"Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free
to combat it". Thomas Jefferson
By Herbert Beukes
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.
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 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment