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| 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.
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