Union Buildings

Union Buildings

Tuesday 14 March 2017

A remarkable man (Part 1)


"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it". Thomas Jefferson


By Herbert Beukes

It was the mid-sixties and the South African government was defending its mandate over the UN Trust territory of South West Africa at the World Court in The Hague. I was still at university in Stellenbosch and was following reports as the court case made headlines in local newspapers. That was when I became aware of the name Pik Botha for the first time. As a still youthful career official of the department of foreign affairs at that time, Pik Botha was part of the government’s legal team defending its claimed mandate.

In time I joined the department of foreign affairs and was on transfer to San Francisco when Pik Botha again featured in public columns. As an elected member of the ruling National Party by then, he challenged the political status quo early in his political career. Custom dictated that a new member of parliament should steer clear of controversy in his maiden speech. Only nobody told Pik Botha so. 

Most Party loyalists were unable, or unwilling, to recognise that the government’s policy on human rights was flawed, discriminatory and hurtful. The problem was that the race policies could only be sustained by allowing or tolerating the violation of the rights of, particularly, black people. Pik Botha, in an act of virtual apostasy and fully aware of the implications of his words, used his maiden speech to defy Party orthodoxy by making a plea that the government accept the UN Convention on Universal Human Rights.

Not long after raising the political eyebrows in parliament, he stirred up political emotions again when he boldly told the UN General Assembly in 1974 that he could not support a policy of discrimination based on a person’s skin colour. It was a political grenade lobbed at the heart of the government’s race policies. 

Pik Botha immediately became associated with a new hope and reason in his troubled land. It was a marker that he had put down on the South African political landscape and a message to his Party colleagues that if they were unhappy with his public questioning of the political grid-lock, they needed to convince him of the error of his ways.

At the time of these developments I was attached to the embassy in Washington. It was an important voice symbolically that brought a quiet expectation of more of the same courage to come from inside a hitherto unshakeable ruling Party. The next step in Pik Botha’s progression was his appointment as South Africa’s permanent representative (i.e. ambassador) to the United Nations in New York. Soon after taking up his position, the country’s participation in the General Assembly was suspended and he was appointed South African ambassador in Washington while continuing to hold down the now much reduced UN position. Looking at the appointments in retrospect, Mr Vorster’s choice of someone with Pik Botha’s relatively liberal leanings for appointment to those high profile positions was an act that few would have thought the prime minister capable of, considering his own political credentials.
The beginning
It was in Washington that our career paths intersected and that I came to know Pik Botha personally up close. I was doing long hours, often after official closing time, but I was not the only one working after hours in the office. My assignment as a young foreign service official required me to cover Capitol Hill and interacting with officials as varied as legislative assistants, senators and congressmen. Since congressional staff and their activities were not limited to the 8-to-5 routine, I might only get back to the embassy long after closing hours and then still have to prepare reports on the day’s events for the department of foreign affairs in Pretoria before leaving for home. It was during those times that I noticed that ambassador Botha was also still in his office, which was linked to his (official) residence.

One day, toward evening, as I was getting ready to pack up and go home, Pik Botha unexpectedly came into my office. I discovered something that day that repeated itself, times without number, namely that Pik Botha did not care for small talk. Correction: he was incapable of small talk. (See: Pik Botha’s Church). We were still practically strangers to one another but he wasted no time in getting to the issue at hand. From that day on it became a familiar pattern. Only, instead of coming to my office he would summon me to his. His work ethic was legendary and he expected the same of his staff. It must be said though that he did not expect anything from his staff that he would not commit himself to. In all the years I worked for and with Pik Botha, I seldom knew him to leave a job or task unfinished simply because he wanted to go home in the evening. Work and being busy was his Bio-plus.

In his waking hours he was forever busy at the office. This usually entailed writing reports on anything that might remotely affect or be of interest to the government. These reports he would bring to the attention of his political bosses in Pretoria because for such reports to have meaning, they needed political direction and commitment at the very top, at ministerial level in Pretoria. 

For a foreign policy to function effectively, it was paramount that there should be a relationship of trust between ambassador and foreign minister, without any room for wavering inclinations. This was a political truth that Pik had learned in an unusual manner and, although disappointing at the time, the experience would be good preparation or schooling for his own cabinet career later on. 

Two events provided the context. Both were foreign interventions by South Africa which were threatening to engulf the country in major conflicts. South Africa’s support for the Smith government in neigbouring (then) Rhodesia had moved to the top of the agenda bedeviling South Africa’s relations with the US and many of the country’s important trading partners. 

Support from within the ranks of the Vorster government however stymied the international efforts to terminate the backing. Pik had done his homework on the implications for South Africa of a prolonged involvement in the escalating crisis and was clear on what the message to prime minister Vorster should be. Only, who would confront the prime minister with the realities? Pik warned frequently and passionately in cables to the Union Buildings.

In the meantime another foreign policy dilemma was fast turning into a formidable threat to South Africa’s security. South Africa had covertly entered the Angolan conflict on the side of Savimbi’s UNITA forces, clandestinely backed by US arms supplies, against the Soviet/Cuban assisted MPLA. The South African war effort had all the appearance of a proxy for America. 

When the covert alliance was exposed publicly, the US Congress forced the American government through the Clark/Tunney amendment to sever all assistance to UNITA. It left South African forces exposed and vulnerable to Super Power hostility on foreign soil and condemned by the world community. Lives lost and excessively unaffordable demands on the treasury demanded disengagement and withdrawal, a necessity that South Africa’s military leadership resisted. It was only prime minister Vorster who had the political authority to overcome the resistance. Again, someone had to lay out the stark realities. It became evident to Pik that all his previous cautioning in reports to the department of foreign affairs – read foreign minister - had fallen in fallow soil.

A meeting was called by Mr Vorster with some key advisers, including ambassador Pik Botha in Washington. When Pik teamed up with his minister in Pretoria for their journey to Oubos, on the Eastern Cape coast near Port Elizabeth, where Mr Vorster had his holiday home, Dr Muller proved very reluctant to confront Mr Vorster with the uncomfortable truths and it was left to his ambassador in Washington to step into the breach.

Pik was justifiably unhappy with his minister’s feeble response that he was “… too tired” and all that he was “interested in now, was to retire and get (his) pension”. Clearly irritated, Pik seized on the lamentation and respectfully suggested that if nothing was done to pull the troops out of Angola and get the costly interventions off the South African taxpayers’ back, “… there might not be a pension for you, when you retire!”

1976 was also a presidential election year in the US. Gerald Ford, the incumbent, was up against a virtually unknown Jimmy Carter from Georgia. Ford was the beneficiary of former president Nixon’s political melt-down but cerebral clumsiness and the Republican Party’s unpopularity following the Watergate scandal conspired to ensure his political demise. Foreign ambassadors in Washington were customarily invited to attend the four-yearly conventions of the two Parties where the respective candidates for the presidency were formally elected. 

The invitations were part of the American process of openness and transparency and were intended to promote democracy. These occasions afforded the attending ambassadors useful opportunities over three days, not only to meet and interact with many of the influential party officials and congressional and business representatives who were much more accessible at such times, but also to attend policy manifesto review sessions. Many of the new administration’s senior appointments would come from the ranks of the people taking lead roles in these conventions. It was up to each ambassador to make what he could of the opportunities that presented themselves. 

Pik Botha attended the National Democratic Party convention in New York City in 1976 where Jimmy Carter would be elected officially as his Party’s candidate to oppose the incumbent president Ford. Late in the evening after the official opening ceremony I got a call in Washington from the ambassador in New York. He was succinct: “Jy kan maar van môre af die s..t kom oorvat. Ek’t genoeg gehad”. (From tomorrow you can take over the s..t, I’ve had enough). All that socializing around the conference events was not Pik Botha’s scene. And for good reason. He did not have the patience to endure such unstructured, unfocused and protracted meetings.

Pik disliked social functions - the conventional diplomat’s staple - intensely. He loathed the burden that he felt, cocktail functions imposed without substantive reward. His was almost a visceral reaction to such occasions. Something about Mr Botha that had always intrigued me was the incongruity between the self-assuredness of the public speaker cum debater and his unsure footing in small talk situations at social gatherings.

The setting was SABC headquarters in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, where Mr Botha visited the senior management of the Corporation on invitation. It would be a first for him since ministerial oversight for broadcasting affairs had been given to him in the wake of the information scandal. I accompanied Mr Botha and his first reaction as we got out of the car in the basement parking garages, was to notice the large number of expensive German cars belonging to members of the management personnel.


We were received in the parking area by the chairman of the SABC, professor Wynand Mouton, who shepherded Mr Botha to a side room for a brief exchange before escorting him to a reception room where senior personnel would be introduced to the minister. I had meanwhile made my way to the reception area and was in conversation with some SABC representatives in the corner farthest from the entrance door when Pik appeared. For a brief moment he scanned the room, then walked straight past several of the locals and away from his nominal host, prof Mouton. 

At that moment I knew I was witnessing the same phenomenon that I first observed in similar Washington environments. He headed straight for the far end of the room where he had spotted me and joined our conversation. Clearly, this was not a question of his shunning the hosts. Rather, everybody else in the room was a stranger and Pik Botha had sought sanctuary in the familiar. 

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