERLY: From Mrs Thatcher to PW Botha was obviously a very important channel, but it was private and not public. No one else knew that it was going on. It was one of the best explanations of what Britain was doing, but it could not be revealed at the time.

HOWE: I have another interesting document. [Holding up a pamphlet.] It is a photocopy of the pamphlet produced after you had left, Patrick, and Robin Renwick was there. It is entitled Britain’s Voice in South Africa254 and contains extracts from all our speeches and pronouncements, many of them as reported in the Afrikaner press. More and more people could therefore learn the case that we were pressing. There are no coloured ones left, so you may keep this one, Shula.

MARKS: I should love to keep it. Thank you.

Can we know about the other side? Thatcher made her views known to PW Botha. Is there any evidence that that made much impact on him after all, in 1985, everyone awaited his ‘Crossing the Rubicon’ speech255 with great trepidation in some quarters and with hope and anticipation in others. But he did not cross the Rubicon, so could we not argue that, if the British Lion had evidence that the British would take action if the conditions were not accepted, it might have had more influence on someone like PW Botha?

HOWE: It was interesting how PW Botha reacted to any sharp presentation of ours. When I saw him in 1986, he was particularly dismayed that Margaret Thatcher was presenting the case. I also met a very senior figure in the Broederbond256 and was surprised by the extent to which he and people like him were arguing the same case that we were arguing. The accumulation of advocacy from different quarters — from the ‘armed struggle’ to sanctions, and Margaret Thatcher disproving of both of them — all contributed to the change of thinking that took place.

MARKS: We know that, by the mid-1980s, the Broederbond was in touch with the ANC secretly. The British voice was nudging it in that direction even if PW Botha was not listening. It would be interesting to know how far it was reaching into Afrikaner elite circles.

MOBERLY: Before we met today, Dr Onslow sent us some background papers. They include the text of Mrs Thatcher’s letters to PW Botha, one of which shows that her point of view was carrying weight.257 We do not have his replies, but his initial reaction when the first suggestion was made known about a Commonwealth mission, was that he did not want anything to do with it because of interference in internal affairs. Mrs Thatcher replied in her letter that it would be a great mistake to rebuff that opening and, a week later, Pik Botha issued a statement said that, yes, the mission would be received. That could be a specific instance of how importance our pressure was and that our point was accepted.

254

Published by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1989.

Speech of 15 Aug. 1985: for full text, see: http://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/pw-botha-gives-rubiconspeech-durban [Accessed 6 May 2014] 256 See chronology.

257 See http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111650 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

255

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POWELL: We did receive some feedback suggesting at least the content of the messages was widely known among South African Ministers. We had one or two secret contacts with them in the mid–1980s at which it was quite clear that they were aware of Mrs Thatcher’s messages and had, indeed, seen them, and believed that they were having an effect on President Botha who they tended to talk about as though he was President of another country.

I am not enough of an expert on South Africa to remember the chronology, but in about 1986-87, a number of reforms were instituted. The pass laws started to change. Forced removals were pretty well stopped. Job reservation stopped about then. The Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act 1949 was abolished in about 1986–87. We cannot say that there were no changes. It was not happening quickly enough, but there were changes.

MARKS: A lot was going on in terms of internal activism at the time, which we could argue was pushing the pace.

ROBERTSON: The total isolation of South Africa at the time must have had an effect. That is what the Commonwealth had been working on. We conceded that what Mrs Thatcher did behind the scenes was useful, but what leaders in the Commonwealth could not understand was why she was so publicly hostile towards the Commonwealth. We knew that she and perhaps her officials were sceptical about liberation movements in South Africa. We accepted that they might be worried about Communism, but there was a sort of dismissal of the aspirations of the black people in southern Africa that was quite extraordinary. Their leaders were calling for sanctions, so why the idea that that would hurt those poor people living in such horrible townships under very repressive laws? What was the point of that? What was the point of describing in Vancouver publicly that the ANC was an illegal terrorist organisation?258 And for saying in 1987 that anyone thinking that the ANC would ever be in power in South Africa was living in cloud cuckooland. Someone must have provoked her into such an emotional response.259 POWELL: I think that 48 members of the Commonwealth had provoked her.

ROBERTSON: Margaret Thatcher definitely considered Nelson Mandela to be a terrorist and, as far as I can remember and I can stand corrected, late in the 1980s she would not meet

258

In response to a question from a journalist at a press conference at the Vancouver CHOGM who asked if the British government would be funding the ANC to help speed up the process of the ending of apartheid, Thatcher responded: ‘the ANC says that they will target British companies [operating in South Africa]. This shows what a typical terrorist organisation it is. I fought terrorism all my life and if more people fought it, and we were all more successful, we should not have it and I hope that everyone in this hall will think it is right to go on fighting terrorism. They will if they believe in democracy.’ In response to another question later, she said: ‘I will have nothing to do with any organisation that practices violence. I have never seen anyone from ANC or the PLO or the IRA and would not do so.’ http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp? docid=106948 [Accessed 6 May 2014] 259 According to the principal editor of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation website: ‘the origin of the quote appears to be a response by her press spokesman, Bernard Ingham, on 16 October 1987 at the Vancouver Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. A Canadian journalist speculated that the African National Congress might overthrow the white South African regime, to which he replied: “It is cloud cuckooland for anyone to believe that could be done.” (See Washington Post, 17 Oct 1987.)’ … ‘Years later the words were modified and attributed to MT by Hugo Young, who claimed that she had said at Vancouver: “Anyone who thinks that the ANC is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land”. (See The Guardian, 26 Apr 1994.) In that form they became part of the journalistic “record”.’ See http://www.margaretthatcher.org/ document/110862 [Accessed 6 May 2014]

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Desmond Tutu.260 He came to London to plead with her. I might be wrong, but I think that she was finally persuaded to meet him.261 When the ANC celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary in 1987, even the United States and the EU sent delegates, but the British were conspicuous by their absence. We at the Commonwealth could not understand the point of that. We were desperate to get on with Britain.

When Commonwealth countries became independent, they really wanted some TLC from the British Government, but they were plunged into the horrible quarrel in southern Africa and the whole business of kith and kin, and financial ties. That created at atmosphere that was not conducive to trust that the British Government were working hard to end apartheid. Okay, it might have ended — but it might have continued easily for years under the ‘Let’s talk to you behind the scenes and see what you can do’ approach, which was the approach which would have been acceptable to the South Africans. We in the Commonwealth saw opposition to any sort of pressure. We really could not understand it.

The Commonwealth still continued, however. It wanted to keep Britain on board somehow, which is how the Eminent Persons Group [EPG] was established. At Nassau, Mrs Thatcher again absolutely rejected economic sanctions and when the Commonwealth came forth with the idea of the EPG, she accepted it. However, she kind of rubbished it, to be quite honest. She went on television to say that she had only given a teeny teeny bit. I remember that well, because when the leaders — Rajiv Gandhi,262 Mulroney,263 Kenneth Kaunda264 and that lot — who had come up with the EPG idea at the retreat,265 were arranging to go and see her in her villa to say what they wanted, they said that Rajiv had to go because they had heard that she liked handsome young men! It was a lot of fun, despite the unpleasantness and racial tone of some of those meetings.

POWELL: Listening to that brings it back to me why Mrs Thatcher used to get upset.

I have a clear mental picture of Archbishop Tutu sitting on the sofa at No. 10, but I am sure that it took a bit of persuading her to see him. Patsy Robertson is absolutely right.

Through the 1980s, Mrs Thatcher steadily thought more and more that the Commonwealth was ganging up on her on the subject in what she felt was an unpleasant way and that it was questioning her motives, questioning her sincerity in opposing apartheid, and she felt badly about that.266 Some of her statements at the time made even No. 10 sit up, let alone the Foreign Office.

As for why Mrs Thatcher opposed sanctions when the ANC wanted them, that is not an easy question to answer. Political movements frequently put their objectives above the actual basic interests of the populations. Hamas is the most recent example of that. I do not take it as read that simply because the ANC wanted sanctions, that it was the right thing to do. Throughout those years, Mrs Thatcher was frequently in contact with the Prime Minister 260

Desmond Tutu, Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, 1986-96.

According to Tutu, he did meet Thatcher: ‘I went to Downing Street and had a nice 50 minute meeting with Mrs Thatcher, and spoke for 20 of those minutes. She was very charming, but as I tried my pitch on economic sanctions she wouldn’t buy that’. (Tutu’s interview with David Hamburg: http://lib.stanford.edu/preventinggenocide/transcript-interview-desmond-tutu) [Accessed 6 May 2014].

262 Rajiv Gandhi (1944-91), Indian Prime Minister, 1984-9.

263 Brian Mulroney, Canadian Prime Minister, 1984-93.

264 Kenneth Kaunda, Zambian President, 1964-91.

265 At Lyford Cay, New Providence Island, where leaders retired during the weekend of CHOGM. For a description of this weekend, see S Mole, ‘From Smith to Sharma: the role of the Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral’, in James Mayall (ed), The Contemporary Commonwealth: An Assessment, 1965-2009 (2010), p.50.

266 Tutu’s biographer, John Allen, was told by Conservative politician Lynda Chalker: ‘[Thatcher] couldn’t stand Desmond Tutu. Part of that was the result of his animosity … [his belief] that there was no good in her’.

Quoted in Rabble-rouser for Peace: The Authorized Biography Desmond Tutu (2006), p.257.

261

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of the Zulus, Chief Buthelezi,267 who represented in one way or another a lot of people in South Africa. He certainly did not want sanctions. I know the Commonwealth did not like him because they thought that he was too close to the Government, but he was a person who should be taken with some seriousness and, indeed, he was.

Patsy Robertson said that sanctions was the only form of pressure, but they were not.

Margaret Thatcher’s attempts to persuade Botha and others of his Ministers was a form of pressure, too. I think that that was probably more effective than sanctions would ever have been. But apart from sports, Krugerrands and a brief period during which we were not buying something that we would not have been buying anyway, no one applied sanctions. Financial sanctions applied by institutions and banks, not by governments, were probably more effective.

MARKS: That was crucial. I was in South Africa at the time, and it was the first time that white South Africans began to realise that the outside world was serious about apartheid.

ROBERTSON: Yes. MARKS: It was the first time that in the leafy suburbs of Johannesburg people started to worry seriously about political change in South Africa. It was in about 1988, I suppose.

Townships had been in turmoil. People were being killed and that really did not bother the average, middle-class, English-speaking white to any great extent. However, the financial sanctions hit the message home.

ROBERTSON: The Australian Government did a very good study — I have a copy for the records — on the impact of sanctions as a whole, but particularly financial sanctions. A lot of people were breaching sanctions, but they were doing it at a price. You could get anything you wanted, and South Africa would slowly become bankrupt because all the sharks throughout the world were ready to supply what they wanted at a huge price, and in the long run that was not sustainable.

POWELL: South African exports had increased quite considerably during that period, particularly after financial sanctions. The exchange rate had more or less halved, and that made its exports much easier.

ROBERTSON: Where did they go?

POWELL: They went very widely indeed. Japan was probably the main gainer. Germany was certainly the biggest importer from South Africa in Europe. Coal was the biggest single import.

ROBERTSON: Singapore, too.

MOBERLY: As I understand it, financial sanctions came from the banks, not from the Governments.268 All the measures agreed between governments were only moderately effective.

267

Inkosi (or Chief) Mangosuthu Buthelezi, South African Zulu leader. Chief of the Buthelezi, 1953-.

End Loans to Southern Africa (ELTSA), established in 1974, campaigned for the end to apartheid through the imposition of effective financial sanctions. In 1994 ELTSA was transformed into the Southern Africa Economic Research Unit (SAERU). A particular target for ELTSA, was Barclays Bank, which was the largest UK investor in South Africa. Barclays announced its intention to disinvest in 1986 by selling its business to 268

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MARKS: It was American pressure more than British pressure that cracked it.

ROBERTSON: Eventually.

POWELL: There were two waves of financial sanctions. I am stretching my memory but, we saw the first wave in 1984-85. That was diffused quite quickly when the Chairman of the Swiss Bank came in and everything was settled between the banks and the South African Government by the end of 1985. The second wave was led by the Americans in about 1987 onwards.

MARKS: It was the refusal to roll over South African debt that was quite critical.

MOBERLY: We are really dealing with the heart of the issue: sanctions and isolation. Was isolation a good way in which to achieve change in South Africa? I want to quote three sentences from someone who has a definite view. He was the man who instituted change. FW de Klerk269 said: On the whole, I believe sanctions did more to delay a process of transformation than they did to advance it. The reality is that isolation, sanctions and unbridled criticism seldom persuade people to change their positions. In our case, they created a natural resistance among white South African individuals and companies and often made them less willing to consider change. Most importantly, sanctions impeded economic growth.270 I believe that Mr de Klerk was far and away the important change factor in South Africa. He had a point of view but, after all, he was the man who had to change his position to enable what then happened.271 MARKS: You must now explain why he changed his position. If all that isolation and sanctions were driving people into a corner, why did he change his position at precisely that time?

ROBERTSON: And so unexpectedly. Everyone thought that the struggle would go for another 20 years at least.

POWELL: Another Minister — for Constitutional Affairs, I think — came to London to see Mrs Thatcher once or twice. I think that his name was Viljoen.272 Forgive me for not remembering better. He had a great influence on de Klerk.

MARKS: De Klerk’s brother273 may have had some influence, as well.

Can we go back a bit? So far, we have been quoting de Klerk and that is interesting, but who were the contacts with exiled South African opposition groups? To what extent was there any contact with them? Lord Howe, you have written about your only meeting with Anglo-American plc, a British multinational. Also see ‘Barclays Bank – Too little too late’ in K Buenor Hadjor, Africa In An Era of Crisis (1990), pp.189-91.

269 FW de Klerk, South African President, 1989-94.

270 FW de Klerk, The Last Trek-A New Beginning: The Autobiography (1999), pp. 70-1.

271 Also see FW De Klerk, ‘Why South Africa owes a huge debt to the Iron Lady’, Evening Standard, 16 April 2013 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

272 Gerrit Van Niekerk Viljoen (1926-2009), South African Minister of Constitutional Development, 1989-92.

273 Willem De Klerk, South African journalist and a co-founder of the Democratic Party.

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Oliver Tambo.274 That was quite late in the day and in the face of considerable opposition.

Were there contacts between the opposition and other members of the Foreign Office lower down?

HOWE: I should have thought so.

POWELL: There were at desk officer level in London.

HOWE: In London, yes.

MARKS: The most important contact was Buthelezi.

HOWE: That was one of the important contacts, but Oliver Tambo was another. He was then President of the ANC, and that formally linked him with the continuing ‘armed struggle’.

When I spoke to him, my main purpose was to secure his agreement that that should not be continued. He was clearly disposed that way himself and, for a long time, the armed struggle was conducted only against telegraph posts and buildings. It was when people became involved that we were reluctant to maintain open contact with the ANC. All experience of parallel situations, such as in Ireland, demonstrate that in the end one way or another we must have access to movement even if it does contain that aspect.

POWELL: Buthelezi was not the most important contact. I do not think that anything he said influenced our policy. Margaret Thatcher’s point in seeing him was that it was unfair that no one else would see him. Everyone was opening their arms to the ANC, yet no one was listening to a person who represented a strand of opinion in South Africa. She took the view that that was not right and that she would see him.275 COX: Throughout the 1980s, I was living in Northern Ireland. I was observing events in South Africa as one tended to do because parallels were constantly being drawn. To what degree were the views of Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative Government overall in part shaped with the background of an on-going conflict in Northern Ireland and terrorism? The IRA was not defined as Marxist in any sense. It seemed outside of the Cold War in some ways that the ANC did not. Did that shape the idea of not talking to the ANC and trying to keep a distance?

HOWE: There must have been a conscious or unconscious read-across, and I coined it in the sense that Mrs Thatcher was not enthusiastic about three-letter words — [General Laughter.]

— IRA,276 PLO,277 ANC. There was no equivalent representation of people under repression in the Soviet Union, so it was much easier to identify with the cause there.

One of the first things that the Conservative Government did when we came in was

274

Oliver Tambo (1917-93), President of the African National Congress, 1967-91.

Buthelezi attended Thatcher’s funeral in April 2013 and his office issued the following statement: ‘Baroness Thatcher supported Buthelezi’s call for the rejection of economic disinvestment and international sanctions against our country, which both leaders recognised would only hurt the poorest of the poor. Like Buthelezi, Thatcher recognised that the abdication of principles only leads to decay.’ http://www.thesouthafrican.com/ news/buthelezi-and-de-klerk-to-attend-thatchers-funeral.htm [Accessed 6 May 2014].

276 The Irish Republican Army.

277 Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

275

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the Venice Declaration on the Middle East,278 prepared by Peter Carrington. It acknowledged that we should be dealing with the PLO. POWELL: Yes. To balance that, there were several economic summits. G5s became G7s279 and there were declarations about not talking to terrorists, without naming who they were.

That was the staple diet at the time.

HOWE: That did not stop them happening.

POWELL: Of course. We are talking about Governments.

MARKS: It is interesting that the definition of terrorists does not extend to states that are terrorist. South Africa was a very violent country in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of the violence was perpetrated by a South African state against its own population, but there seems no mechanism for actually thinking about terrorist states.

HOWE: The whole of the worldwide campaign in the promotion and respect of human rights is directed against governmental terrorism, whether in the form of rendition, torture or other ingenious ways that Governments deal with such matters. We cannot get away with the idea that— MARKS: Except that we cannot do very much about it.

HOWE: Exactly. That is all that we can do.

MARKS: I was making the point that you made in your autobiography that, on the one hand, we do not talk to terrorists when they are in opposition but, on the other hand, we do talk to them when they are running a Government. You said that Margaret Thatcher never thought about the violence that was being done to black South Africans, and that her concern was not to talk to terrorists. Terrorists were defined as the opponents of a Government that were actually from Sharpeville in 1960 through the Soweto uprising in 1976 through the uprisings in the 1980s and the extraordinary so-called Civil Co-operation Bureau280 — one of those marvellous terms that the South Africans had — and police squads that were murdering dissidents who were not necessarily in favour of arms struggle. Police squads were disposing of people in Bantustans.

HOWE: The whole framework of our case was against the horrors that followed from or were part of apartheid, including that sort of treatment. We were no more enthusiastic about police behaviour at Sharpeville than anyone else.

MARKS: But you went on talking to them. All I am saying is that one makes distinctions between talking to terrorists.

278

In June 1980 the 9 countries of the European Economic Community (as it was then known) and the Palestinian Liberation Organisation issued an agreement known as ‘The Venice Declaration’.

279 The G7 was the meeting of the finance ministers from Canada, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, United Kingdom, and United States of America.

280 Civil Co-operation Bureau was a death squad. See http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/covert-operations [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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HOWE: Partly because it is the Government who have the power to do so. The Government can change things. We would not remain silent in the face of what is happening at Chechnya,281 for example.

POWELL: The world does not work unless Governments talk to each other.

MARKS: But it also does not work if Governments do not talk to the enemies of those Governments who they may disagree with.

POWELL: I thought that we had just been saying that they were talking to them at lower levels and discretely.

MARKS: At very low levels, yes.

DR SUE ONSLOW: In your recollections, how important was Sir Laurens van der Post282 and his contacts with Mrs Thatcher?

HOWE: I do not think that they were very important. There were quite a few of them and they were by means related entirely to South Africa. Indeed, I should have thought that only a maximum of 20 per cent were to do with South Africa. Laurens van der Post had his own romanticised view of South Africa and the role of the Zulus, which was absolutely true. He used to talk to the Prince of Wales at great length on many different subjects, but the canard that her views on South Africa were shaped by Laurens van der Post is frankly absurd.283 ROBERTSON: During the period, the Commonwealth had very wide contacts with South Africans of all kinds. We had set up a committee to train South Africans and Rhodesians in exile, and Britain never had a problem in giving generously to that scheme. Lots of young people were trained in preparation for the day when they would return to their countries. We worked closely with the Anti-Apartheid Movement284 and we allowed ANC leaders such as Thabo Mbeki285 to have access to Commonwealth Leaders and Heads of Government meetings. I personally gave Mbeki and others media accreditation, but that was a secret because we knew Mrs Thatcher would probably be incandescent.

POWELL: Mrs Thatcher was incandescent 80 per cent of the time anyway!

MARKS: It was not special to South Africa.

HOWE: Can I put the Commonwealth in perspective? Many aspects of the Commonwealth were of huge advantage. When I was Chancellor, we had Commonwealth Finance Minister meetings lasting four or five days. All Commonwealth Finance Ministers were in London for one of them, and we had a banquet at the Tower of London. When I told my colleagues about 281

Referring to incidents that had taken place during the Second Chechen War, 1999-2009.

Sir Laurens van der Post (1906-96), author (notably The Lost World of the Kalahari (1958) and The Heart of the Hunter (1961)) and BBC television personality.

283 Many commentators have suggested that Van de Post, who had been Thatcher’s neighbour when she lived on Flood Street, Chelsea, was a significant influence on her. See J Campbell, The Iron Lady Vol. II, Europe and the World (2003), p. 325.

284 For the history and the archives of the Anti-Apartheid Movement see http://www.aamarchives.org/ [Accessed 6 May 2014].

285 Thabo Mbeki, South African President, 1999-2008.

282

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that the following day, they said that if we had had 47 Finance Ministers locked up, why the hell did we let them out!

ROBERTSON: There was an undercurrent of good will.

HOWE: It was not only good will. When I then went to IMF meetings, I knew far more about the economic problems of the world than any American Treasury Secretary, for example. To be on terms with India was very perceptive. The other example was the New Delhi Commonwealth Meeting in 1983 when the arms control conflict between east and west was at its most difficult. To see Margaret Thatcher addressing Commonwealth Heads of Government then was convincing them of the sincerity of our commitment and that of the United States to find a way in which to tackle the problem. The Commonwealth, with its huge forum of international relations, was important. That is why we should not allow the South African politics to colour it too much.

POWELL: The tragedy was that so much of each Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting was taken up with South Africa. They could have all been more positive if it were not for that.

ROBERTSON: A tragedy.

SAUNDERS: Can I introduce an angle that interests me especially in relation to Britain and South Africa? Namibia is not part of the South African issue, but in the mid-1980s Chester Crocker286 was taking the lead and Britain seemed to take a back seat in respect of Namibia.

Is that correct?

HOWE: Chester Crocker, an American non-professional diplomat, was extremely effective in building bridges in southern Africa. For example, he persuaded us — and through us, the United States — about the South African financing of RENAMO287 to damage FRELIMO288 in Mozambique. We were wholly against that after the part played by Machel289 in the Zimbabwe negotiations. On my first visit to Washington, I said to Reagan290 that we must recognise RENAMO as a poisonous thing rather than something to be encouraged. That was an important aspect. It was an area that we tended to leave to the Americans partly because of the Cuban participation in Angola and Mozambique.

POWELL: That is broadly right. The one exception was that Margaret Thatcher was actually in Namibia on the day that it achieved independence.291 HOWE: She played an important part.

286

Chester Crocker, US Secretary of State for African Affairs, 1981-7.

Resistência Nacional Moçambicana (Mozambican National Resistance) or RENAMO fought against the FRELIMO in the Civil War in Mozambique, 1975-92.

288 Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (Liberation Front of Mozambique) or Frelimo was formed in 1962 to end Portuguese rule and has led Mozambique since independence in 1975.

289 Samora Machel (1933-86), Mozambican President, 1975-86.

290 Ronald Reagan (1911-2004), US President, 1981-8.

291 Thatcher visited the country in April 1989, the year before independence, on the day when the United Nations settlement came into force. The purpose of her visit was (and continues to be) viewed with suspicion by the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the main Namibian independence organisation. See ‘Thatcher no friend of Namibia’, Windhoek Observer, 12 April 2013, http://www.observer.com.na/national/1288-thatcher-no-friend-of-namibia [Accessed 6 May 2014].

287

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POWELL: And stopped the South Africans from coming out of the barracks and trying to overturn it straightaway.

SAUNDERS: I think that she actually allowed the South African to come out — POWELL: You are right, to come out without overturning it straightaway! Those things seem long ago. They did not do what they had intended to do, which was to reinstitute South Africa in control immediately.

HOWE: It was lucky that Margaret Thatcher happened to be there on the same day as Pik Botha.292 SAUNDERS: You would agree that, in the mid-1980s, the Americans took the lead on the Namibian issue and the British Government tended to take a back seat.

MARKS: We have about five minutes until we break. Is this not a moment when we can take questions from the floor to break matters up a little, as Christopher has broken the ice? There was a question that Michael wanted to ask that really belongs to what we are talking about now, which is the whole Cold War aspect.

[Lord Powell left the room at this point of the discussion.]

DR M.D. KANDIAH: Participants have already mentioned the on-going Cold War. When Margaret Thatcher and Reagan come into the power, it intensified. Governments such as South Africa felt initially that they could benefit out of that situation. You are saying that that is not the case. What about defence matters and strategic issues in the southern African region? You have already referred to Namibia and Angola, the southern African region still remained important for broader world strategy and defence. Did that fact play into some of your debates, for example, Lord Howe, or in those at the Embassy?

HOWE: As everywhere when the Cold War was so dominant, we were anxious at the advance of communism in any part of the world. That was what the Cold War was about and was bound to be a factor, if there were a perceived or misperceived link between the ANC and communism. We were trying to break that in people’s perception. It was such an important feature in the perception of the South African Government. Their whole presentation of the worst aspect of the ANC was Communist built and I do not see how we were not infected by that, but it was not overwhelming.

292

According to Thatcher’s biographer, John Campbell: ‘Mrs Thatcher met the South African Foreign Minister Pik Botha at Windhoek airport and told him forcibly that if South Africa Acted unilaterally “the whole world will be against you – led by me”.’ (Thatcher: Vol.2, p.330.) At a press conference in Windhoek she stated: ‘nothing must stand in the way of implementing the United Nations Resolution on the independence of Namibia. South Africa, Angola and Cuba are signatories to that Agreement. It is in their interests and the interests of the whole international community that this Agreement go ahead. … We must not be put off by a challenge to the United Nations' authority at present. We must deal with it decisively and through the Security Council and the international community. We are all behind that Agreement. Its implementation will have an enormous influence on the whole future of affairs in South Africa. Anything which flouted it would be disastrous.’ http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/ 107626 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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ONSLOW: Were there debates within the Foreign Office about the ‘Total National Strategy’ of South Africa to deal with ‘Total Onslaught’? I am using the phraseology that was dominant within the South African Government at the time, in the State Security Council.293 HOWE: I honestly cannot remember the phrase.

MOBERLY: We know, again from de Klerk, that the end of communism in Europe — the end of the Cold War — coincided with the very moment that de Klerk became party leader for six months while PW Botha was still President. PW then stands down all together, de Klerk becomes President and his view clearly is the end of the Cold War. The end of the total onslaught idea made it much easier for him to move on the internal front in South Africa. It certainly was a factor in the South Africa Government’s thinking in those apartheid years.

SAUNDERS: Why did the British Government in the mid-1980s not do more to persuade PW Botha that the ‘Total Onslaught’ was a figment of his imagination and that there was not a plan from Moscow to take over the whole of Southern Africa? You must have known that that was not the case. Did you really press him on that or try to persuade him of it?

HOWE: It was part of our general case. We were also anxious to emphasise that it was not the primary motive of the ANC to be seen in that form.

MARKS: Was there discussion of the possibility that apartheid itself was creating the fertile ground for the spread of Communism in southern Africa?

HOWE: I would think so, yes. Together with the potential impact of Cuban influence, we would have been anxious to avoid infection. It was an additional reason for wanting to remove — MARKS: And that was explicitly discussed — HOWE: The grievance contribution that apartheid represented, yes.

SAUNDERS: I want to ask about the secret talks that began in Britain at a certain point at Mells Park294 between Mbeki and people from South Africa. Did the British Government play a role in facilitating those secret talks?

HOWE: I cannot remember the timing of that at all.

ONSLOW: The talks were initiated in mid-1985.

SAUNDERS: Was the Commonwealth involved at all?

293

See S Dubow, Apartheid, 1948-1994 (2014), pp.200-3. And see Apartheid Museum’s chronology: http://www.apartheidmuseum.org/sites/default/files/files/downloads/Learners%20book%20Chapter5.pdf [Accessed 6 May 2014].

294 Mells Park, near Frome, Somerset, was the estate of the Horner family from the dissolution of the monasteries until the First World War, when the male line was extinguished. On 18 Jan. 2009, a Channel 4 dramatisation of these events in Mells Parks was broadcast, called Endgame, an adaptation of the final chapter of R Harvey’s Fall of Apartheid: The Inside Story from Smuts to Mbeki (2001).

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ROBERTSON: Peripherally. We knew that it was happening, but our view was that anything we could do to facilitate discussion was okay.

HOWE: You are stirring my memory.

PROFESSOR MICHAEL PARSONS: What would you like to say about the role that Europe played in all of this?

HOWE: It was as important component in the meetings partly because the Foreign Affairs Council met once a month, whereas the Commonwealth met only once a year. It was a regular item on the agenda. While I was visiting South Africa, I was doing it as the President of the Foreign Affairs Council there. We had regular meetings about once a year between SADC295 states and the European and Foreign Ministers, which were very helpful in strengthening the case for effective European policies. Within the European Council itself, there was dissent on the nature of sanctions with the Germans and Portuguese.

ROBERTSON: At the mini summit in 1986,296 at which you were present, Lord Howe, when seven or eight Governments were looking at the EPG report and there was a ban on air links. The Commonwealth agreed a ban on the import of agricultural products, no new investment, no new bank loans and the termination of double taxation agreements, and Mrs Thatcher agreed only to the voluntary ban on tourist promotion and new investment. She did say, however, if that the EEC concurred on a ban on iron, steel and coal she would go along with it. That was the first time that we had heard her bring in the EEC, as it was then. She also made it clear that she would go along with any measures adopted by the EEC and said that she would be effective and realistic about anything that the Commonwealth proposed.

Mrs Thatcher challenged the findings of the EPG and insisted even at that late stage that South Africa was involved in a process of reform. By then, we were seeing green shoots of change in South Africa. The USA had come aboard on sanctions. We felt that South Africa had been effectively isolated. We had done many studies as I have said. We heard that black people were being invited to the British Embassy in Cape Town to receptions. That may not have been true, but we could see change coming. We were pretty certain that there would be change in South Africa and that our insistence on isolation and sanctions, talking to the liberation movements and helping to educate people had been the right approach to take. But the shoots did not have time to grow into big trees. Vancouver was in 1987, and by 1990 things had changed.

HOWE: It was the arrival of de Klerk on the scene.

ROBERTSON: When you came to Vancouver, you came with a package of help for the frontline states. Do you remember that?297 HOWE: I had forgotten!

ROBERTSON: That was the first time that we thought that Britain was beginning to accept that change was coming. We were very grateful.

295

Southern African Development Community.

The 1986 CHOGM was a special meeting, held in London, with the specific intention of discussing the EPG report.

297 http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106952 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

296

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HOWE: We all, in one way or another, were trying to something to bring it about. We did not like marching for ever down the sanctions road. The Commonwealth contribution was different from ours, but it was in parallel with it. We often tried to get synthesis and harmony between the two. It was awkward having one bundle of sanctions and then another bundle. It was the collective impact of all such things that precipitated the change for which South Africa was becoming ripe.

MOBERLY: The collective impact of all such things — the South African view — has been subsequently that the internal pressures were more important than the external pressures, but that is another big subject that we shall perhaps come to later.

HOWE: Without the internal working.

MOBERLY: They needed both.

ROBERTSON: Everything contributed.

MARKS: That is a comfortable conclusion. I am not sure whether we should have such a conclusion but it is nice place to stop on for quarter of an hour for a tea break.

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Britain and South Africa: 1985-91 Session 2 [Lord Powell of Bayswater was not in the room when the witness seminar reconvened.]

PROFESSOR SHULA MARKS: I know that Professor Cox would like to start off with a letter from Denis MacShane MP.298 PROFESSOR MICHAEL COX: One of the people who was going to participate this afternoon, but who sends his apologies, is Denis MacShane, Labour MP. As you know, Denis was much involved in the Labour movement and his early work was very much connected to what was going on in South Africa at the time. The letter is contained in your material, but I thought that I would read it out very quickly to give a parallel perspective. His perspective is from that of an active trade unionist at the time in the 1980s connected to and involved with South Africa. It states: ‘I was very active in South Africa in the 1980s, travelling regularly to work with black, South African independent trade unions. I co-authored a book Power!—South Africa’s Black Unions, which came out in 1984.299 I worked for the International Metalworkers Federation based in Geneva, which was the co-ordinating body for all industrial unions.

American, German, Nordic and British unions all took an interest in supporting the development of independent trade unionism in South Africa. It was my view that the unions showed that apartheid could not co-exist with nascent mass consumption capitalism underway in South Africa. By going on strike, by organising, by electing leaders like Cyril Ramaphosa,300 by rejecting fakes like Chief Buthelezi, by rejecting external Stalinist Communist control of trade unions, by building extensive links with European and North American trade unions—a more powerful force in the 1980s than today—the black, including the so-called coloured and Indian workers, demonstrated to (a) themselves, (b) the world, (c) the Southern African white minority their ability to take control of their own destiny.’

Interesting issues now come up: ‘The trade union movement in South Africa was inspired by Polish Solidarity— Solidarność —which did not sit easily, of course, with the Communist elements inside the ANC. They also looked to Lula’s301 trade union—the Brazilian trade union leader—and to the six-week general strike and occupation of the union movement in South Korea in 1987, which helped push the South Korean military out of Government. We sought to use the ILO as a forum, which even if South Africa was excluded from the UN could, by using its tripartite nature, have an influence with employers in South Africa, multinational firms in Germany…I hoped to organise a top peer QC to go to South Africa to defend Moses Mayekiso302, the metalworking union leader, and working with South African labour lawyers like Halton Cheadle,303 we sought to use the law to promote black worker rights.’

298

Denis MacShane, Labour MP for Rotherham, 1994–2012. Policy Director, International Metalworkers Federation, 1980-92. He was invited to the witness seminar and wished to attend but found that he could not attend on the day. Instead he sent a statement to be read out.

299 Denis MacShane, Martin Plaut and David Ward, Power!: Black Workers, Their Unions and The Struggle for Freedom in South Africa (1984).

300 Cyril Ramaphosa, organiser of the South African National Union of Mineworkers (NUM).

301 Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commonly known as Lula, President of Brazil, 2003-11.

302 Moses Mayekiso, Shop steward and later Secretary General of the Metal and Allied Workers Union. For details of his imprisonment and trail see: http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/moses-jongizizwe-mayekiso [Accessed 6 May 2014] 303 For details of Halton Cheadle career see http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/michael-halton-cheadle.

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I shall jump a little here. Denis MacShane goes on and said that in all that process, they regarded: ‘the British Government as an ally of apartheid. We received no help or support at all from Mrs Thatcher’s Administration. Whereas President Reagan named an African American as Ambassador to South Africa304 as symbolic and important and some European Governments and diplomatic services were supportive of independently led unions, the ideological venom against trade unions that lay at the heart of the Conservative Government in the 1980s—’ I am using MacShane’s words— ‘meant that British diplomats, whatever their personal views on apartheid, were irrelevant.

Again and again, I asked black trade union leaders what contact they had with British diplomats and what invitations they received and was told that the UK Embassy was seen as representing Mrs Thatcher and the Tory support for apartheid. The Young Conservative leaders wore badges at the Tory Party Conference saying, ‘Hang Mandela’ and Conservative MPs routinely described the ANC as a terrorist organisation. Mrs Thatcher’s notorious Chequers meeting with apartheid leaders caused shock waves of disgust amongst black union leaders at the time when the US Congress was taking much tougher sanctions against actions signed into law by President Reagan. Geoffrey Howe’s memoirs confirmed—’ his words, Geoffrey— ‘the shame he felt at how even limited measures conceded by Mrs Thatcher at Commonwealth Conferences were rendered nugatory by her later declarations and actions.’

Denis MacShane goes on to say: ‘If you read Lord Howe’s memoirs — and I do no doubt his personal decency and horror of racism — you will see that in all of his discussions on South Africa he only met white South Africans. In the 1980s, the British Government and the ruling Conservatives were seen as hostile to black trade unions and supporters open or sotto voce of apartheid. Britain could have been the world leader against apartheid…but Mrs Thatcher was seen as apartheid’s best friend in the northern democracies.’

That letter trenchantly and clearly states Denis’s point from the view of in independent trade union leader at the time. I do not know whether anyone wants to comment on it, but I thought that it would be another contribution to perceptions.

LORD HOWE OF ABERAVON: A clock that strikes 13 times thereby casts doubt on all the rest of its evidence.

COX: You can be wrong every time, but you have to be right once. I thought that I would throw those sentiments expressed in the letter into the verbal contributions.

MARKS: We hear Denis MacShane’s view of the relationship of the Government with the trade union movement. I do not know whether anyone wishes to comment on that. Should we look at the other side of the equation because I suspect that it was equally firmly held by MacShane and the anti-apartheid grouping that at root the British policy was determined by economic factors? Do we need to probe that a little more? Both Lord Powell and Lord Howe have alluded to the significance of British-South Africa economic ties. To what extent were there connections in the Foreign Office between HMG with leading South African businessmen or with British businessmen with interests in South Africa?

HOWE: There was no formal structure, as far as I know. We were in touch with British business as the British trade unionists. We would have held discussions, for example, about 304

Edward J Perkins, US Ambassador to South Africa, 1986-9.

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no more trade promotion exhibitions and the feasibility of sanctions insofar as they were introduced.

MARKS: Would there have been discussions with the Treasury or the Department of Trade and Industry?

HOWE: I was never conscious at any discussion on South Africa or apartheid of any economic pressure being directed at us, whereas in a similar situation in Zimbabwe when Ian Smith305 was there, there were clearly discussions about it then.

SIR PATRICK MOBERLY: We are looking at two bits, one of which is the black trade unions. In retrospect, it is interesting that the South African Government authorised the creation of black trade unions in 1979 because they became a very powerful force — a political voice — for the blacks. There were only two ways in which blacks could really make their voice heard: one was through the Church and people like Bishop Tutu and the other was through black trade unions. My guess is that the South African Government rather regretted giving that opening to a powerful movement.

It was suggested in Denis MacShane’s letter that the Embassy had nothing to do with the unions. That was more than 20 years ago, and I am sure that not only the Ambassador but others would have done what they could, but those black trade union leaders did not want to have anything to do with the British Embassy for the reason given. Of course, we represented Mrs Thatcher and the British Government. That was the Embassy’s job and the trade unions regarded her as a supporter of apartheid — wrongly, but that was their view. I remember trying to set up a meeting with Cyril Ramaphosa, but it never materialised. I am quite sure that he just did not want to have that contact. It was not us who were neglecting them, but there was a gulf.

The other side of the matter was the business community. It was largely, although not entirely, white. Its leaders were certainly an important part of the local scene. It was not just that business and industry are important anywhere in a place such as South Africa. Banks and the insurance companies were very important players and they had a chance to influence the political debate. It is part of an Ambassador’s job to keep in touch with such people, and I hope that I did so. It was early days when I was there. There was not that much prospect of a real change beyond fairly small changes, but I remember the Chairman of Anglo American, Gavin Relly,306 asking me to its offices in Johannesburg where one or two other top business people were working on a scheme that would enable negotiations to start. That was all part of the background contacts with the ANC in Britain, with South African business people.

MARKS: What date are you talking about roughly?

MOBERLY: I should think that it was about 1986. The particular idea did not take off, but it is an example of what was trying to be done. There were others who were interested. I had no difficulty in accessing those people. Some industries there were subsidiaries of British firms so there was naturally contact with them. It was what any Ambassador in any country should be doing rather than putting in action special private diplomacy.

HOWE: What Denis MacShane said has been reminded of other aspects. When we were in Opposition, my wife and I visited South Africa. I did not meet any black leaders at all. I went there as a guest of the South African Foundation and the meetings that were arranged fell 305 306

Ian Smith (1919-2007), Prime Minister of Rhodesia, 1965-79.

Gavin Relly (1926-99), Chairman of Anglo American plc, 1982–90.

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through in every case, whether by accident I do not know. In the end, we made contact with Mrs Suzman’s307 agent and by arrangements with him we were introduced to a black leader in Soweto and were able to go there in her car and meet people. We turned away when we saw a police car or other authorities come along. I got a real feel for what apartheid was. That was in 1975.

My wife308 wrote a report for the Equal Opportunities Commission of which she was Deputy Chairman in this country forecasting what eventually happened in Soweto.

Unfortunately, we cannot find the report, but we were both very moved by it. I met Tambo only once at Chevening.309 You would have seen the essay about him. We were both extremely delighted to meet each other. Margaret Thatcher was not in favour of maintaining that line of contact. Lynda Chalker310 had meetings with him as well.

When I made my two visits in 1986, I wanted to see African leaders but the ANC would not meet me. It was sad.

MARKS: Was it the ANC in 1986 or the United Democratic Front (UDF)?311 HOWE: I cannot remember. I think that it was the ANC. MARKS: The ANC internally would meet.

MOBERLY: The ANC was banned.

MARKS: Yes. I suppose that, by 1986, there was such a stand-off between the two sides that we can understand the ANC. I think that there was a real feeling that there was no hope in talking to the British Government at that stage.

HOWE: I have another trivial footnote. When the meeting took place at Chequers in 1984, I did not dare to disclose to anyone present that my son was marching down Whitehall. When I passed that on to John Leahy312 a few weeks later, he said that his daughter was doing the same thing.

MARKS: It was a wonderful generational divide. It was not only the Young Conservatives who were saying, ‘Hang Mandela’. There was a real generational divide. One of the strong things that the Anti-Apartheid Movement did in the 1980s was to mobilise the youth very imaginatively. If we are looking at the impact of South Africa on this country as opposed to its impact on South Africa, the Anti-Apartheid Movement has been regarded perhaps next to CND313 as one of the most original and innovative popular, grass root movements that this country has seen.

307

Helen Suzman (1917-2009). Member of the South African Parliament, 1953-89.

Elspeth Howe (suo jure Baroness Howe of Idlicote), Deputy Chairman, Equal Opportunities Commission,1975–9.

309 Formerly the country seat of the Earls Stanhope, since the late-1970s Chevening has been used the country home of the Foreign Secretary.

310 Lynda Chalker (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey), Minister of State for Overseas Development, Foreign Office, 1989–97.

311 The United Democratic Front (UDF), intended to unite all black resistance groups, was founded in 1983.

312 Sir John Leahy, Ambassador to South Africa, 1979-82. He was invited to attend the witness seminar but declined.

313 The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) was formed in 1957.

308

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COX: I was not living in London at the time, but I came over and wondered whether I had any other friends except South Africans. Everywhere I went, there seemed to be South Africans. The overwhelming majority of the South African community in London was antiapartheid. The movement’s impact politically in London and in places outside, such as Glasgow where I used to live, was quite huge and sustained. I do not know what the numbers are now, but at the time I think that about 200,000 people from South Africa were living in London.

MARKS: But there were not only South Africans. I am thinking that it is more significant in a sense as a political grass roots movement in this country than for mobilising South Africans.

ROBERTSON: But it succeeded, unlike CND. Anti-apartheid obtained its objectives: the end of apartheid. It was a great movement, wonderful people. It was an adornment to this country. All the ideas about liberty and fair play— MARKS: And non-racism — ROBERTSON: Yes. MARKS: That probably changed racial attitudes in this country almost more than anything else.

ROBERTSON: Absolutely.

ONSLOW: How did the Foreign Office regard the anti-apartheid movement?

HOWE: We were in contact with it all the time. We could not avoid it.

MARKS: Even over the dinner table.

ROBERTSON: We would hear from the children.

HOWE: We were constantly asked to meet representatives of the movement at different levels at different times. We did not meet everyone, but the doors were open. We had no doubt about the need to check apartheid.

[Lord Powell rejoined the discussion.]

ONSLOW: I have read that Archbishop Huddleston314 had a meeting with Mrs Thatcher on the evening of PW Botha’s visit to this country, and that parallel to her discussion with him at Chequers there was a mass demonstration in London.315 Did you regard it as an important force for change?

HOWE: The demonstration?

314

Trevor Huddleston (1913–98), Archbishop of the Indian Ocean, 1976–84.

See Huddleston to Thatcher, 2 June 1984, Anti-Apartheid Archives http://www.aamarchives.org/browse-thearchive/government/file/3758-gov27-letter-from-trevor-huddleston-to-margaretthatcher.html?tmpl=component&start=20 [Accessed 10 Nov. 2014] 315

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ONSLOW: No, the Anti-Apartheid Movement itself.

HOWE: Of course. It impressed upon us what a lot of people thought. We were not anxious to preserve apartheid. The one link that irritated those of us who wanted faster change was the enthusiasm with which Margaret presented a perfectly rational case against sanctions and which for so long identified her with apartheid. To some extent, it gave a sense of false security to the Bothas, which is why the impact on PW at the Chequers meeting was so important. He did not expect to hear such words coming from her, nor the letters that you have. When I met him during his two successive visits, he really felt that I was betraying what he thought, which was Margaret Thatcher had been somehow acting as his bulwark. It was not the case.

I do not know whether you have read my memoirs when I referred to my evening with Pik Botha when we drank far too much, and he changed his position. I felt that he was a genuine man. He had been the UN Representative before he became Foreign Minister. He recognised that change would have to come. Yet he would suddenly swing round and say, ‘Well, you are not going to impose it on us.’ When I was there subsequently for the CODESA316 Conference much later in the 1990s, we were on very good terms. There were probably many other equivocal people like that.

ONSLOW: Lord Powell, what did Mrs Thatcher herself make of the anti-apartheid movement?

POWELL: She was not exactly wildly enthusiastic about it! She thought that there were better ways of dealing with apartheid than noisy demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. If I am honest, I would say that she regarded it much like she regarded CND — something that was highly politically inspired, was closely associated with socialism and left-wing socialism — in practice, not in intent — so it was thus part of the political opposition to much of what she believed in and was trying to achieve. She would have associated it more with that than with anything in South Africa.

MARKS: You missed the beginning of the discussion. We were looking at the letter from Denis MacShane in which he expressed how the trade union movement saw Mrs Thatcher.

POWELL: I shall look at it.

COX: Have a stiff drink before you do!

POWELL: I know Denis very well. I would not be at all surprised by anything he writes.

MARKS: Denis MacShane got into it through looking at the trade unions and the extent to which not surprisingly there was a confrontation on that front. He also asked questions about the broader anti-apartheid struggle at a grass roots level. I asked earlier about the role of business in both countries in influencing British policy. Do you want to say a bit more other than Mrs Thatcher really saw such people as an unnecessary and noisy accompaniment to her politics?

POWELL: Let me try to express matters better. Mrs Thatcher certainly saw it as a legitimate thing to do. Obviously, everyone in our society would say that it is legitimate to demonstrate 316

Convention for a Democratic South Africa.

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and demand changes. She thought that what they were proposing was wrong in a sense that they were proposing sanctions against South Africa and she thought that their criticisms of her were unjustified. She thought that many of the people who were involved were her natural political opponents. She tended to politicise matters in her mind, rather than take them seriously as something that affected the Government’s policy.

Business had quite an effect on the South African Government. That was where the principal effect was felt, not particularly on British policy. I do not remember a lot of discussions — to be honest, I do not remember any — when people from business came to see Mrs Thatcher to talk about South Africa. However, she was well aware of the discussions between South African business leaders and the ANC, for example, and thought that that was a very good step and that it was exactly the thing that ought to be happening. She believed that capitalism was the best model for South Africa, because it would produce prosperity there.

One matter that concerned her in her meeting with President Mandela in such august surroundings was that he still seemed to spout 1947 LSE doctrine on the economy.

COX: That was 1947. We now have Howard Davies317 as Director. He stops us doing that.

POWELL: She said that she understood perfectly well, because when Mandela had been in prison, that was the general view. The world had since moved on.

ROBERTSON: And was now nationalising the banks, as in the ANC Charter.

COX: How did Mandela respond to that?

POWELL: It was a most extraordinary meeting.318 Few meetings that I have attended have made a more profound impact on me. It was the pure dignity of Mandela and his lack of reproach or bitterness for anything or anyone, and his extremely courteous manner, and I think that she was deeply impressed and moved by it.

COX: Did Mandela have strong economic views? Did he accept that some form of socialist planning was necessary? Was he then convinced otherwise?

POWELL: No, he was not converted by a single meeting. He used language in describing economic policy that was frankly extremely dated. It was understandably dated, but it was dated. Margaret Thatcher explained to him why she thought that it was no longer appropriate and he did not counter that. He listened to her, absorbed it and he did what he did.319 HOWE: The most interesting, trivial registration of Nelson Mandela’s reaction was his first question to the EPG when he asked whether or not Don Bradman320 was still alive.321 317

Sir Howard Davies, Director, LSE, 2003–11.

In July 1990.

319 See Guardian’s US Embassy Cables Series: http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cablesdocuments/359 and http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/28/nelson-mandela-margaret-thatcher-meeting [Accessed 6 May 2014]. Also see Richard Dowden’s blog entry for 15 April 2013: http://www.royalafricansociety.org/blog/mrs-thatcher-and-africa [Accessed 6 May 2014] According to Dowden, Thatcher told him in 1999 that she did not recall meeting Mandela.

320 Sir Donald Bradman (1908–2001), Australian cricketer.

321 See Malcolm Fraser’s tribute to Mandela, ‘Nelson Mandela: “By far the greatest man”,’ 6 Dec. 2013. http://www.smh.com.au/comment/nelson-mandela-by-far-the-greatest-man-20131206-2yup4.html [Accessed 6 May 2014].

318

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MARKS: A wonderful story. It was alleged in MacShane’s letter that you met no black South African leaders. However, there were meetings with Buthelezi, so it is not quite that there were no such meetings. Was the Buthelezi meeting because he was against sanctions?

Was he prepared to speak to you because he was the darling of British business, the present party, and the links through him and Suzman? You said that it was a canard that Laurens van der Post had any influence on him, but Buthelezi was in very close touch with Van der Post. I recall in the late 1980s driving to the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and listening to the 5 o’clock news programme and being very startled to hear Margaret Thatcher say, ‘I am a Zulu’ at the Holiday Inn. She might have said, ‘We are a Zulu’, but I cannot vouch for that.322 POWELL: I take no responsibility for anything she might have said after 1990.

MARKS: What were the connections with Buthelezi? By 1988, it was clear that he was in collusion with the South African Government, with the Special Forces that were ravaging KwaZulu-Natal. A civil war was raging in KwaZulu-Natal and that did not seem to have been noticed either by Margaret Thatcher, which was perhaps understandable, nor possibly the Foreign Office.

POWELL: I recollect that the Foreign Office was against Margaret Thatcher seeing Buthelezi generally, certainly seeing him frequently. She saw him, not because she believed that he was the way to a solution in South Africa, but because she felt that it was simply unjust that no one would talk to him, and that he did represent quite a large number of people in South Africa and so deserved to have a hearing. If he had not been regarded by people in the Commonwealth as beyond the pale, she probably would not have bothered to speak to him. It was almost because he was rejected as being beyond the pale that she did speak to him. Nothing very much came of those meetings. He used to talk about his relationship with Mandela. No one can say that Margaret Thatcher was not aware of what was going on in South Africa. She was extremely well-briefed by the Foreign Office. It is an immensely efficient organisation. She knew exactly what was going on, and we were well aware of Buthelezi’s links with the South African Government.

Coming back to contacts with black South African leaders, there is no doubt that there were contacts with the Foreign Office. I cannot give chapter and verse, nor could probably Patrick, but people who were working in the Foreign Office at the time on South Africa, would be able to give you more detail. There were contacts between the ANC and other elements of the British Government structure—let us put it like that. We certainly knew exactly what Tambo and one or two others were thinking. Contacts were there, and they were reported. They were well known, so there was certainly an awareness of the thinking.

However, you are right: there were no direct contacts at the highest level – any more than there were for the PLO for example.

HOWE: There was much discussion about whether representatives should or should not be invited to Embassy garden parties.

MOBERLY: We invited black guests, but they would not come — understandably, in those days. The British Embassy was thought to be supporting apartheid and representing the Government who did. That was the view, so black people were not keen to come to a large function at which there would only be one or two of them alongside 100 white people. I do 322

For the full text of her speech, see http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108270 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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not think that receptions were the test; it was whether one could meet them and have discussions. In fact, when I saw Pik Botha, one or two black people spoke. They were a voice. They were not the voice of the ANC because that was proscribed. … It was difficult to get them to meet us.

HOWE: After I had met Tambo in the United Kingdom, soon after came a feedback from Lusaka because the ANC people there had been saying how the meeting had gone from his point of view. Lots of contacts like that were taking place. I cannot remember where I met Buthelezi. I certainly met him more than once. On one occasion, I was partly encouraged by a great Cambridge friend, Radclyffe Cadman,323 who was the last leader of the United Party.

He became Administrator General for Natal and was working in joint harness with Buthelezi.

There was so much overlap and cross-fertilisation that I was always rather disappointed if a door was shut.

MOBERLY: I went to see Buthelezi about three times. It was not a good example of dialogue because he had 10 pages of statement, which he would have released to the press afterwards. He insisted on reading every word.

POWELL: He probably had an American adviser who wrote it all for him. I met Mr Tambo twice with Anthony Sampson,324 who was a close friend.

MOBERLY: To reiterate, it is obvious that there were not really representative black South Africans who could speak with authority for the ANC because they were either in exile or in prison.

MARKS: There was a huge internal political movement with figures who were clearly leaders.

MOBERLY: The UDF was active, but harassed.

MARKS: Yes, but it was there. People from the UDF were representative figures within South Africa who could speak, but, as you say, they might have refused to speak.

Unless anyone else wants to pick up matters, can we change tact and look at how important Washington’s stance was, and the extent to which there were discussions between Britain and America, particularly between Thatcher and Reagan during those years on apartheid? Did it have any significance in their relationship or was it something that did not turn up?

HOWE: It was not a regular item on the agenda, but it was something that George Shultz325 and I would discuss from time to time. His perception was much the same as my own. The legislative components in the United States were passing fatter sanctions, whereas his position was more measured—as we liked to think ours was. The example that I gave about the discussion about RENAMO took place with him at the White House.

MARKS: So it was the Cold War aspect of southern Africa that would have been most significant.

323

Radclyffe Cadman (1924-2011), United Party Member for Zululand, South African House of Assembly, 1961-77.

324 Anthony Sampson (1926-2004), journalist and author of Common Sense About Africa (1960).

325 George Shultz, US Secretary of State, 1982-9.

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POWELL: It featured a bit in conversations between Margaret Thatcher and President Reagan. It was not a major subject, but it was raised. He would always say that he entirely supported her views on it. After Congress overrode his veto and passed the Act — sorry, I cannot remember its name326 — he encouraged her to go on, saying that she would still have his support, even though he was constrained by Congress and had to do things that he thought were ill advised and ill judged. They also talked about RENAMO in Mozambique. He had been persuaded by Senator Jesse Helms327 into support for RENAMO and she urged him time and again to have nothing to do with RENAMO. She said that it was a most ghastly organisation and that he should stay clear of it.

MARKS: Does anyone from the audience with to ask a question? Sue? ONSLOW: No, my question was about the relationship and co-ordination between Washington and London on the issue. I thank you for answering it.

MARKS: Before we leave the issue, was there discussion about American backing for UNITA328 in Angola?

POWELL: Not at Thatcher-Reagan level.

HOWE: I do not recollect any discussion.

COX: To what degree was the discussions between Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan framed by Cold War considerations? The ANC had close connections with the South African Communist Party and so on. What was then going on in South Africa? One thing was mentioned as an interesting variable. The geo-strategic framework of the regional issues was mentioned by you, Lord Powell. Was that always the compromising problem that could not be moved beyond or outside?

HOWE: It was the framework with which everything was discussed, but it did not dictate the policy on a wholesale basis.

POWELL: It applied particularly to Angola rather more than South Africa. Cubans in Africa were discussed. We had gone beyond the days of the sea lanes and the strategic influence in Africa.

ONSLOW: With the improvement in the international climate following Mikhail Gorbachev’s329 arrival in March 1985 and particularly in 1987-88, did that cause a review of how the ANC could be regarded? Was it still seen as being particularly influenced by Communism. Did it modify, in fact, how the British Government saw the ANC? COX: Mrs Thatcher also recognised very early on the potential of Gorbachev — earlier than most.

HOWE: She was ahead of everyone.

326

Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act 1986 (CAAA).

Jesse Helms (1921-2008), US Republican Senator from North Carolina.

328 União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA).

329 Mikhail Gorbachev, Soviet and then Russian leader, 1985-91.

327

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COX: There was no doubt about it.

HOWE: I do not recollect a tremendous range of discussion on southern Africa with Gorbachev. The topic more naturally at the top of the agenda was Afghanistan. I spent an entire evening with Shevardnadze330 trying to advise on how to get out of Afghanistan, commending our success in merging the ‘terrorist movement’ and Ian Smith’s military forces, and that was not very wise. That was the sort of topic that would come up.

POWELL: I do not recall any Thatcher-Gorbachev conversation — and there were many — that touched on South Africa, from either side. Discussions were enormously long, detailed and ranged widely. I suppose that the biggest subject for much of time was the nature of Communism and what, in her view, a hopeless system it was and how it was destined to complete failure. The Middle East certainly, Afghanistan — as Geoffrey said — and nuclear matters came up. I might be wrong, given that I do not have access to papers or claims to a super memory, but it did not fit the context of their relationship. Neither of them were that interested in it.

MARKS: I thought that Sue’s question was slightly different. Did the fact that Margaret Thatcher came to terms with Gorbachev and that Communism change her attitude to the ANC? POWELL: I am sure that it did not change it consciously, but whether it did subconsciously, it is possible. The whole atmosphere by 1989 was different.

MARKS: Presumably, it was the Cubans rather than the Russians who were the threat.

POWELL: When did the Cubans start to pull out [of Angola]?

[Several from the floor: 1989] HOWE: The Cubans were diminuendo, they started from a lower base anyway.

ONSLOW: How far were there enduring tensions and frictions on the presentation of British policy between No. 10 and the Foreign Office? Obviously, there would be flashpoints. I am not talking about the content, but the actual presentation.

HOWE: You have my unpublished letter — as published.331 It was a fairly illustrative example. It was not the general pattern. To be rather frivolous about it, there were a number of situations in which consciously or unconsciously there was a touch of hard cop/soft cop. In fact, Margaret Thatcher and I worked together for 15 years on a whole range of things, and we achieved some things between us. That is longer than most marriages last. We concentrated more on our marriage, than on our divorce.

ONSLOW: That was exactly my point. Although in the literature, you highlight those flashpoints, but should a rather different view be taken?

330 331

Eduard Shevardnadze, Soviet Foreign Minister, 1985–90, 1991.

Letter to Thatcher reproduced in G Howe, Conflict of Loyalty (1994), pp.493-5.

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POWELL: There was an occasional need, Geoffrey, for a marriage counsellor, but the moment usually passed. To be honest, Margaret Thatcher was very unpredictable in everything, not only South Africa. She could come up with statements out of the blue that no one thought that she was about to make. That was part of her being. She was a passionate person, and she formed her views through argument. She would therefore come out with often provocative statements simply to test the arguments. Indeed, a great deal of time was spent by her Cabinet and, most importantly, her personal staff at No. 10 just arguing. It was exhausting, especially at 2 o’clock in the morning. Now and again, we would wake up the next morning and find that she had adopted our point of view without saying that she had changed her mind. It made it difficult for the Foreign Office, with its consistency, to know exactly what she would say. We sometimes had to scramble to deal with some ex cathedra statement that suddenly emerged.

HOWE: In her book, when discussing the Anglo-Irish Agreement,332 Margaret Thatcher says that she thinks that a completely different approach was needed.333 That was before the next steps down the road were taken. She was reflecting on whether we got it wrong. Her attempt was always to find the right answer, and she believed that she had — POWELL: But the process was sometimes a bit bumpy.

PROFESSOR PHILIP MURPHY: Talking about tensions, there were rumours in the 1980s that Mrs Thatcher’s attitude towards South Africa and the animosity that was generated in the Commonwealth was creating tensions between No. 10 and the Palace, and that the Queen was worried about Mrs Thatcher’s attitude towards South Africa. Can anyone say anymore more definite about that?

HOWE: I never witnessed any direct tension of that sort. That does not mean to say that there was not some. You might have a closer picture, Charles.

POWELL: I have absolutely no idea what the Queen’s views were on the subject. I would not say if I did. Were there different views between people at No. 10 and people at the Palace, yes. On the press side of the Palace, in particular, there was a strong difference of view. Michael Shea334 thought that Margaret Thatcher’s policy on South Africa was wrong.

He did not hesitate to let quite a few people know that, which led to stories in The Sunday Times335 and other newspapers. Whether Michael Shea was speaking with the knowledge or authority of the Queen was highly unlikely.

ROBERTSON: In the Commonwealth, we had no idea what the Queen thought about issues, but she was very supportive of the Commonwealth. She came to meetings. She spent much time meeting leaders individually and talked to them about their countries. She showed a great interest in the Commonwealth. She never wavered, which was much appreciated.

332

The Anglo-Irish Agreement was signed on 15 Nov. 1985 by Thatcher and the Irish Prime Minister Garrett FitzGerald (1926-2011). The Agreement set-up a framework which gave the Irish ministers a forum to discuss matters relating to Northern Ireland.

333 Thatcher, Downing Street Years, chapters 90 to 92, and see J. Newsinger, ‘Ireland and “The Downing Street Years”,’ Irish Studies Review, Vol.2 No.7 (1994).

334 Michael Shea (1938-2009), press secretary to HM Queen Elizabeth II, 1978-87.

335 The Sunday Times, 20 July 1986, ran the headline: ‘Queen dismayed by “uncaring” Thatcher’. The article suggested that the Queen believed the Prime Minister to be ‘confrontational and socially divisive’ and focused on the Queen’s fears for the future of the Commonwealth because of Thatcher’s refusal to implement sanctions.

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HOWE: I was very struck by that when I presented my first Budget to the Queen, which was the first occasion when I had do anything substantial in respect of her. I arrived at the Palace through one of the servant entrances. A car was moving away, and I was told that it contained Robert Muldoon, the New Zealand Premier and then their Finance Minister.336 It made me think (between then and reaching the Queen’s room) that I was representing only one of 47 countries. As I got closer, I realised that it was my first Budget and that it was her thirtyseventh. Her sense of engagement in the subject was so convincing. It was quite astonishing.

MARKS: I was wondering whether, had it not been for South Africa, would Thatcher’s ride with the Commonwealth have been different? Was it really the South African thing that got in the way or was she genuinely contemptuous of the Commonwealth and that it was no longer the British Empire, but run by all sorts of other people?

POWELL: No, I do not think that she was contemptuous of the Commonwealth. On the whole, she preferred people who spoke English to people who did not. It was poisoned by South Africa. Whether that was the fault or the Commonwealth or Margaret Thatcher, we can debate, but that was the poisonous issue. It was fine on almost every other issue. There were discussions about other aspects of world affairs. Geoffrey [Howe] already said that there were good debates at Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings about the broad, international scene and usually broad measures of agreement, too. She certainly valued and respected the practical side of the Commonwealth.

HOWE: I always recount one illustration. At the New Delhi 1983 Commonwealth Conference just after the American invasion of Grenada,337 we suddenly saw opinion dividing. Julius Nyerere338 was very much on the American side because, after all, he had invaded Uganda. On the other hand, Mugabe was concerned about encouraging South Africans to invade him. There was a sharp division depending on what you had done or what you were afraid of. And it was characteristically summed up by Lee Kuan Yew:339 ‘the Americans should not have done it, but I’m am glad they did’.

ONSLOW: I am sorry that Lord Renwick is unable to be here.340 In your view, how important was he — as British Ambassador, as well as his approach from 1987 onwards?

How much guidance did he receive from London or was he the initiator of all sorts of contacts and approaches?

HOWE: Who can answer that best? An ex-Ambassador, probably. Surely Ambassadors bring their own talent to fulfil the task in hand. The most important thing during his time was the extent to which he was able to extend the spread and penetration of the presentation of how views and the views for a case for change in South Africa. The pamphlet to which I have referred was produced during Lord Renwick’s time and it may have even been his idea. It was fundamentally about what the Embassy was meant to be achieving. South African Leaders/opinion formers could not be under an illusion about what the British case was.

However strongly we fought against sanctions, that was our voice. It was progressively more successful. His reign at the Embassy was at a time when it was most important.

336

Sir Robert Muldoon (1921-92), Prime Minister and Finance Minister of New Zealand, 1975-84.

See M.D. Kandiah (ed), Cold War in the Caribbean: Britain and the Grenada Crisis, 1983: Witness Seminar (forthcoming).

338 Julius Nyerere (1922-99), Tanzanian politician. President, 1964-85.

339 Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of the Republic of Singapore, 1959-90.

340 Lord Renwick of Clifton had been invited to participate but declined.

337

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POWELL: Telling a small tale out of school, Lord Renwick was not the Foreign Office’s first choice to be Ambassador to South Africa. Mrs Thatcher strongly championed his appointment. He certainly had her endorsement. He was one of my oldest friends and we used to speak frequently on the telephone, so he would be aware from me of her views, and I could obviously tell her what he was telling me. He played a big role, but he made maximum use of the space that he was given and the confidence that he had not only with the Foreign Office’s backing, but explicitly on a difficult subject with that of the Prime Minister.341 MARKS: In some ways, the space was increasing in South Africa.

POWELL: He got there at a good time. The tide was running his way.

ONSLOW: Lord Renwick writes in his memoirs that he initiated contacts with the Afrikaner press to make sure that the British voice was heard beyond a narrow, English-speaking South Africa.342 Had you any contacts before then, Sir Patrick, with that slice of South African society—the press or the Afrikaner community?

MOBERLY: The Afrikaner community was certainly accessible. A lot of heads of firms were Afrikaner and there was no difficulty talking to them. I never felt any difficulty in such dealings. I admit that our contacts were mainly with the English-speaking press for obvious reasons. I must have met editors of the main newspapers, but without making a special pitch.

ONSLOW: Did Mrs Thatcher use the same letter route with FW de Klerk that she would use with PW Botha?

POWELL: She certainly sent him messages, yes. I cannot remember, but they met several times before and after he became President. She got on well with him, and encouraged him.

She thought that he offered a good way forward. She was no great admirer of PW Botha.

Even in her memoirs, she had something fairly disobliging to say about him.

MARKS: There were very few. Even in South Africa, he was known as the ‘Great Crocodile’.343 Your allusion to meeting Afrikaner business people was very interesting. One of the key changes in South Africa that opened it up was the fact that, by the 1980s, Afrikaner businessmen had caught up in a sense with English-speaking businessmen in the country, and had similar interests. For them, the whole issue of external relations and relations to markets were more similar. If you had been there 10 or 20 years earlier, it might have been a lot more difficult to talk to Afrikaner businessmen.

MOBERLY: I do not remember there being a problem. I can think of seeing the head of a big insurance company. I doubt whether we were getting far on the big issues of the day; it would have been more to do with what was happening on the economic front.

MARKS: That was quite a big issue of the day, as we now know!

341

See C. Landsburg, The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation: International Politics and South Africa’s Transition (2004), p.39.

342 R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (1997). Also see his more recent, A Journey with Margaret Thatcher (2013).

343 See http://www.sahistory.org.za/people/pieter-willem-botha [Accessed 6 May 2014].

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MOBERLY: Not the reform that everything was looking for on our side. It was always pretty closed on that.

POWELL: This is not in answer to the question, but I just do not want it to go missing, as it were. Margaret Thatcher admired Helen Suzman and met her on several occasions. She always listened carefully to her, and found some moral support from her, too.

MARKS: Two very tough ladies.

HOWE: In the 1990s, I was on the Economic Advisory Council of Ukraine and during that time I made some speeches to business organisations in South Africa. I was enormously struck by the difference between the availability of institutions in South Africa and their total absence in a country like Ukraine, which had built for itself a constitution modelled on the United States – and achieved deadlock at almost every stage. It had no Stock Exchange, no free press, no legal system. South Africa was able to inherit or carry through institutions that still had enormous potential. It is an interesting contrast, although it is irrelevant.

MARKS: It is important in looking at what happened subsequently. Are there any questions that the panel members would like to direct to one another or from our historians in the audience?

ONSLOW: In your view, Mrs Robertson, how important was Sir Sonny Ramphal344 on coordinating or managing the issue of South Africa within the Commonwealth and in his links with the Foreign Office?

ROBERTSON: Sonny Ramphal was crucial. Having gone through the Rhodesian business, by the 1980s when the Commonwealth moved towards South Africa he had developed some very strong links with about 10 leaders: Malcolm Fraser;345 Bob Hawke346 in Australia, both the Gandhis – Indira347 and Rajiv –, the Canadians Trudeau,348 Mulroney and Joe Clark;349 Michael Manley350 in Jamaica, Kaunda351 and Nyerere. He had a group of leaders around him whom he would talk to frequently and exchange a politician, he knew how to deal with politicians. I have a great respect for politicians. If I ever set up anything, I would get a politician to run it. Ramphal was able to bring a lot of ideas to the table at Commonwealth meetings, especially. He engineered the publication of lots of studies, which helped people involved in anti-apartheid to give them facts and figures. We brought out scores of booklets on all the big issues, not only on South Africa but on development and so on. His role was very important ideas. People forget that, at the time all this was happening, people around the table had all brought countries into being. They had all been through the independence process.

In passing, I must say that no one wanted to talk to Buthelezi. There was always someone in those countries who would try to do a deal behind the independence movement, probably with the British Government, who always had someone they wanted to take over rather than the firebrand. Buthelezi was seen as that sort of person, a spoiler. Because 344

Sir Shridath Surendranath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal, Secretary General of the Commonwealth, 1975-90.

Malcolm Fraser, Australian Prime Minister, 1975-83.

346 Bob Hawke, Australian Prime Minister and the Leader of the Labor Party, 1983-91.

347 Indira Gandhi (1917-84), Indian Prime Minister, 1966-77; 1980-4.

348 Pierre Elliot Trudeau (1919-2000), Canadian Prime Minister, 1968-79; 1980-4.

349 Joe Clark, Canadian Prime Minister, 1979-80.

350 Michael Manley (1924-97) Jamaican Prime Minister, 1972–80, 1989–92.

351 Kenneth Kaunda, Zambian President, 1964-91.

345

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Ramphal was and I think that Commonwealth leaders appreciated him. At many meetings, if leaders were rambling on—as they do—and they came up with an idea, he would sit at the table and draft something right there for them. That was useful.

Sonny Ramphal got on very well with the Queen. I nearly said that he sucked up to her, but that is not nice! For instance, when he came in as Secretary-General, he gave her a very nice bound copy of all the background papers, which no one had ever thought of doing before. She appreciated that because it gave her an idea of what happened. I do not know whether she read it, but it was a gesture. A lot of the initiatives taken by the Commonwealth at the time came from him. He had the support of important and crucial leaders, such as Lee Kuan Yew. It was a very exciting time. When Margaret Thatcher was leaving, she gave a dinner for Sonny, which was unusual. She gave him a nice photograph and it said, ‘To a superb Secretary-General’. Even though they had their differences, in the long run she respected what Sonny had tried to do in southern Africa.

POWELL: I endorse that completely. I cannot imagine that Sonny enjoyed his meetings with Margaret Thatcher particularly, but they certainly got on very well at a personal level. She had a great regard for him.

MARKS: Would you like to say something about the Commonwealth and the EPG? ROBERTSON: That came out of the fact that, in Nassau,352 Mrs Thatcher said, ‘No more sanctions.’ It was an attempt to have dialogue. She was very strong on how it was best to talk, it was best to cajole rather than isolate by imposing sanctions. She saw sanctions in that light.353 Sonny suggested that we should send the EPG to South Africa. It was at the retreat.

The Commonwealth has lost that now, but it would meet on the Thursday and Friday, get through the first two agenda items and anything serious they would take to the retreat. It would comprise Leaders and their wives plus an aide, and the big differences would be ironed out there. There was a little ‘in’ group of leaders. The others played golf, tennis or sat on the balconies and dreamt. When the ‘in group’ had decided what they wanted to do, they would hold a meeting with all the leaders and decide how they would handle such matters. In Nassau, Mrs Thatcher stayed away from such negotiations. When they felt that they had to take the document to her, they insisted that Rajiv Gandhi went along because they thought that she would be happy to see him. He was young and handsome and she had got on very well with Indira Gandhi.

POWELL: Margaret Thatcher took the view that they deliberately kept her out of those negotiations.

ROBERTSON: Oh, really?

POWELL: You will find that in her memoirs. I do not know whether that is right or wrong.354 352

At the Nassau CHOGM, Oct. 1985.

See Times article of 21 Oct. 1985, ‘Thatcher refuses to budge over sanctions’, which outlined her position at the Nassau Conference: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111649 [Accessed 6 May 2014]. The transcript of her press conference, see: http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/106151 [Accessed 6 May 2014].

354 See J Campbell, Thatcher, Vol.2, pp.326-7. Once the EPG was set up, Thatcher wrote to Botha, encouraging him to meet them. See Thatcher to Botha, 14 Dec. 1985 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111654) [Accessed 6 May 2014]. Following his meeting with the EPG, she wrote thanking him for seeing them. Thatcher to Botha, 8 Jan. 1986 (http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111655) [Accessed 6 May 2014]. Before 353

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ROBERTSON: No, they felt that she did not want to be there. She could have been there if she had wanted. Anyhow, whatever—the idea of the EPG was that it would first find out what was happening in South Africa, get a bird’s eye view, and encourage dialogue and give some ideas of how the logjam could be released. There were joint chairpersons: Malcolm Fraser and Obasanjo,355 Nita Barrow356 from Barbados. There were about seven or eight of them. They went around South Africa and met a lot of people. Everyone acknowledged Mrs Thatcher’s role first in getting them there. There was also Tony Barber357 who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. They were the first outsiders to visit Mandela in prison. He had been aware of what the Commonwealth was doing. I think that they had a radio so they listened to BBC World Service on which Sonny Ramphal did a lot of broadcasting. However, the visit had to be aborted because three neighbouring capitals were bombed while they were there.

The EPG came back to London and wrote the report. It set out what eventually happened, such as the main negotiating strategy on lifting the ban on the ANC, the release of Nelson Mandela and all other political prisoners and to begin dialogue. When de Klerk came along, that was exactly what he did. That was one of the Commonwealth’s best contributions to helping the South Africans at that stage. It told them what they needed to do and said if they did it, they will succeed. All these matters have now been forgotten. The Commonwealth’s role is totally forgotten.

MARKS: That is one of the reasons why I asked you about matters.

ROBERTSON: No one has written any memoirs. Sonny Ramphal has steadfastly refused to write his memoirs because he is very busy. He writes a lot about other things, so I hope that one day someone will help him to do it.358 ONSLOW: I am very happy to come to Barbados to do just that!

COX: We will give you a grant.

MARKS: We will watch that space. We would probably wrap up now. It remains for me to thank everyone very much indeed for participating this afternoon. It has been a fascinating discussion. I look forward to seeing it in print and how it hangs together. It is always difficult when we are in the middle of it to see that. Thank you.

COX: I thank our speakers. I thank you, Shula, for chairing the proceedings with great aplomb. I thank you, Sue, for organising it.359

EPG produced their report, she urged Botha to engage with the findings. Thatcher to Botha, 20 Mar. 1986. http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/111658 [Accessed 6 May 2014]. However, in her memoirs she thought the subsequent report an ‘unmitigated disaster’ (The Downing Street Years (1993), p.519).

355 Olusegun Obasanjo, later President of Nigeria, 1999–2007 356 Dame Ruth Nita Barrow (1916-95), later Governor-General of Barbados, 1990-5.

357 Anthony Barber (Lord Barber, 1920-2005), Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1970–74.

358 Since the event, he has published his memoirs: Glimpses of a Global Life (2014).

359 The event was organised jointly by Dr Onslow and Dr Kandiah.

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