Catcher in the Sky

H F Verwoerd

By Colin Vale

On the day that the South African Prime Minister, Hendrik Verwoerd, was assassinated in Parliament by a messenger called Tsafendas, it seems likely that I was, very briefly it is true, the first and only person in Pretoria to know about it.

It happened thus. On that lazy mid-afternoon on 6 September, 1966, I was sitting quietly at my desk in the Union Buildings in Pretoria, high up over the city, quite possibly gazing sleepily out of the window and waiting for the four o’clock chime that would send the civil servants streaming like lemmings from their offices into the passages and home for the day. My phone rang. On the line was a familiar voice, but one I had not heard since leaving Salisbury several months before. It was a highly agitated voice. “My God”, it said, “They have killed Verwoerd!”

“What?” It was certainly the most outrageous thing I had ever picked up a phone to hear, but not exactly astonishing since, with a sense of deja vu, I instantly recalled listening on the radio to a speech given by Verwoerd  in 1960 after which, quite casually, a farmer called David Pratt reportedly pumped two bullets into the poor man’s face.

“A man has stabbed and killed Verwoerd. Two minutes ago in Parliament. I’ve just seen it. I had to tell somebody in Pretoria. You must tell your people.”

The caller was Andre, an Information man on parliamentary duty. It occurred to me that, since his whole department – a little one before the Rhoodie days - was probably in Cape Town for the session, I might be the only person in the Union Buildings whose number was listed in his diary. He clearly expected me to pass on the news up the line to the dynamos who kept the power of the state pulsing while the parliamentarians postured and preened in parliament. I was stunned that I should be the first recipient of such momentous tidings and that the burden of handing it on to the right people in the shortest possible time had been recklessly placed on my unwilling shoulders. What if the revolution had started?

Once I had the news, I had the same problem as he: to get rid of it at once. Whom could, or should, I inform? News that hot doesn’t stay fresh for long. I rushed down the passage and into the office of my boss and blurted it out. He then bustled officiously out of his office and vanished down another passage. I was, disappointingly, not required to accompany him. But news that hot doesn’t stay fresh for long. It was on the front pages by the time the lemmings hit the streets. I had been sensational for a minute or two, though unfortunately, not noticably.

And there was, thankfully, no revolution.

The death of Hendrik Verwoerd had a profound effect on South African foreign relations and that effect was felt almost as instantly as the startling intelligence I had received from Cape Town. My acute awareness of this change had everything to do with the fact that, since my return from Salisbury, I had been a member of the Africa Division; and the greatest problem that beset members of that division was that they were fundamentally in disagreement with Verwoerd’s Africa policy. This was not surprising, because, while other desks were preoccupied with blithely expanding ties with the countries under their care, and earning official approval for their efforts, what the Africa Division was conditioned to do was to keep Africa at bay; this at a time when most of its staff felt that it would have been a good deal more sensible to take advantage of the opportunities that were opening up everywhere in Africa to cultivate the acquaintance of the new leaders of the Dark Continent. After all, the Afrikaners had long complained about being the victims of colonialism, and the liberated masses of Africa all appeared to feel the same way – eagerly and profitably exploiting, at least politically, that perceived grievance to the full. They might, if astute, have made common cause.

But Verwoerd, though a kindly and correctly considerate man who, privately, paid the school fees of a talented orphan child in Ghana, - I’ve read the file! - believed so sincerely in his thesis of separation of the races in South Africa and perhaps even in keeping the races separate for the good of mankind on general, that he could not resist running South African foreign policy as a lab experiment in social engineering. (Of course, since he had been born in Holland he might not have felt quite as strongly about colonialism as the rest of his cabinet.)

 Be that as it may, he certainly made it his business to see to it that Foreign Affairs understood his position on this issue and would strive, protesting mildly, to promote his crusade against indiscriminate mixing of the races, even into the well-lubricated arena of the diplomatic cocktail circuit. I recall reading more than one rambling, painstakingly extended comment in his tight, neat handwriting wandering across and over the pages in reply to departmental memos gently pleading for some slack on the issue. No one believed this would ever change.

But change they did on that fateful day when he died. Yet, even in that, there was a wicked little twist of irony. In spite of his mighty resolve, Verwoerd had been persuaded, three days before his murder, to meet privately and alone with Chief Jonathan, the Prime Minister of Lesotho, in his office in Pretoria. The circumstances at that time, relating to the slowly maturing Oxbow scheme which was designed to bring water by gravity to South Africa and money by a reverse flow into Lesotho, made the meeting inevitable.  It was Verwoerd’s first and only meeting with any head of an independent African state, and it may well have been his last formal meeting with anyone. Clearly, he regarded the occasion as an exception not likely to be repeated, for he declined to attend a formal lunch with Chief Jonathan hosted by the Africa Institute at the Union Hotel to mark the event. Foreign Affairs, stepped into the breach by supplying a bevy of senior officials for the occasion to puff it up, but the absence of Verwoerd raised an embarrassed eyebrow or two in Pretoria.

More curious, perhaps, is the fact that the only person who had any knowledge of what had passed between Verwoerd and Jonathan – was Chief Jonathan himself. After the dust had settled, so to speak, the South African government was put in the unaccustomed position of having to ask Jonathan what, if anything, Verwoerd had conceded at that historic, landmark encounter. I understand that he was honest about it; though a touch of hyperbole might have been forgiven considering that Britain, in its haste to leave Africa as cheaply as possible, had dumped Jonathan’s country into an accelerated independence pretty much without a penny.

But, if the meeting had achieved nothing extra for Chief Jonathan, it had at least cracked, if not broken, the ice between South Africa and Africa. It would, however, as history shows, quickly freeze over again when Africa perceived the virtue of tit-for-tat isolation. But it is the time between that is the burden of this tale.

Verwoerd’s death, as many will recall, gave rise to a policy called, strangely, the “Outward Looking Policy”. I remember thinking that it sounded somewhat eerie, anxious eyes peeping out over the barricades into the Dark Continent, but I suppose that at the time, no one thought it worthwhile to actually go out into Africa; and instead of looking out for Africa (involvement perhaps?), outward-looking (clinical detachment?), was considered quite sufficient for confirming one’s sceptical preconceptions or sombre forebodings about Africa and its likely fate. As it turned out, however, looking was quite insufficient. Africa, or at least a part of it, definitely needed more fraternization and less voyeurism.

The main benefit for me and for all my colleagues of the Africa Division, of the arrival of the “outward looking” policy was that it relieved us of an unusual duty that should go down in the annals of diplomacy. In those days I saw myself as a catcher and dispatcher of VIPs. Perhaps, with apologies to J.D. Salinger, a Catcher in the Sky. It happened this way:
Independence had brought with it the need for the new leaders of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, the BLS countries as they were referred to first in the Africa Division and then beyond it, to travel abroad. For leaders of land-locked states in Southern Africa thousands of kilometers from any other state likely to offer financial support to maintain their leaders in a style in keeping with their elevated status, the most convenient way out of Africa by air, was by way of the airport which they would have been astounded to know would one day be called Oliver Tambo International. Jan Smuts Airport, then, was a very different place. For a start, it was very much smaller than it is today and was not divided into two sections, local and international. Also, since flying was still a form of entertainment, it featured a section from which the public, bored on a Sunday afternoon, could take the kids to see the aircraft landing and taking off.

But there was one serious snag - in South Africa, public facilities were very strictly segregated and this meant that an airport like Jan Smuts was simply not equipped with facilities, “separate but equal”, as the phrase went, to handle black customers. I suppose that, in point of fact, there were so few black people traveling by air in those days that the problem, when it did occasionally crop up, could be handled informally, if messily. However, the sudden blossoming of independent states in Southern Africa raised a problem of serious proportions for the South African Department of Foreign Affairs. Black Kings, Presidents, Prime Ministers and other dignitaries could not simply be left to take their chances in the tempestuous waters of Jan Smuts Airport.

The Department was, as always, equal to the task. Protocol took care of the details, and the upshot was that every last member of the Africa Division – not Protocol, note - found himself (no hers in those days!) with the new and delicate task of preventing major diplomatic rows from erupting over the treatment of foreign black dignitaries during their dreary transit hours in South Africa.
As a rule, government business cannot be stalled over weekends and public holidays, neither do aircraft patiently circle to await the arrival of diplomatic mediators at airports to hustle sensitive visitors from cabin to private lounge, out of sight, wherever possible, of policemen or nosey airport staff. The Africa division had to be on its toes, day and night, to hurry out to Jan Smuts Airport. The arrangements wreaked havoc with private and family life, since there was no saying how long these excursions might last. Planes are frequently delayed both arriving and leaving. Hours were spent at the airport waiting for flights to arrive or to depart, anxiously making small talk with said Kings, Presidents and Prime Ministers, Departmental directors, indeed with any resident of a neighbouring state who by fair means or foul could obtain a ticket to travel abroad.

The need for these excursions had come upon us quite suddenly as black colonies in Southern Africa, like Lesotho, Swaziland and Bechuanaland were tumbled one after the other into hasty independence. Far too suddenly for the management at Jan Smuts Airport to make accommodation available of a suitable quality with all the necessary facilities required by long-distance travellers. The first VIP lounge that I recall, was a cramped, long, narrow room with insufficient furniture. The new top dogs would be shown to the comfortable, padded armchairs and the rest would make the best of what remained including windowsills and suitcases. Rest rooms could be reached from the VIP lounge only by minor voyages of exploration through the mazes of the back rooms of the airport. In the early days, these were staff toilets of the clerks and functionaries of the airport, and the sudden appearance of black faces in the passages under escort of lounge-suited, shifty-looking white companions naturally caused curiosity, if not alarm. With larger groups of dignitaries, these distinctly undignified wanderings might occur with some frequency, so that more than one member of the Africa Division might be required to do duty at any one time, adding to the restive crowd.

Hours of forced companionship takes it out of all parties, especially when the traveller is alone. This was surely the time, if one had only thought of it, with history in the making, to conduct in depth interviews with the nation-builders of the new Africa. Instead, the hours were passed either in uncomfortable silence or in polite inconsequentialities. A junior diplomat cannot, in all conscience, casually enquire of a President what takes him to Europe. Or whether he intends visiting the Russians while he is abroad. (An especially sensitive issue at that time – and some, of course, were visiting Russia for cash or in-kind handouts.)

Some of the dignitaries were chattier than others. Others slept, or pretended to sleep. I recall that King Moshoeshoe of Lesotho, a tall, slender young man at the time, accompanied by a couple of advisers, was somewhat imperious in his, to me then, incongruous majesty.

Meals were a problem too. Snacks could, for preference, be obtained on order, but the process was time-consuming (cold tea) and, as with all snacks, a little disappointing for men who enjoyed eating copious quantities of starches. Dainty sandwich quarters, nestling in lettuce leaves, stood no chance in the face of large, uncomfortable men, idle and ravenously bored.  For proper meals, which were occasionally requested, the assembled travellers would have to be escorted to the dining room where one could never be quite sure of the quality of the service, though the meals were good. In those days, airports and railways stations (not to mention the restaurant cars in the trains themselves) still prided themselves on the quality of their cuisine. The dodgy service may have been influenced by resentment, or astonishment, or both together.

For the members of the Africa Division, there were, of course, some worrying moments. For me, the worst arrived on the day that Quett Masire, then a Minister in the Botswana government, asked me whether I could show him the way to the airport bookstall. No one had previously made such a request and no route from the VIP lounge to the main hall of the airport had ever been prospected. I played for time by asking whether there was any particular magazine or newspaper he would like to see. But no, he wanted to look around for something himself. There was no help for it but to navigate by the stars. I took off confidently down one long corridor and, seeing an open door which appeared to be leading in the right direction, I took it, without hesitation. This led me along another passage that I feared might be a dead end. So it turned out. By this time, I had lost my sense of direction. We were deep in the innards of the building, with nowhere to go but back. I apologised and returned to the first passage where I opened another door at random. Too late, the smell of the kitchen, but there was no going back. I pushed on and opened another door. There we were, the future Prime Minister of a sovereign state and I, darting about among the cooks and between the ovens and the scullery of the airport kitchen. I’ve seen this escape route a dozen times in movies employing people like Peter Sellars and  Woody Allen in the role I was playing, and am full of sympathy. Weaving a path among cooks and scullions, especially while attempting to look dignified and in control of the situation at the same time, is no easy task. Ask the Pink Panther.

But there was worse to come. On leaving the kitchen, the Minister and I suddenly found ourselves behind a glass door leading into the main concourse, but guarded by a member of the South African Police force. Now I was really being put to the test that I had long dreaded. Blacks were not allowed into the main concourse, and I had a black man in tow who was determined to get there and whom I was duty bound to protect from injury and humiliation. I pulled the door open. The policeman gaped as I urged my guest to follow me quickly. The policemen shouted at me to stop. I pointed to the bookstall for Masire’s benefit and slowly walked back to where to the young policeman stood prepared, in his turn, to do his duty to our mutual government. He said to me: “Bantu’s are not allowed in here.”

“Look”, I replied, “I am an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs and this man is a Minister of the government of Botswana.”

“My instructions are not to allow blacks into this hall,” he said.
“OK”, I said, “I’ll ask him to leave again.”

He thought that good enough and said, “Good.”

I stood at Masire’s elbow as he browsed through the offerings of the day, keeping an anxious eye on the policeman. He studiously avoided looking back at me. Masire eventually bought his magazine and I faced the task of getting him back to the safety of the VIP lounge. I knew no other route but the one through the kitchen. We dived back into the steam and smoke, weaving and bobbing and smiling – especially Masire.

“Do you always go that way?” he asked politely. I had no reply.
Eventually, the airport and the department sat down together to work out a more satisfactory solution to the problem of the transiting VIPs. The outcome was an entirely new VIP lounge much closer to the dining room and to the aircraft. Pressure on the cramped facilities was increasing, and there was no time to lose. The result was that when the new VIP lounge was brought into operation, one or two minor problems had not been solved. The most serious of these was the location of a VIP toilet. In the interim, the VIPs had to use a bathroom that had for years been used by ladies. As the department’s official diplomatic mediators, we now had to take on the lowly job of controlling access to one of the airport toilets. There is no sight more dismaying that an urgent lady being told that her bathroom is currently being occupied by a group of males, even if they are described as VIPs.

“Who are you?” they would ask suspiciously as I stood guard over the door marked “LADIES”.
“I am an official of the Department of Foreign Affairs,” I would reply uneasily.  I  sometimes wonder what they thought of that.