Memories of Mr. CH Taljaard on his Diplomatic career

Mr C H Taljaard

In translation

These are notes on a conversation of Mr CH Taljaard with Advocate Andre Stemmet, Senior Law Adviser (International Law), and Mr Neels Muller, Departmental archivist, which took place at the former’s home in Government Avenue, Pretoria, on 12 June 2003, shortly before his ninetieth birthday.

Mr Taljaard was born at Elands River in the former Northern Transvaal. At the age of fourteen he moved to Pretoria and began work as a messenger in the office of the Registrar of Companies. In 1933 he joined the Department of External Affairs as a second grade clerk in the accounts section.

Composition of the Department in 1933:

The whole civil service except the Railways was housed in the Union Buildings. Dr Bodenstein was Secretary of both the Office of the Prime Minister and the Department of External Affairs. The Assistant Secretary of External Affairs was Mr Farrell and Mr Taljaard thought he sat in office 82 in the Union Buildings. Mr Emile Horn, formerly a trade commissioner, was in charge of diplomatic affairs. Mr BP Muller was head of personnel.  The accountant and his assistant was a Mr van der Merwe. There were three typists, Mary Nielsen, Eileen Durbin, and a Miss Hark. The librarian was Miss Bone and the Clerk of the Executive Council was Mr Johnny Neser. He and Mr van der Merwe sat in Room 52 and Mr Muller in the office next door. There was also a Mr van Tinteren and the head of the registry was Miss Hutchinson. The two men who assisted her were the first “trainee diplomats”, Mr Johan Uys (later High Commissioner in Australia and Ambassador in Germany) and Mr Robert Kirsten, later High Commissioner in the erstwhile Rhodesia (who resigned after falling-out with the Secretary for External Affairs, Mr Jooste, went farming in Rhodesia). Mr Johnston acted as personal servant to the Prime Minister and made the tea etc.  

Diplomatic career:

Mr Taljaard was transferred to Paris in 1936. Mr Eric Louw was Envoy Extraordinary[1] at the time. He returned in 1938 and was succeeded by Mr SF Waterson, who was transferred to London as High Commissioner a year later and later was made a Cabinet Minister. Nine months before the outbreak of the Second World War Captain C Bain-Marais was appointed Envoy.

After the outbreak of the War Mr Taljaard, Mr Bain-Marais and Mr Servaas  Hofmeyr (later to become a judge) were the last of the diplomatic staff to leave Paris.

Originally it did not seem necessary to withdraw. In the first six months of the War there was only on incident in Paris, when the German air force attacked the French War Ministry on 3 September 1939, an incident that Mr Taljaard observed while he was sitting and eating in the garden of the pension where he was living. After that there was no further German action until 11 May 1940.

When the staff was withdrawn from Paris the chancery was left in the care of the Swiss. Minister Bain-Marais was a good friend of the British military attaché, a colonel who owned a Humber motor car. The British also withdrew to Tours. On Monday, 17 June when Germans forces were already on both sides of the Seine Mr Bain-Marais asked Mr Taljaard if he would travel in the British military attaché’s Humber  (driven by a chauffeur) to Tours. The roads were filled with refugees especially from Belgium. A French friend of Mr Taljaard’s, who was a captain in the army and who was also fleeing, told him that the refugee situation in the north of the country was even worse.

They first travelled to Tours, where they heard that the Germans planned to blow up the bridge over the Loire to Bordeaux. This obliged them to go to Bordeaux, where Mr Taljaard stayed in a hotel and the other two in a chateau. Mr Taljaard chanced to meet the law adviser of the French Foreign 

Ministry in the street. The latter told him that the French Foreign Ministry was at that time located in Bordeaux. At that stage the South Africans received a message from General Smuts instructing them to approach the French government with a recommendation not to sign a ceasefire with the Germans, but to establish a government in North Africa. The French fleet could then move to Toulon and be available to the Allied forces in the Mediterranean. There was a conflict in the French government between

Laval and his deputy about the question of a ceasefire. The Laval faction won and the Vichy government was established, which then negotiated a ceasefire with Germany. When the ceasefire came into effect the South African legation was still accredited to the French government and not to the Vichy government. After the Germans took control of Paris the Canadian embassy withdrew to London, but was subsequently accredited to the Vichy government. While the South African Legation was in Bordeaux it received political reports from the Canadian Embassy in Paris, which enabled it to report on conditions there.      

       

Mr Taljaard and the chauffeur in the Humber crossed the bridge to Bordeaux. When the ceasefire with Germany was signed the Vichy government decided that diplomatic staff from Commonwealth countries should withdraw entirely from France. The British government then sent a torpedo boat up the Loire to Bordeaux, where Mr Taljaard and Servaas Hofmeyer went on board. The Humber was left on the dockside, but the plan was to get the colonel’s trunk with the family silver in it safely to Britain, where Mr Taljaard delivered it to the family there.

At the mouth of the Loire they were transferred to a cruiser (the Polish government were also on board). That was on 17 or 18 June, a day or two before the ceasefire came into effect. They disembarked at Plymouth and travelled from there to London.

Minister Bain-Marais was then appointed as Envoy to the Belgian and Netherlands governments-in-exile. Mr Taljaard was secretary. Their offices were in South Africa House. At that stage there were three officers from the Department of External Affairs in South Africa House, Messrs Taljaard, Brand Fourie and Bob Jones. The other staff were employed by the Treasury.

Mr Taljaard was married in London on 6 June 1942 in a church on Barclay Square which the Anglican Church had made available to the Dutch Reformed Church for its use during the War. He married Antjie van Linschoten. Her mother was a Miss De Kock from the Free State who had been married to a Dutchman (Van Linschoten) and after his death she married a Englishman from Rhodesia. The latter returned to England after his father became ill and he had to take over running the family estate. Mr Taljaard met Annetjie van Linschoten at a farewell function for Minister van Broekhuizen (who was evacuated from the Netherlands where he had been Envoy).

In this time Mr Taljaard was requested by the BBC shortwave service to comment and to read the news in Afrikaans for the South African forces.

In London the British Minister of Health convened a meeting of representatives (also governments in exile) once a month to discuss issues of education and health after the war. That resulted in the creation of the WHO and UNESCO. In later years of service in Paris Mr Taljaard worked with Dr Harry Gere from South Africa on UNESCO issues and attended WHO conferences in Geneva. He and Gere worked on the WHO constitution and regulations.

At the end of 1945, after eleven years in Europe, Mr Taljaard returned to South Africa on home leave. He had to pay for the ticket himself.

Mr Taljaard and Mr WGW Parminter travelled to Paris at the start of 1946, where the Peace Conference was to take place. General Smuts attended with Mr FH Theron (Minister, Rome). Dr Louis Wessels represented External Affairs as the legal adviser and accompanied General Smuts.

Messrs Taljaard and Parminter had to re-establish the mission. Mr Parminter was Chargé d’Affaires for a short while before his retirement. He was succeeded as Chargé d’Affaires by Mr JWR Stewart.  Mr HT Andrews came from Washington as Minister (he was a “Smut man”). When Mr Andrews retired Mr Taljaard was Chargé d’Affaires for a year until Mr SF du Toit became the Ambassador.

Mr Taljaard attended the sessions of the Inter-Governmental Reparations Commission in Brussels. General Smuts decided there to return a few million gold pounds which were in the possession of the possession of the South African government, to Germany. Mr Taljaard opposed the decision and felt that they should be used to buy buildings for the South African government in Europe.

He remained in Brussels until 1951 when he was transferred and assumed duty as Chief of Protocol in Cape Town. In 1955 he return to Paris. In 1961 he was leader of the South African delegation to Vienna for the negotiation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The same year he was transferred to Cairo as ambassador. He arrived in Cairo on 1 May 1961 and found it strange that he could not get an appointment to present his credentials. On 31 May he heard on a radio news bulletin that Egypt had broken diplomatic relations with South Africa. He decided that it would be best if he left as quickly as possible and within a few hours seats were reserved for him and his family on a flight to Athens.

After a few weeks he returned to Pretoria and in September of that year he was appointed as Ambassador in Bern where he served for three years. On his return top Pretoria he became head of the Africa section and then moved to Sweden with the official status of Envoy. (Sweden would not recognise him as Ambassador for political reasons.) He was also accredited to Finland. From 1972 to 1978 he was Ambassador to Spain. He retired in 1978.

After his retirement he was asked to become our representative in Bophuthatwana.

---

[1] At the time the heads of South Africa’s diplomatic missions in non-Commonwealth countries had the title of Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary. The title of Ambassador was introduced later.

Communication difficulties

Coen van Wyk on his first stint in Uganda

Moving to a country with a foreign language, one expects difficulties in communication, but when you move to a country which prides itself on its English you might just get caught in unexpected pronunciation and usages. Also the Italian proverb says: “Traduttore tradittore”, a translator is a traitor.....

When I arrived in Uganda, I noticed that the people have a habit of freely exchanging “l” and “r” in the normal course of conversation. One day a friend excused himself from an invitation for a Saturday afternoon braai. “I have found a glader to revel my yald” he said, and it took me a few seconds to remember that he had recently acquired a plot on a steep hillside, where he hoped to build a house.

In order to display the necessary politeness, I asked what the local expression for “thank you” was, and was told that “webali” would be acceptable. Imagine my concern when the housekeeper, on my return from a shopping trip with packets of sugar and other delicacies, greeted me with “webali!”

And then, on a sweltering day, I ventured into crowded Luwum street, to buy a fan. Having been warned about pickpockets I kept my hands on my money, my cell phone, trying to hide my wristwatch as crowds of people, some dressed rather disreputably, jostled me along the narrow sidewalk. 

When I left the shop, with a fan big enough to dispel the heat and humidity of the equator, I realized with consternation that I needed both hands to keep this fan from the surging crowd, leaving my pockets unguarded! Just then a young man, dressed, I thought, a bit sharply, smiled and shouted at me: “Webali!” 

Only a week later did I discover that the word could be better translated as: “Well done!”

And the lasting impression was when I boarded a plane out of Entebbe, and a smiling hostess wished me: “Have a nice fright!” 

I replied: “Webali!”

A Sahara Beach Party

Introduction

Coen van Wyk explains the background to this piece

I was sent to the Western Sahara as part of the then OAU observer team, to supervise the UN updating of the voter's roll. Your readers may remember that the Western Sahara was in dispute since the 1960's, just like South Africa. Annual UNGA resolutions put pressure on Spain to do something, so they conducted a very comprehensive and complete census in 1974. The International Court of Justice in 1975 gave an unexpected Advisory Opinion allocating the country neither to Spain nor to Morocco, but to the indigenous people, who were to decide by referendum whether they wanted to remain independent, or join with Morocco. Morocco stated that the decision favoured their claim and invaded: The famous Green March, Spain got out, and the indigenous people, the Saharawi's, rose against the Moroccans under leadership of the POLISARIO Front. The war lasted a short while, and then became a stalemate.

With South Africa jouning the OAU in 1994 Morocco announced that they would allow the UN to update the census with a view to holding the referendum, provided that South Africa, whom they believed would favour their point of view, would be part of the supervisory team. It was believed that thework would be done in three months, and the Government nominated Mtutuzele Mpehle, an old hand from the ANC External service, to the OAU Observer team. After three months he asked to be replaced, and Ebrahim Saley, later Ambassador to Tunisia, was sent, again for three months. However both the Moroccans and the POLISARIO representatives kept finding reasons to stop the registration of voters on one pretext or another. When his time was up Saley asked to be replaced, and I was sent.

My six months there was very interesting, but with long periods of total boredom, to the point where you decide not to iron your washing today otherwise you would have nothing to do tomorrow.

I was not replaced at the end of my time there, and Minister Nzo tried unsuccessfully, and based on my reports, to break the stalemate, up to visiting King Hassan of Morocco. The stalemate still drags on, and the Saharawi people are still in the refugee camps.

Start of his article for the Meintjeskop Courier

BPs (beach parties) are, so I am told, part of normal human life. I would not be able to confirm this, but I can report on a memorable one in the Sahara. Now if you were well brought up you will know that for a BP you need three ingredients: beer, meat and a beach. The last is not so important, ours got stolen by the tide, but by then it did not matter. Who cares anyway?

After months of frustration, inactivity, waiting for the work to begin, a sizable team of party goers decided that the only thing to do is to have a hell of a party.

The journey

We leave Laayoune in a convoy of seven vehicles. No doubt the Moroccan security get their knickers in a twist, send out air survey teams to determine the intention of the convoy, etc. We eat dried sausage from South Africa, and drink Moroccan beer to cut short the distance, and get into practice for the main event.

After 50 klicks (this passes soon in the desert, read: at the second camel) you turn left. No, right. If you turn left, you must first cross the Western Sahara, Algeria, Chad. Sudan, and then get to the beach, but what is five thousand km between friends when you want to get to the beach? On the other hand, if you turn right, you have five km to do, and you are at a fishing village entirely constructed of driftwood and its modem equivalent, plastic, and filled with waving inhabitants. Another klick down the track, at 4x4 low ratio, and there is the beach. A bite out of the desert, where the Atlantic is relentlessly grinding down the continent, sending the rocks as sand and dust blowing back to the Red Sea. A soft sandy

shore lies at the bottom of a steep cliff, accessible only by a narrow winding track. The Civ Pol (Civilian Police) contingent do not believe in roughing it, they have a generator on the back of one of the trucks to run  the cassette   player,   and a barbecue, complete with bags of charcoal is soon brought into operation. The charcoal and grill have to be dropped down the cliff face, ten metres to the beach, the two girls protest at being dropped down as well, and insist on going down the narrow track under own steam. Strange.

Eat and be merry

Soon the chicken is being incinerated, Jurgen asks for assistance to put beer cans under the grid to stop the chicken from burning (‘drink quickly, you quys') and the bottle of KWV Chenin Blanc goes down singing hymns. If you do not think this is fun, then you were not brought up right.

The policemen play soccer and American football on the beach, some Irish (from County Cork nogaf) , Austria, Poland, (if we had won the war I would have been German) and Hungary. Austrian oompah music for now. The pale sun shines down through a high cloud cover, and the wind swirls from inland, blowing a fine spray of sand over the cliff, sprinkling the food and drink. Who cares? Some roughage is good for you. After the chicken, we wait for the kebabs. The CivPols play bocce. Of course one of them throws the jack onto the cliff, and the others follow. No, they did not put one of the balls through a window, only onto the back of a truck. Then back down again.

Music and laughter

The cassette player is dreaming about California, and the small waves are translucent in the weak sun. Quite a sight to see burly men jostle each other, playing like little boys. One of the Austrians grabs the Pole, throws him over his shoulder, and staggers into the surf with him. The Pole retaliates in the only way open to him, and pulls down the Austrian's pants. At which they collapse into the milky white foam, laughing at the fun of it all.

The Saharoui children (who said the desert is empty?)  parade around, but after a kebab each they disappear. Some guys play football again. ("Watch oot, here coomes the fooker") The KWV is gone, a Moroccan white wine follows, Sima.. something. Not bad. They say that wine after beer brings pain, but beer after wine brings pleasure. What about wine, then' beer, then wine, then ... ? Who cares anyway? The Beatles sail along in their Yellow Submarine, and Oh, I love you dearly, more dearly than the spoken word can say.

More music and song

By now we are all quite happy, bumping through to the stops. The generator runs out of fuel, and I team up with one of the Irish, who has brought his mouth organ, and we play a few songs we both know, such as “Wooden Heart," "Lili Marlene" and "When Irish Eyes". Who cares if he does not know Meadowlands", you know, AmaTsotsi Boy? Then I play “Cherry Pink, Apple Blossom White”, and somebody actually knows it. So I play it again. He plays an Irish song, which has the Irish contingent tapping their feet, singing lustily along, crying out their longing for their wives who have to handle the kids and build the new house while the men are here doing nothing, waiting for the work to start again, and feeling helpless in the meantime. Then we play "Erica" which has the Germans crying and the Austrians smiling. 

Much later ...

The sun is setting now, and the light is like oyster shell, laced with a delicate, caressing pink that tries to soothe the hurt and regret and the futility of it all as the small waves in the crosswind curl and push the foam over the charcoal and the tracks of the football players, and Ingrid, two weeks out of Austria and due back in two weeks tries not to be shocked as her husband-ta-be gets crying drunk, and wrestles his buddy into the waves, and the gulls look for something to scavenge, but they have to wait until the tide has turned up the bones we have buried, and the Irish carry down a fresh dozen beers to celebrate something. The party gets into telling jokes, and the girls cuddle up to their guys to tell them all is OK, isn't it? And the rest of the chaps pretend not to notice, and wrestle, and push each other into the surf.

Sunset  

Now the sun sets and we struggle the equipment back up the passage and go dune Jumping. This is not yet an Olympic sport, but if you judge it on fun levels, it soon will be. We line up, and all run along the hard back of a dune, holding hands, and jump as far as we can down the front of the dune, landing, and rolling over in the dark, in the soft sand. It is a crazy feeling, and the most staid police officer collapses into a heap of giggles. Candice tries to video it, it must be the biggest dune jump yet, and something for the Guinness book, but the light is too low. But we jump again, just for fun. Then we clamber to the top, and the girls get thrown down, just for good measure.

Someone has driven up onto the dune, and now he gets stuck, but many hands are helping and soon he is on the go again. Then the race is on to the main road, trucks jumping like goats over the dunes, hidden hollows and small bushes, shedding generators and barbecue equipment, but who cares? Once on the road, police training tells, and everybody keeps to the 80km/hr speed limit. This is a real BP. You end up at the hotel, sand down to your undies, and filled with beer, wine, adrenaline, and what not. Fun, FUn, FUN'. If you do not like it, well, you were not properly brought up. Pity, that.

Meintjeskop Courier 2/96

Cyclone Holland A

Cyclone Geralda 1994

By Coen van Wyk, Port Louis

 On 9 February 1994, I address the Rotary Club of Port Louis on the forthcoming elections in South Africa. On their agenda is also a request from a member to provide assistance to a Rotary Club in Antananarivo, badly hit the previous weekend by Cyclone Geralda. While expressing relief that Geralda missed us, one of the sugar farmers caution that the next tropical depression  named Hollanda, might hit us. Geralda was turned away by a high pressure system to the south. but this has now moved away.

Thursday 10 February, a public holiday in Mauritius in honour of the Chinese New Year, greets us with the news that there is a cyclone warning 1 out. Hollanda has intensified. is now a weak cyclone, and may hit us over the next day or so. All precautions should be taken, food and fuel stocked up, and we should stand by for further warning.

By 10h00 we move to a class 2 warning. A cyclone is now probable, lower antennas, get boats to safety, and make ready. Fortunately two colleagues from Pretoria, visiting paradise, are on hand to help lower the TV antenna, and put away garden furniture. Cyclone cocktails are served: a young coconut. removed from the tree to avoid it becoming a missile during the cyclone, its top cut open, with a shot of disinfectant added. The best disinfectant comes from Scotland, in a square bottle with a skew label.

At noon, we take our colleagues to their hotel and on our return see some of my fishermen friends struggling to get their boats out of the water. The little Suzuki jeep is not comfortable. but in 4x410 low-ratio she can climb trees, and a two ton boat is not too bad. Moving it 100 metres down the road, one of the trailer wheels come off, but we get it to safety. A pirogue is towed over rollers under the trees, and meanwhile the rain is pouring down, buckets full. The feeling of anxiety in the air is palpable. Dogs seek shelter, no birds are seen, the wind is rough and threatening.

Back home, and now we pass to warning 3, a cyclone is imminent. We sit on the veranda and drink beer, safe from the wind from the east In the afternoon. We pretend to be blase about the cyclone, and even get a short siesta. Then we get back to trying to decipher the creole news broadcasts, and to find out what is going on.

Sunset in a cyclone is not spectacular, the grey becomes black, and that is all. But now, according to the news, we are at warning 4, winds are now exceeding 120km per hour, and the cyclone might pass directly over the island, at around midnight. The recorded telephone message, in English, is still at level three.

By eight o'clock the news warns, in increasingly idiomatic creole that the cyclone is now an intense cyclone  and is approaching the northwest coast, at an accelerated speed. The front patio is still shielded from the wind, and if you stand outside, you discover the meaning of the word indescribable.

The English language lacks words for a wind that does not howl or scream. It roars round the comers carrying water like the spray from a fire hose. In the light of a torch it looks like a plastic sheet. The sea is flat, as soon as a wave forms the wind rips the top off. The spray looks like smoke.

Not much is visible around tis, branches lashing wildly, unidentified objects whip by, corrugated iron sheets fly by like sheets of paper. A sound like a rusty gate makes me look for a loose shutter or open window. I find a Mynah bird, in a protected comer, unable to get out of its temporary refuge without being blown out to sea, terrified and shrieking. The telephone is cut off, not to be reconnected until three weeks later.

Now, unbelievably, the wind increases. The radio announcer, Michelle, announces that winds over 200 km per hour have been measured. She interviews people who tell of roads being washed away, trees blown over, roofs ripped off. A person calls to tell of a car washed off a bridge. and submerged up to the windows in a river that is rapidly rising. He asks that she call the police, to come and assist him. He will go and look if there are any people still in the car. Still later she announces that a baby has been born in a car in front of a police station, while the father was trying to convince the police to provide a Land Rover to take the mother to hospital.

The night passes, an interminable roaring darkness, with periodic trips to reinforce windows as the wind shifts. The veranda floods, the wind blowing the water against and under the bedroom door in a miniature waterspout. No towels are dry. The human mind, overloaded by the forces at play, closes down, and goes to bed, hoping that the cyclone will just go away.

Dawn comes, and now the wind is calming. Everywhere it looks like photographs of Delville Wood after battle. A palm tree, 20 metres from our TV room bas been snapped in two, without our hearing it. Everywhere shredded leaves are piled up. The sugar cane, fortunately still young, has not been blown down, but the leaves are stripped of green. On the road, power lines are strewn around. We try to contact our colleagues in the Hotel, and have to cut our way through fallen trees, and wade through flooded roads. Michelle, after 12 hours of broadcasting, salutes the country, and goes home.

Then to the office, as the cyclone warning is lifted at 09hOO. The roads are blocked every few kilometres by fallen trees, and we have to drag them aside, or cut branches to pass. Scenes from CNN as containers are strewn like matchboxes around the harbour. Cranes on two of the tower blocks under construction are wrapped around the buildings, as someone remarked, like climbing roses. The office block housing the Mission seems intact, ut the security guard is nowhere to be found.

One office block is particularly hard hit. The aluminium window frames are pushed into the building or ripped out. A friend that bas a computer business in that building which is completely wiped out. Computer boxes are scattered for more than a kilometre down the road.

Government offices are deserted. I try to reach the Foreign Ministry to find out what help is needed, but have to talk my way past a policeman who objects to the way I parked. I park to his satisfaction, and continue searching for someone to speak to. There is some activity at the Prime Minister's office. The policeman at the entrance assures me that there is nobody I could speak to. By this time I get a little hot under the collar of my T-shirt, and insist that I wish to establish contact between my Government and his Government about the cyclone damage. He feels that I am not dressed appropriately, and maybe I could return on Monday?

I meet a Deputy Minister, who is developing a Hydroponics project together with South African partners. The R3 million investment was due for handing over at end February, and they were ready to begin supplying lettuce to the market. Now, with his eyes brimming with tears, he tells me that they have to start from scratch, everything is destroyed.

A Creole who owns a beautifully varnished wooden pirogue stands next to where it is washed up on the beach, laughing. When I ask him what damage is, he points to a small hole on the side. Then he escribes how the boat dragged a path through the rocks, and how the bottom is pulped. "At least your house is safe?" He replies, still laughing, "No, it blew away last night at eight. Everything is gone, I picked up the TV set 200 metres down the road."

"And you are still laughing?"

"Well, I can't cry anymore."

Grand Bay is a scene of desolation. Yachts sunk, their masts protruding, pirogues buried in the sand, one shattered into pieces 20 cms across.

And the radio carries the information: another tropical depression, Ivy, is forming, and should at present speed reach Mauritius in four to five days' time.

Meintjeskop Courier Volume II/1994

A fishy story

By Annatjie Prinsloo

In translation

It was September 1984 and the last Friday of those three weeks in which State President P W Botha was inaugurated in Cape Town and when the “Four” were detained in Coventry and the “Six” took refuge in the British consulate in Durban.

So much work, outside the sun shone on Signal Hill from a blue sky, Brian Cohen’s boats were busy collecting the riches of the sea … and then Minister Pik’s heart drew him to the mirror-smooth sea. I, the unfeeling Assistant Private Secretary, was determined to finish the work and took in more and more submissions for approval and signature.

Then the Minister came up with a plan.

Vic Zazeraj, thee Private Secretary, was not in his office and I just sat and worked at the switchboard. (Besides the Minister’s long-serving driver, oom Kerneels Joubert, we were the only Ministry staff in Cape Town at that stage.)

The plan might work.

While I was sitting and typing, I became aware of a movement out the corner of my eye: there large as life on his hands and knees the Minister was creeping past me down the corridor to his freedom and the sea!

What I did with the naughty boy? In spite of two giant reproachful eyes, naturally send him back to his office.

The weather outside (unlike in the office!) remained favourable and that evening, when the work was up to date, the Minister, (clad in those old khaki pants of which the seam had been burnt away by the coals, but wait, that is another story), Vic and oom Kerneels could sail out on the boat in blissful camaraderie.

All published in the Meintjeskop Courier, Volume II/1994

Something about the days of the South West Africa court case

By Patrys Smith

In translation

It was a July morning at quarter past nine when Stoney Steenkamp called me in and told me to report to Room 109, no, No 109A, in the Union Buildings with Pik Botha. They need help on the case they are working on about South West Africa.

It was the time of Memorials and Counter Memorials. We had little time for stories. Soon it was Pikkewyn, Koedoe, Patrys and Kittie, together with Marinus, Hein, Miss Stolte and co. If I refer to Pik it is not because of lack of respect for the Minister, but with Pik as a colleague, the memories are as if of yesterday.

The year was 1964. If one thinks back there is so much that one could record. Money was scarce, especially after returning from a first post. Those of us that smoked followed Pik’s example and smoked a pipe, with one like Pik’s. (I still have the old big one somewhere.)

New shoes “with broad round fronts in which you could roll your toes around and new clothes had to wait until you could draw an advance on “S&T” (subsistence and travel allowance) if you were to travel abroad. (Clothing allowances were only for those on transfer, as is the case again today.)

When one thinks back, memories come pouring back, such as how Pik  delayed the last flight to Cape Town on a Sunday night “on instructions from Prime Minister Verwoerd.”  The reason? The draft documents had to go to Cape Town where the only printer who was permitted in terms of a state contract to print the court pleadings, was based.

Everything went according to plan and the “printer’s” staff were waiting for the documents.  In fact this was not on instructions from Dr Verwoerd - Pik told the airport traffic controller that if he did not want to hold back the flight, he should “call the following number and ask for Dr Verwoerd.” He could then provide Dr Verwoerd with reasons for his decision.  Needless to say, Pik got his way. The documents were passed through the window to the captain on the runway at Jan Smuts Airport.

That same week – on Friday afternoon - we needed a book urgently to check the accuracy of quotations used by the advocates in the pleadings. The book was not available anywhere in Pretoria. The proofs had to go to Cape Town that same night. At long last a copy was found in the Wits library. It was ten to four in holiday time and the library was about to close at four o’clock for the weekend.

Pik then arranged for the Flying Squad in Johannesburg to collect the book. One of us would come and fetch it from them. Pik then arranged for the same student who had had to rush to Jan Smuts Airport the previous Sunday night, to fetch the book. “And you see that you are back here within one hour, or I will report you to Dr Verwoerd!” 

In those days the highway between Pretoria and Johannesburg had not yet been built. To everyone’s surprise the young man was back within the hour. He explained that sometimes they had to pass cars on the wrong side of the road. At the entrance to Johannesburg the government car was stopped for speeding. After he had announced himself with a homemade double folio “Identity Card” with the words “ON OFFICIAL DUTY – Department of Foreign Affairs” on it, he explained that he had to collect the book from the Flying Squad “on instructions from Dr Verwoerd” and there was a time limit.

The traffic police then provided an escort with sirens and all to the Flying Squad and back to the outskirts of Johannesburg.

We worked a lot of overtime. Pik, with the support of Mr Donald Sole , arranged for us to be compensated for it. He and others, if I remember correctly, worked 250 hours of overtime in one month!  Helena and the children brought food over the weekends. On Monday mornings the dedicated Helena arrived with his shaving kit and as she put it, “at least a clean shirt.”

During the printing of, I believe, the “Counter Memorials” Pik was the Department’s representative at the printers in Cape Town. The compositors had to work late on many evenings and sometimes at week-ends. They were generously compensated. 

When all was finished one of the compositors came and greeted Pik. The latter thanked him heartily and expressed the hope that he was satisfied with the material compensation. According to Pik, his answer was, “Mr Botha, I shall give you all the money I earned for this overtime, provided you give me that time to live!” 

There are things that are more valuable than gold, such as memories!

Pik Botha and the Gold City Dixies

By Marinus te Water Naude

In translation

Since many of the younger members of the Department were only born in the Sixties and Seventies something about an earlier time may be of interest to them.

In the early Sixties Minister Botha was a Second Secretary. The younger members of the time heard that his promotion was delayed because he had not passed the required French course. He had by then returned from postings in Stockholm and Cologne and was someone new appointees were aware of.

According to the popular view his reputation rested mainly on the fact that earlier he as a “Rasie” leader at Tuks and he had, with odd exceptions, convinced the members of the music and dance group , the Gold City Dixies, to return from Sweden to South Africa. In fact his reputation was already based on his strong opinions which he was prepared to defend to anyone – and generally convince them,  his resourcefulness and unexpected insights. In addition he was able to work long and hard irrespective of the time day or night.

Other older colleagues from an entirely different (SAP) era now and again referred to his reports on his attempts to convince the Dixies with a mixture of repudiation but also lack of understanding of his way of doing things. On one occasion a few cadets dug up one of these reports (everything was in hard copy in those days, neatly typed by an older generation of foreign assistants who were almost all strict and very strict and reprimanding to cadets.

The Dixies were at a hotel somewhere in the forests considering their situation and the minister-to-be in his report wring of his exceptional attempt to convince them, wrote a sentence which read along these lines: “The engine purrs reassuringly like the Mercedes, turn after turn through the everlasting Swedish pine forest climbing up the mountainside.” In his student days short stories were published in the Huisgenoot magazine under the name Pik Botha.

In the mid-Sixties the Department co-ordinated the reply of the government in the SWA case before the World Court. The team of advocates drafted the texts, while a team of typists, researchers, proofreaders, copy-makers and others under the leadership of Mr Botha prepared the texts for the printers. This went on for weeks and months with many hours of overtime. He already knew how to bind together a group of faithful workers and his teams were always prepared to do more. Some of the older women brought him coffee etc at the slightest cough or sign from him. Everyone hung on his every words when he delivered long orations at teatimes on some aspect of the case or told anecdotes about anything or everything.

He loved the veld and going hunting if he got the chance. There were dedicated audiences including the advocates for these tales. While hunting he had improbable experiences, among others that on occasion he encountered frogs as big as lambs. He considered shooting a specimen as proof, but the frog stared at him so threateningly and reproachfully with his saucer eyes that he decided to lower his gun…

With these sessions and show of interest he kept the morale of his co-workers high and succeeded in getting the best from all of them. However, after weeks of overtime, despondency and a sense of unreality as a result of pure exhaustion began to affect the production team.

At this time rumours of a ghost in the bell tower of East Wing of the Union Buildings re-emerged. This caused a certain anxiety among the ladies especially. The rumour just would not die. Some simply dismissed it as rubbish, but especially after dignified members of the legal team a week or so later also claimed to have heard something in the early hours of the morning doubts began to grow.
Mr Botha’s interest was also aroused.

To bring an end to the rumours he arranged that all gathered at the windows of the West East Wing of the Union Buildings facing the Amphitheatre on a moonless Saturday night at midnight. By eleven o’clock only the most committed were still working and by twelve midnight the tension was really high. And would you believe it, when some began to think there was no truth in the rumour, in the dark silence a shadowy figure was noticed below the bell tower.

Later it was visible on the stoep opposite from time to time. It then moved with a strange movement towards the copula between the fish ponds.  Some ladies screamed uncontrollably and fainted when the ever level-headed David Tothill claimed that he recognised the “simian movements” of Advocate John Viall under a sheet. The excitement and reflections had a remarkable effect on the team to make them feel they had been on holiday for a week or more. Mr Botha who carefully planted the rumours over a period and planned the phenomenon with a few co-workers, could not hide his satisfaction and pleasure entirely.

The long working hours also caused some members of the team to experience a variety of problems as a result of family circumstances, cadets with examinations, etc. Then he was prepared to go out of his way to help them. In turn his team were prepared to walk on fire for him. Eventually he went to the World Court in The Hague as full member of the legal team.

A personal impression of Pik Botha, the man

 

By Pierre Dietrichsen

(Written after President Mandela moved Pik Botha to the Ministry of Minerals and Energy Affairs in 1994)

Many of my colleagues have had a longer direct association with Minister Pik Botha than I have and I write these lines realising that I would possibly contribute very little not already said by someone else. Nevertheless, with time marching on and the Minister now at a neighbouring Ministry, a bit of nostalgia might be in order.

The first time I heard the name Pik Botha was, almost inevitably, in the context of my reading of the World Court Cases on Namibia. Little did I realise that I would one day work "at his side". Then came the general elections and the famous smile was all over the lamp posts and trees of Pretoria and after that it was Pik Botha, MP. Shortly after that I joined the Department and got to know several colleagues who had worked with him on the SWA case, as they called it. They spoke in admiration of his stamina and ability to read and reread papers long after midnight without tiring.

My first personal experience came in New York. Former Minister of Foreign Affairs Hilgard Muller was leading the delegation of SA to the General Assembly with Pik Botha, Dirk Mudge and other politicos such as Lennox Sebe, if my memory serves me well, as members apart from Departmental and Mission staff. It was 1973 and already the credentials question was hotly discussed.

I remember how strongly Mr Botha argued for firm action, both in the Assembly and in the lobbies. By the way, this was an important Session for China and Germany too, apart from the fact that Henry Kissinger made a speech in his deep voice which was not easy to forget! Pik Botha was clearly at home in that theatre of operations and I think his long friendships and associations with people like Kissinger started there. But I could also see that colleagues such as Carl von Hirschberg, who was Permanent Representative, Jim Steward, Hermann Hanekom, Derek Auret and Dawie Gericke had a healthy respect for the MP with the quick smile but the uncompromising desire for good results and high standards. I was a "temporary" member and could almost choose when to be absent, if you know what I mean!

When Pik Botha became our Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1977, I was at Head Office. Shortly after that I was posted to Paris where the Minister soon visited for talks. Late one evening, after meetings and a cocktail, Ambassador Louis Pienaar and Jeremy Shearar had already left when the Minister decided his team should go out for dinner to be able to face up to the hectic programme of the next day! I was the only Embassy staff member around and so it came to pass that a mere First Secretary had to entertain the Minister. The Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Brand Fourie, decided that he had had enough to eat and sat out.

After some hurried telephone calls to find a restaurant prepared to accommodate some ten people for dinner on the wrong side of 11 p.m., we left from the Rafael Hotel in the 16th arrondissement for the Gauloise in the 15th. Luckily my instinct had given me the foresight to keep the cars waiting until the last moment! It was a relatively short drive but still took some ten minutes. The Restaurant was not a very inspiring sight close to midnight (few Parisian restaurants are, some would say) and this, together with the inconvenience of the trip through Paris traffic, caused the Minister to severely question my sanity. Before entering, I was sure I heard the words "Kafee op Petrus Steyn" and something about "ure se ry in die middernag", but, I must add, my objective was to get in there to tell my acquaintance, the "maitre" that the dinner was "big stuff".

I think he read it on my face because he was extra charming, but, to no avail, all in French! Man, did I interpret and invent! By the time the snails were three minutes late, the party was ready to abandon the outing. It took some convincing to stay and 'voila!', the snails arrived. Our visitors had expected a dozen on a plate but this man did things in style; a plate full each with the most delicious sauce caused a silence at the table that had me wondering! By the time the fillet arrived the best Bordeaux had done its magic, the Restaurant was a different place. The punch line is this: Pik Botha expects quality and when he gets it he recognises it. I was complimented on my knowledge and my judgment. I personally thought my tenacity was way up in the A's. Some more visits followed over the next four years and I really matured in the job!

On my return to Head Office in 1982, I joined the staff of Mr Hans van Dalsen, the Director-General. We were closely involved in negotiations with Angola about the withdrawal of the Cuban troops and the meetings with Mozambique to reach agreements on matters of mutual concern. The first number of meetings took place at Komatipoort at the Motel near the border post. The airstrip near the town at times became a true international airport! Delegations on both sides were normally substantial and colleagues and I had our hands full with logistics. I wrote minutes until late at night many times. What impressed me then was the fact that Pik Botha never looked at my notes; yet he remembered every word and nuance used by the other delegation weeks and months later and used them effectively. This contributed to the confidence built up over months between the sides.

In this context, I personally experienced the Minister's stamina. After a long day of talks, the Minister requested us to arrange dinner at the Castle for the two delegations. This is where the Nkomati agreement was finally taking shape. Late at night when he sensed that agreement was near, the Minister suggested that the politicians continue political negotiations while the "experts" take leave to a backroom to come up with a fine-tuned text. Adv. Jan Heunis, Les Manley, I and others then toiled away while the Ministers talked about future relations.

Soon after that we witnessed a classic Pik Botha move; when the text was agreed on it was time to arrange the signing ceremony. Pretoria and other venues were suggested but the Minister thought only one place was symbolically suitable: Komatipoort Somebody mentioned three weeks as a suitable delay but the Minister thought a week was enough to arrange it, so just about the whole Africa branch, Protocol and several others got to work with the help of other departments to create a Pik Botha-inspired temporary village on the banks of the Nkomati to sign the accord some ten days later with full military pomp and a five-course lunch for hundreds in tents and train coaches.

The Minister's drive and original thinking certainly inspired his colleagues and got officials to adopt a "can-do" attitude. I think a few were exhausted in the process but Pik Botha thrived! It was March 1984 and I spent my birthday at Komatipoort.

Several commentators of note have written on meetings with Angolan delegations on Ilha do Sal and I shall not venture into detail. What was impressive was the ability of the Minister to arrive with SAA flights to Europe around 01h00 and after very little sleep, keep the nose to the grindstone all day just to leave again at the same ungodly hour at night in time to report to Cabinet at 09h00 the next morning in Cape Town. A number of other Cabinet Ministers and officials aged a lot in those days.
(Translated from the Afrikaans beyond this point.)

Around this time I was instructed to join the Ministry at the time of Mr Hans van Dalsen’s retirement. This brief article is about Pik Botha, but I think it is quite in order to mention that Hans van Dalsen was one of the Ambassadors and people for which I had only the highest respect. A true role-model as person and diplomat. As the Director-General he complemented the Minister excellently. Just as Mrs Helena Botha fulfilled a role that should not be underestimated.

After a period with the Minister it was time to try for another posting. Evert Riekert came to my aid and after the Minister was convinced that a replacement by the name of Hennie de Klerk was ideal, I was on my way to Tokyo. I remember a few conversations about this matter, among others at a small farewell for me. This is how it went: “Pierre, must you go now?” PD: “I think so Minister. I have been at Head Office for nearly four years.” Mrs Pat D:  “Our money is all gone, Minister. We are penniless.” Minister:  “Then this is serious. Les, our people at Head Office must get more money. Speak to Evert. We must make a plan, really! We can’t continue like this.” This is something about Pik Botha that sticks in one’s memory: the humanity which he displayed at unexpected moments, even in times of tension and drama.

There are of course other anecdotes about suitcases that got lost at Frankfurt just before Rubicon, nightmares during the visit of the Prime Minister to seven countries in 1984, potjiekos competitions that we lost, problems at the SABC and other troubles with the neighbours which I will leave to other colleagues and friends. More recent affairs such as our negotiations with China while CODESA was in progress, journeys to the East with the current Director-General and so forth I will allow to mature with age. I have already shot off my mouth, as the saying goes.

Greetings to a Minister, a boss, a colleague and a friend.

The Republc of San Seriffe - a place to be watched

Now for something lighter

                                                                      By Tom Wheeler

On 1 April 1977 The Guardian in London produced a five broadsheet page supplement on the island republic of San Serriffe in the Indian Ocean. Full coverage was given to the island's struggle for independence, its recent turbulent political history, commercial opportunities and the head of state as a family man (all Ministers 'Here members of his family). The editorial text was accompanied by many advertisements like that by Kodak -Mlich read "If you have a photograph of San Serriffe, 'He would like to see it".

Always on the look-out for new political friends in Africa in those days of  isolation, the staff at South Africa House immediately reported on this new phenomenon to Pretoria with copies to Washington and our erstwhile mission  on Reunion. (In those days the report was typed and put in the next outgoing diplomatic bag.)

Just over a month later - fast for those days - the accompanying report on a follow-up conversation between a member of the Embassy in Washington and the desk officer for San Serriffe at the US State Department arrived.

The issue is of such importance both to the history of South Africa's international relations and, with our new found interest in the IOR*, to the situation in Indian Ocean early in the next century, that it is reproduced here  for posterity, (with the agreement of the drafter of the report.)
*.IOR : Indian Ocean Rim

BUT FIRST, THE ACTUAL EXTRACT:

A GUARDIAN SPECIAL REPORT  -  1 APRIL 1977

THE TEN YEARS of independence which San Seriffe celebrates today have been a period of economic expansion and social development probably unrivalled by any other new nation.

With this achievement has gone a determined attempt, In part successful. to maintain the outward forms of a parliamentary  democracy. This special report, edited and introduced by Geoffrey Taylor, attempts to recount the remarkable transformation in the life of the Republic, to inform British investors and visitors of the opportunities which have been and are being created, and not least to
encourage companies trading with the Republic to call attention to their  share in its development.
.
Rapid growth brings its own problems, not all of which can be solved in total composure. The
survey allows some of those problems to be brought under closer scrutiny.
(Survey then follows)

Reaction of SA Mission in Washington, to Head Office:
CONFIDENTIAL
The Secretary for Foreign Affairs
PRETORIA
CAPE TOWN
(Copied to London and Reunion)
INDIAN OCEAN: REPUBLIC OF SAN SERRIFFE                                                       
10 May 1977

Please refer to the Ambassador, London's minute UKl8/317 /4 of 1 April 1974  and enclosure (Guardian Special Report on San Serriffe).

We recently had occasion to discuss the implications of the first ten years of San Serriffean independence with the desk officer at the State Department responsible for San Serriffe, David P Rosenblatt III. Mr Rosenblatt, a graduate of Iowa State University and the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, served in Damascus, Baghdad and Beirut, before being posted to Bedoni as political
officer in 1974. While in Beirut, where he served from 1969 to 1973, he met Mr Woodward and Mr Shaw, W'l0 are familiar with Mr Rosenblatt's remarkable objectivity in reporting on Arab/Israeli problems.

Mr Rosenblatt opened the discussion by sketching the difficulties facing San Serriffe. Apparently the erosion of the Western Coasts of the island is proceeding at a far greater pace than originally thought. Scientists at MIT have now calculated that San Serriffe will strike the coast of Sri Lanka, 22,5 km south of Galle, sometime in December 2008. Apart from the damage that will be sustained by the Sri Lankan coastline, there are problems of an Infringement of a sovereign nation's economic zone, not only by fishing vessels of the nation in question, but by that nation itself. As a result, Mr Rosenblatt indicated that the US contribution earmarked for the so-called Zimbabwe Development Fund (Mr Rosenblatt was somewhat vague about the location of Zimbabwe) would now be allocated to Sri Lanka so that the Sri Lankan government would be able to repair the damage to their coastline and integrate those San Serriffeans who wished to come ashore, or are thrown ashore on Sri Lanka, by the force of the impact, with the Tamil population of the island. When we pointed out that the Sri Lankan government was forcibly returning the Tamil population to India, and that such repatriation was causing untold hardship amongst the Tamils, Mr Rosenblatt replied that that was an internal affair of Sri Lanka, and therefore the United States had no right to intervene. In any case, he said, Mrs Banderenaika had "not done a bad job nd if the undisciplined San Serriffeans come barging in to a peaceful island where they had no right to be, they can jolly well accept the consequences".  The fact remains, of course, that San Serriffe has not yet collided with Sri Lanka, although it is steaming across the Indian Ocean at such a pace that it is threatening to turn the ocean from a zone of peace into at very least, a zone of considerable consternation.

Turning to the President, General MJ Pica, Mr Rosenblatt raised a rather chilling fact. Apparently the president, although only 34 years old, has allowed  the description of "father of the San Serriffean people" to go to his head - in a manner of speaking. In fact, he is quite crippled with syphilis and his doctors expect him to live for only six months more. Allied to this is the fact that the leader of the opposition, Mr Ralph Baskerville, is obviously in his dotage and it is quite obvious that the frail web of democracy in San Serriffe is in peril. In fact, the most alarming development in these islands is the appearance of radical cells amongst the M'flong, a newspaper printed In Mitton and Portuguese, entitled "0 Osinho Legatato" has suddenly appeared on the campus of Perpetua University and even in Bedoni, walls are suddenly daubed with signs reading 'Viva Frelimi", with the M'flong translation "Frelimo Viva" in brackets. The fact that a radical element is emerging amongst the indigenous people of these islands is extremely depressing to the West. Furthermore, it is obvious that the worst form of African socialismt (i.e. that socialism implantedin Africa after the sudden departure of the Portuguese) has now taken root on the islands vk1ich, through the vagaries of erosion, are travelling away from the African mainland at 15 m. p. h. and therefore exporting an alien ideology to South East Asia. However, there is a ray of hope. Mr Rosenblatt revealed that the CIA is well established in the Maldive Islands where a complicated programme of dyke-building and counter current making, which should resist the onward surge of the Republic of San Serriffe, is underway.

The local head of the CIA is so confident of the outcome of his plans that he feels that the Serriffean islands may not only be halted, but that their shape may be altered totally. In an interview in the capital of the Maldives, the head of the CIA operations there, Mr Cyrus X Treat said, "Who knows, the semi-colonic San Serriffe Republic might, through our efforts become an enigmatic question mark in the cookie jar of history". (Washington Post, 14 May 1977)

We would like to suggest that our Consul at Reunion pay an official visit to Bedoni while the islands are still within reach and under General Pica's rule. Whether or not the Department decides to establish a permanent presence on Serriffe is a matter for the East African and South East Asian sections to decide. The only comment that this mission would like to make is that the South African presence on San Serriffe will certainly not lack mobility.

JM STERBAN
for Charge d'Affaires a. i.
Footnote: . For those with a knowledge of the printing trade the significance of the names will not be lost - serriffe, pica, bodoni, baskerville and many others.

Dachau concentration camp

(Explanatory note by Pieter Wolvaardt: 6 December 2015. R.F. ‘Monty’ Montgomery was seconded to the BBC from South Africa House during WW II. He had earlier, while in Berlin, married an Italian and the secondment was for security reasons. His last posting was ambassador in Lisbon during the mid-1970s. About five years ago his daughter gave me a copy of his Afrikaans 352-page memoirs (38 chapters) ‘Op die maan se baan’.  He had unsuccessfully tried to have it published. The following is a translation of chapter 16 dealing with his visit to the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 – one of the first South Africans who had entered the camp).

Dachau concentration camp

Dachau

Only after I had said ‘yes’ did I realise with a heavy heart to what macabre and gruesome task I had agreed to. The South African Government required a report on the conditions on German concentration camps for submission to Parliament. I would be loaned back from the BBC and would, with Stoffel Botha, deputy-director of information at South Africa House, pay the necessary visits.
Earlier that week I saw shocking photos of scenes in camps like Buchenwald and others in Poland already freed. After deciding to watch newsreel about the events, I realised that I would either have to withdraw or that I would have to prepare myself psychologically for seeing heaps of naked and twisted corpses. I chose the second course as the arrangements for the visit were already advanced.
We learnt that Dachau concentration camp, the first of its type dating back to only a few weeks after Hitler came into power in 1933, had just been freed. We also learnt that a typhoid epidemic was raging and that the inmates could not yet be released. We left a few days later, on 7 May 1945, with an American Air Force Dakota to Munich in Bavaria (South Germany). The Americans had invited newspaper editors from Spain, Portugal, Brazil and Poland, as well as from Fleet Street in London on the trip.

Munich carried many wounds of war and large parts had been flattened. We stayed in a pre-war five-star hotel which was still habitable but which would not have qualified for one star a week after the invasion of the city. There were, however, warm water and reasonable beds. Two of the American crew managed to arrange bedmates by exchanging a hot bath – and possibly a bit of chocolate – for a young Dutch and equally young German girl who walked in ‘looking for a bath’. The next morning early we left in small bus for Dachau.

It was a beautiful day, and incidentally V-day, Victory Day in Europe. The road wove through green fields and cultivated areas. About 15 kilometers east of Munich we arrived at the road leading to Dachau. At that point we encountered one of those colourful typical south-German wooden road signs, depicting a group of singing and dancing rural individuals with a concertina player with the motto: ‘Zum Konzentrationslager Dachau’. Was this intentional sadism or only to mislead the population?

Off the left of the entrance on the siding the so-called ‘death-train’ from Buchenwald stood. Five-hundred of the inmates released from there had arrived dead. Just inside the outer gate with its huge quarantine announcement we were taken to a clinic for a typhoid injection – and after that sprayed with DDT powder. This also applied to the American ambassador in Paris.

At the main gate a young Dutchman was addressing a number of farmers who had arrived with their horse-drawn wagons in German. Despite his new uniform and a weeks’ proper rations since the relief of the camp, he looked under-nourished and emaciated. His name was Willem ‘Bib’ van Landschot, an erstwhile Dutch golf champion and a lieutenant in the Dutch army. He and a few others had escaped death narrowly when the Natzweiler extermination camp in Alsace Lorraine was evacuated with the advance of the Allied troops. They had already been brought to the over-burdened Dachau camp where several could, in the growing chaos and death rate of more than 120 a day, change their identity. (Dachau was originally meant for 10 000 inmates, but the number incarcerated was at that stage 36 0000). Van Landschot and other Dutch prisoners – like Hans Gerritson, Louis Reyntjes, Casper Vermeulen and the priest P. Van Gestel – were all NN (Nacht und Nebel) inmates of the Natzweiler camp and were branded for extermination. Only through good underground organisation and, as put by Van Landschot, being able to ‘each arrange a corpse’ had they remained alive. Van Landschot later showed us the deep sores on his legs, known as phlegmona, brought on by systematic undernourishment.

Instead of abusing them this young Dutchman talked like a father to these German farmers: ‘You farmers probably didn’t know what was going on inside. We have asked you to bring your wagons to help us remove those hundreds of corpses and to bury them. In this way you can as proud people of Bavaria help to wipe this scandal out.’ I was immensely impressed by Van Lanschot’s attitude in the light of the brutality that he had been subjected to. As far as these rural people were concerned, he was probably correct. Late that afternoon we looked down from the hospital’s second floor on this sad convoy of wagons packed with corpses leaving the outer gate. I saw the elderly farmer who was leading the front wagon through the many pedestrians, leaving crying and sobbing.

It was a day of cruel contrasts. The wide road between the two rows of huts was brightened up with flags and loud hailers played marching music. V-day and the ambassador’s visit had to be acknowledged. Festive sounds from Paris, London and Brussels, and victory messages from Churchill, Truman and De Gaulle could be heard in many languages. The moving masses dawdled in the dusty road in the early summer sun, stopped to listen occasionally, but there was no cheering or joy. Their victory day was a week earlier when the camp was relieved and when some of their guards who resisted were shot dead in front of them. Their lives were then saved – because was it not Himmler’s order that no prisoner should fall in Allied hands? (Himmler’s written order was later showed to us by the American military authorities).

Inside the sleeping huts were hundreds leaning against the long walls, so weak that they were just waiting to die. No normal food could save them and intravenous feeding was not possible on that scale. The hospital was packed to capacity. We paused at the side of one inmate. He was apparently a Pole because, when the Polish journalist said something there was a flicker in his dull-looking eyes while one huge tear fell – without clinging – over his parchment-like cheek. We walked on hastily. A young boy of about thirteen showed us two corpses which were placed on one side to be removed – like empty milk bottles every morning. For him this was not strange and neither he nor the others showed any emotion. No wonder because statistics showed that 13 000 people lost their lives there during the first four months of 1945. Since the release the previous week a further thousand had died. It would be correct to say that we were more touched by those alive, those living-dead who were lying down or standing like scarecrows – or wandering around without purpose with dull glass-looking eyes.

We were taken through a fence and a type of ditch, but still part of the camp, to the crematorium. The wagons were being loaded from two heaps of several hundred corpses. It looked like branches and tree trunks that were left by storm water against the wall. I suddenly used all my defense mechanisms and blinkers with which I had armed myself psychologically. I tried to see human beings as branches, trunks and stones.

Inside the front entrance of the big room just on the left of the glowing ovens a sign indicated ‘Brausebad’ and there was a flower pot with a few dried-up flowers on a corner stand. Inside the rubber-lined entrance door it looked like a series of shower cubicles with about 50 shower heads protruding from the ceiling. On the far side the big gas pipes feeding the ‘shower room’ were operated from behind a glass-covered watch hole. On the other side of the room was another air tight door leading directly into the ovens. But the ovens could only cremate a maximum of 100 corpses per day. During the last months of the relief many had to be buried outside but, despite this, the Americans found substantially more than 1000 corpses unburied.

Dachau was also used as a SS training camp. Rows of houses for the officers were located outside the camp. Evidence was found of experiments on prisoners to assist the Africa Corps in tropical situations. One-hundred and seventy-eight clerics were for instance subjected to malaria experiments. Those who did not die as a result were permanently physically broken, and suffered fever attacks. The Jesuit priest, P. van Gestel van Maastricht, said that of the more than 2000 clerics from 24 countries who were sent to Dachau, more than half perished, mostly as result of intentional under-feeding coupled with heavy physical labour.

Part of our instruction was to launch an investigation into direct torture and brutality and much evidence of this was found. It is, however, not my intention to dwell further on these atrocities in this account. Several examples were included in our parliamentary report, and anyone who visits Dachau today will find that the West German Government is openly prepared – almost in a masochistic manner – to reveal those Nazi cruelties.

The misery around me and the jubilation from the outside did not sit well with me: it was unrealistic and only left a lump in my throat. Immediately after my return to London I dictated a short talk to my secretary for possible use by Radio News Reel. It was titled ‘V-Day in Dachau’ and came straight from my heart. I tried a few years ago to obtain a copy of that talk from the BBC and was pleasantly surprised when I was told that it was in its archives. Eventually I obtained a copy of what I had said on 12 May 1945. The final paragraph, translated from English, is as follows [translated back from Afrikaans]:

‘When I reflected finally on the visions of the thousands who will probably survive this hell, I realised what V-Day really meant. Not really a victory, but the beginning of the struggle towards a better world to live in’.

*         *          *           *

From a young age I was an admirer of German music, literature, art and scientific achievements. In 1927 our German teacher, Dr. Kuschke, came into the form 1 class with a lieder book in his hand. We learnt more German that way than through grammar. As from form 2 play-time was over and his successor, a brilliant teacher Victor Hesse, inculcated a strong love for the language and culture. Thus, when I was confronted with the atrocities of the Nazis during the war, in particular my personal experience with the concentration camps, my reaction was to draw a clear line between the genuine German and the Nazi regime. As already acknowledged Hitler did a lot initially towards the upliftment of a defeated nation. The huge power that he obtained, the immeasurable ambition and latent hate in him, were brought to the surface through a gang of eccentric lieutenants. In the atmosphere of a destructive and inhuman world war, it degenerated for the true German and his culture into something as different as day is to night. This is possibly what the West German Government wants to demonstrate in the Dachau museum near Munich where no atrocity is left out or diminished.

Munich was of course one of the key locations in the early history of the Nazi Party. In the ‘Burgerbräukeler’ the well known beer-hall ‘Putsch’ of the Nazi Party took place which had overthrown the state government of Bavaria. Later a Party museum was erected. We visited it that evening and found most of the exhibition cabinets broken. On the floor I came across a few inflation notes – over-printed notes worth millions of marks – which I still have. I also still have a fragment of a Persian vase with the swastika figure which was in the exhibition cabinet at the SS training facility in Dachau. This was to show the Aryan blood-line to the early Persians.

That night, and possibly during the day while we were at Dachau, the American crew went on a looting spree for mementoes in Munich, using cigarettes and chocolates as payment. The next day they loaded piles of goods. There were cases of German wine, steel helmets, uniforms and literally hundreds of swords which are probably today exhibited with pride in many parts of the United States.