CHAPTER TWENTY - NINE

Endgame in Southern Africa

The 1980s proved to be the last decade of apartheid and with its passing the politics and economics of the region changed out of recognition. These changes that ushered in the last decade of the century were preceded by a crescendo of violence and few at the beginning of the 1980s believed that the apartheid state had only 10 years to run. In South Africa anti-apartheid violence reached a climax in the years 1984–86, following President Botha’s constitutional reforms of 1983 that still excluded the black majority from any share in power. The front-line states were subject to military incursions by South Africa throughout the decade. In Angola UNITA, supported by South Africa and the United States, waged war against the MPLA government; in Mozambique South Africa supported the rebel movement Resistencia Nacional de Mozambique (RENAMO); in Namibia it fought an increasingly difficult rearguard action to maintain its control. In 1990, however, the new South African President, F. W. de Klerk, recognizing the inevitable, signalled the end of apartheid and universal suffrage in his speech of 2 February. On 21 March Namibia finally shook off South African control to become independent.

THE FRONT-LINE STATES

South Africa had long used its economic strength to dominate its neighbours. Through the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), formed in 1969, it incorporated Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland, as well as Namibia, into its orbit while the mining giant, the Anglo-American Corporation and its subsidiaries, extended AAC control far beyond South Africa into Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Republic’s rail and port infrastructure serviced vital imports and exports for the countries of the interior while migrant workers from the peripheral states went to work in South Africa’s mines (in the mid-1980s 280,000 such migrants sent home remittances worth R538 million).

The Southern Africa Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was formed in 1980 in order to counter this all-pervasive influence, following a meeting at Arusha, Tanzania, by the front-line states. The object was to find ways in which the countries bordering South Africa could reduce their economic and transport dependence upon that country. The original members were Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. SADCC was formed in response to a precise challenge: that of dominant South African power throughout the region. Of its members, only Malawi had recognized South Africa diplomatically, although Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland were seen as the Republic’s ‘economic prisoners’. SADCC had an immediate impact during its first year: in November 1980 it held a donor conference in Maputo and raised pledges from the industrial countries of US$650 million for its development projects. The goal of SADCC was ‘to liberate our economies from their dependence on the Republic of South Africa, to overcome the imposed economic fragmentation, and to co-ordinate our efforts toward regional and national economic development’ according to the Lusaka Declaration of 1 April 1980 that saw the formal founding of SADCC.1 The Lusaka Declaration stressed that economic liberation was as important as political freedom and analysed dependence as follows:

This dependence is not a natural phenomenon, nor is it simply the result of a free market economy. The nine states and one occupied territory (Namibia) of Southern Africa were, in varying degrees, deliberately incorporated – by metropolitan powers, colonial rulers, and large corporations – in the colonial and sub-colonial structures centring on the Republic of South Africa. The development of national economies as balanced units, let alone the welfare of the people of southern Africa, played no part in the economic integration strategy.

SADCC, despite this disclaimer of the colonial powers, was nonetheless dependent upon Western capital injections to further its anti-South African agenda and only in 1987 did the USSR and other Communist countries consider providing aid. At the SADCC heads of state meeting in Maputo, eight of nine leaders (Hastings Banda of Malawi did not attend) agreed that, ‘South Africa can invade and occupy sovereign states, blow up vital installations, and massacre populations at no apparent cost to its relations with its major allies… Some of the friends of South Africa who provide the racist regime with the capital, technology, management skills, and deadly weapons necessary to carry out such a policy also seek to improve their relations with SADCC.’ The best way to do so, they added, was to ‘use their influence to check the aggression being waged against SADCC member states’.

All the SADCC states were liable to South African destabilization raids and other tactics. Pretoria met what it called the ‘total onslaught’ of the Soviet Union with its ‘total strategy’ under which it justified the destabilization of its neighbours. South Africa’s white leaders equated the ‘red peril’ with the ‘black peril’ and claimed that South Africa was defending Christian values while its insistence upon the Soviet threat had two advantages: ‘On the one hand, all criticisms of apartheid can be dismissed as communist-inspired. On the other hand, it allows South Africa to demand that the West support it as a bastion against communism, despite any distaste for apartheid; when the West attacks apartheid it only aids Moscow.’2 However, the total strategy, which placed the entire country on a war footing, that allowed destabilization was based upon a fallacy since destabilization was most likely to lead to more calls for Soviet support because Britain and the United States were on South Africa’s side and would not oppose its policy of destabilization. South Africa saw providing support to RENAMO in Mozambique as the best way to stretch Zimbabwe’s resources and lessen its capacity to cause problems for South Africa since RENAMO constantly targeted the railways to Beira and Maputo upon which Zimbabwe relied for its imports and exports. Proof of South Africa’s support for RENAMO after the Nkomati Accord was passed secretly to the ANC by Derek Hanekom, later Lands Minister in Mandela’s cabinet. During the 1980s South Africa invaded three capitals (of Botswana, Lesotho and Mozambique) and four countries (Angola, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe); its agents attempted to assassinate the prime ministers of Lesotho and Zimbabwe; it backed the rebel movements RENAMO in Mozambique and UNITA in Angola; disrupted oil supplies to six countries; and attacked the railways that affected Angola, Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.³

Once Zimbabwe became independent in 1980 it replaced Zambia on the immediate front line facing South Africa across the Limpopo. Throughout the decade, however, President Kaunda played a leading role in co-ordinating opposition to the apartheid state and from 1985, when Nyerere stepped down as President of Tanzania, became chairman of the front-line states. It was Zambia’s misfortune that confrontation so engaged President Kaunda that he neglected the economic growth and well-being of Zambia to the extent that his country became one of the most indebted in the world (on a per capita basis) while his own popularity as the founding father of independent Zambia slumped.

Robert Mugabe’s victory in the pre-independence elections in Zimbabwe of March 1980 was a severe blow to South Africa. ‘For the South Africans the outcome was a particularly bitter blow. They had invested US$300 million in the Rhodesian war against the nationalists and they had invested heavily in the election campaign against ZANU.’4 Further, South Africa sought to create a Constellation of Southern African States (CONSAS), which they would dominate economically and technologically. Other front-line leaders might prove malleable, but not Mugabe, who advocated Marxist-Leninist policies, was an outspoken critic of apartheid and determined to lessen his country’s dependence on South Africa. He at once became a leading member of SADCC. ‘Zimbabwe’s geographical and historical ties to South Africa, including the fact that it inherited Pretoria as its largest trading partner at independence, left it particularly vulnerable to economic destabilization. Joining the SADCC 17 days before independence was a recognition of this harsh reality. It was also a public statement that it wanted to do something about it.’⁵ Zimbabwe, nonetheless, had to take South Africa’s grip on the region into account. At independence 19 per cent of Zimbabwe’s total trade was with South Africa and 41 per cent of all Zimbabwe’s manufactured exports went to South Africa, 60 per cent of these under a preferential trading agreement of 1964. Abrogation of the agreement would cost Zimbabwe Z$50 million a year and the loss of 6,500 jobs. On the eve of independence, therefore, Mugabe said: ‘We must accept that South Africa is a geographical reality and, as such, we must have some minimum relationship with it.’ South Africa began by cutting off fuel supplies to Mugabe’s Zimbabwe so that the rehabilitation of the Beira–Mutare oil pipeline and the Beira railway became a top priority. At the height of the RENAMO war, between 27 February 1986 and 9 September 1987, the railway was sabotaged on average just over once a week.⁶ From July 1985 onwards Zimbabwe deployed troops in Mozambique to assist FRELIMO against RENAMO and guard the Beira Corridor. In September 1987 a government official estimated the cost of maintaining 10,000 troops in Mozambique at US$1.5 million a day although that included the salaries of the soldiers. During the 1980s, while it played a significant role as a front-line state, the ZANU government of Mugabe also fought the ‘Dissidents’ War’ at home (1982–87) whereby the power of Nkomo’s ZAPU was broken as an opposition to pave the way for the creation of a de facto one-party state.

SOUTH AFRICA’S TWO FLANKS: ANGOLA AND MOZAMBIQUE

South Africa became deeply embroiled in Angola from 1975 when it made its immediate post-independence invasion of the territory. Pretoria feared the MPLA government’s Marxist orientation and Moscow links and saw a Marxist Angola as a threat to the region. Moreover, South Africa sought to remain in Namibia for economic and strategic reasons despite its international obligation to grant Namibia independence. In order to weaken the Angolan government, if not overthrow it, South Africa supported the insurgent movement of UNITA throughout the 1980s. Over the years 1975 to 1987 it made major efforts, including armed incursions, to assist UNITA in its bid to seize power in Luanda but the up-and-down unreliability of UNITA and the substantial military assistance provided by Cuba for the MPLA thwarted this South African design. By the end of the decade rising South African casualties and the defeat (or stalemate) it sustained at the battle of Cuito Cuanavale made the policy unsustainable and forced South Africa into serious negotiations over Namibian independence. South African incursions into Angola were substantial in scale and cost: over December 1983–January 1984, for example, Operation Askari saw the SADF penetrate 300 kilometres into Angola to capture Kassinga and bomb Lubango and other towns. The SADF pulled back after suffering heavier losses than expected and being privately warned by the Soviet Union not to escalate the conflict.7

Angola sustained a contradictory relationship with the United States throughout these years. On the one hand, the United States was Angola’s most important trading partner for its oil (which Chevron largely controlled) and the United States’ fourth trading partner in Africa as a result. At the same time Washington refused to recognize the MPLA government and gave its support to UNITA and South Africa in their attempts to undermine it, even as US oil payments to Luanda were used to buy arms and pay for the Cuban troops Washington wanted to force to leave the country. This complex relationship represented one of the many hypocrisies of the Southern African situation. When President Reagan’s government provided assistance for UNITA and Jonas Savimbi visited Washington where he met the President and had talks with the State Department, the Soviet Foreign Minister and two senior generals met with Angolan government officials and then warned that the USSR might increase its military aid to Angola if Savimbi obtained more aid from the US.⁸ In any case, by the mid-1980s two wars were being fought in Angola: the civil war between the MPLA government, backed by the USSR and supported by the presence of some 20,000 Cuban troops, and UNITA, in its turn supported by Zaïre, the US and South Africa; and a second war between SWAPO, with bases in southern Angola, and South Africa, which made frequent incursions across the border from Namibia to destroy SWAPO and ANC bases.

Fighting in Angola was widespread. ‘By the early 1980s, UNITA forces were entrenched in rural areas across much of southern and central Angola, and were beginning to expand their operations into the north. By the mid-1980s, they had reached the Zaïrean frontier and begun to use Zaïre as a rear base for guerrilla activities in northern Angola… Following the repeal of the Clark Amendment in July 1985, the United States resumed covert assistance to UNITA, thereby once again establishing a de facto alliance with South Africa.’⁹ The MPLA government was undermined because it lacked popular participation, suffered from a dearth of qualified personnel and faced the spread of a US-backed UNITA insurgency and a growing debt burden. Both sides in this long war used increasingly brutal tactics and ‘Savimbi maintained an iron grip on power and brooked no criticism whatever’. On the other hand Forças Armadas Populares de Libertação de Angola (FAPLA) (the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola) never posed a threat to the government of dos Santos. ‘The common threat posed by UNITA and South Africa may provide part of the explanation. The efficient security services, developed with East German assistance, were doubtless another dissuasive factor. Even more important, the presence of large numbers of Cuban troops in the country until 1991 provided a security shield, not just against UNITA and the South Africans, but against potential internal plotters as well.’10 Oil wealth not only sustained the MPLA government but also reduced the readiness of Western countries, eager for a share in prospecting for future fields, to criticize the government while also reducing its need to depend upon aid.

Oil, indeed, was crucial in setting the parameters of the Angola that would emerge in the 1990s. ‘The economic well-being of the sophisticated elite which ruled Angola after the end of the liberation wars of the 1970s was enhanced throughout the 1980s by the growing supply of crude petroleum. The oil revenue cushioning Luanda from the austerity which the collapse of the colonial economy had inflicted on the countryside was also the economic fuel which made the war particularly ferocious… It can, and perhaps should, be argued that it was oil which kept the severe Angolan civil wars running for 25 years.’¹¹ At the same time, while Washington welcomed destabilizing activities in Angola, ‘corporate America remained keen to do business with Angola, selling aircraft, electronic equipment, computer and oil-drilling technology’. President Reagan prevented the United Nations from restraining South Africa’s frequent incursions into Angola and though these ostensibly were in pursuit of Namibian guerrillas, they were also aimed at Angolan army targets while the US worked through third parties to ensure a continuing supply of weapons reached Savimbi. South Africa, loudly proclaiming its role in resisting the Soviet ‘total onslaught’, was able to use Russian support for the MPLA government as a weapon to play upon US fears of the spread of Communism and so ensure continuing US support for the apartheid state.

By the mid-1980s, therefore, the wars in Angola had become inextricably intertwined with the worldwide confrontation of the Cold War so that, reversing its earlier policy, the US House of Representatives voted in 1986 to provide UNITA with US$15 million in aid. In November 1987 a growing battle developed around the strategic town of Cuito Cuanavale in south-east Angola to which South African forces in support of UNITA were laying siege. By January 1988 about 6,000 South African troops were deployed against 10,000 MPLA, supported by Cubans. The battle became one of the biggest set pieces in Africa since World War II. The South Africans lost air superiority to the Cubans and their force was in danger of being trapped. The battle marked a turning point for the region since it destroyed the myth of South African military invincibility and persuaded Pretoria that it could not dominate the region by military means. In April 1988 the USSR and Cuba agreed to the long-standing US insistence upon ‘linkage’ – that is, the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola as part of a package for Namibian independence. The two sides then held a number of meetings over the remainder of 1988 in London, Brazzaville, Cairo, Geneva and New York to produce an agreement that was signed in New York on 22 December 1988 between Angola, Cuba and South Africa. Under its terms the 50,000 Cuban troops (its numbers had been greatly increased in the last phase of the war) were to be withdrawn over 27 months to July 1991; South Africa was to implement UN Resolution 435 leading to Namibian independence in 1990; and South Africa was to withdraw all its forces from Angola while the ANC, with an estimated 10,000 freedom fighters in the country, was to do the same. This US-brokered agreement excluded any peace between the MPLA government and UNITA. However, an initiative to end the MPLA–UNITA war was mounted by President Mobutu of Zaïre who brought President dos Santos and Jonas Savimbi together on 22 June 1989 at his palace at Gbadolite. But the ‘Gbadolite handshake’ did not work and the war resumed. The US increased its aid to UNITA and by 1990 an estimated 100,000 Angolans had been killed in this war while 900,000 faced famine.

The US approach to the problems of Southern Africa during these years was epitomized by Chester Crocker who had been named Under-Secretary of State for African Affairs in the new Reagan administration. He largely determined US policy in the region. In a speech of August 1981, he said: ‘We are concerned about the influence of the Soviet Union and its surrogates in Africa,’ and he then added that the US needed South Africa’s minerals.12 In November 1982 Crocker remarked that the major purpose of the US policy of ‘constructive engagement’ was ‘to reverse the decline in security and stability of southern Africa which has been under way now since the early and mid-1970s’. Crocker’s top priority was to stop Soviet encroachment in Africa and he spoke of the Soviet Union aiming to thwart goals of shared future prosperity through its surrogates in the region. In this regard he became almost mesmerized by the Cuban presence in Angola. It was Crocker who invented the concept of ‘linkage’ whereby Namibian independence would depend upon the withdrawal of the Cubans from Angola while his policy of ‘constructive engagement’ did not also include any contacts with the ANC or other anti-apartheid groups. However, despite eight years of constructive engagement Crocker was only able to broker the 1988 settlement as a result of two factors out of his control: the first, the military setback suffered by South Africa that convinced Pretoria it could not prevail militarily; and second, the decision of Mikhail Gorbachev to end confrontations with the United States and disengage from Angola.

NAMIBIA

The United Nations had been exerting pressure upon South Africa to quit Namibia ever since its foundation in 1945. Over the years 1978–81, using the Western contact group consisting of the US, Britain, France, West Germany and Canada, the United Nations carried out intense negotiations with South Africa on the basis of Resolution 435, which was passed on 29 September 1978 and called for internationally supervised elections in Namibia (the so-called Waldheim Plan). SWAPO, however, called for an end to the Western mediating role since it saw this as biased in favour of South Africa. In a Security Council debate of 30 April 1981 the Africa group brought to a vote four resolutions each imposing mandatory sanctions against South Africa under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, leading the US, Britain and France to use their vetoes a total of 12 times. Then President Reagan brushed aside the contact group mechanism and adopted the policy of linkage. Subsequently, ‘The Crocker mission was conducted with great skill and tenacity but the premise – linking a Namibian settlement to Cuban withdrawal from Angola – put the cart before the horse and thus inhibited progress until developments in Soviet policy prompted Cuban withdrawal.’¹³ Linkage of the Cubans to Resolution 435 by the US was of enormous value to South Africa, for up to that time it had not been a South African demand. It ran counter to the policy of the other four on the contact group and was also counter to majority opinion in the Security Council. Thereafter, the US made it the cornerstone of its policy towards Namibia. By the end of 1983 France and Canada had withdrawn from the contact group which then ceased to exist.

In 1984 Angola, South Africa and the US signed the Lusaka Agreement, which established a joint military commission to monitor the Angola–Namibia border. In 1985, however, South African troops crossed into Angola, claiming to be in pursuit of SWAPO guerrillas. That year South Africa created a Transitional Government of National Unity (TGNU) in Namibia that was widely condemned by the international community, which refused to recognize its validity. In November 1985 the US and Britain vetoed a resolution for mandatory sanctions against South Africa because of its continued occupation of Namibia. By 1986 South Africa admitted to having 35,000 troops in Namibia (75 per cent locally recruited) although SWAPO claimed that South African forces were 100,000 strong. South Africa was mounting a so-called ‘hearts and minds’ campaign in Ovamboland where many atrocities were committed; the South African strategy was to drive a wedge between SWAPO, mainly recruited from the Ovambo, and other smaller ethnic groups. In 1987 the People’s Liberation Army of Namibia (PLAN) resumed attacks on white farms for the first time since 1983. On 20 December 1988, the Security Council established a small mission, UN Angola Verification Mission (UNAVEM), to verify Cuban withdrawal from Angola. In January 1989 the Security Council adopted a number of resolutions enabling the process set out in Resolution 435 to be activated and approved a budget for the UN Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG), whose personnel began to arrive in Namibia. There was a brief and bloody setback in April 1989 when hundreds of SWAPO fighters infiltrated across the Angolan border to establish bases in Namibia during the transitional period. They suffered very heavy casualties at the hands of the South African forces and fighting continued into May before the South African forces returned to barracks. On 6 June 1989 President de Klerk of South Africa declared an end to apartheid in Namibia and an amnesty for guerrillas returning home from Angola. In November elections supervised by 1,695 UN-trained personnel were held and of 700,000 registered voters more than 90 per cent took part and SWAPO won a clear majority with 57.3 per cent of the votes cast. Constitutional talks were held early in 1990 and were completed in time for independence on 21 March 1990.

MOZAMBIQUE

Mozambique did not possess mineral resources like Angola and at independence its economy was based upon agriculture and fisheries while it depended upon two external factors for a major part of its income: remittances from its workers in South Africa and Rhodesia; and its railways and ports, which served the landlocked countries of the interior. FRELIMO emerged as the only political party at independence and represented the will of the people in a way that the MPLA had never been able to do in Angola. RENAMO (the National Resistance Movement of Mozambique), which did much to devastate the country through the 1980s, was created by white Rhodesia with the sole purpose of destabilizing a potentially dangerous enemy. Even so, FRELIMO managed to maintain a remarkable sense of unity so that it weathered the trauma of Machel’s death in 1986.

At the beginning of the 1980s Mozambique appeared to be making reasonable economic progress although this was something of a delusion for outside the towns FRELIMO’s writ hardly ran as RENAMO became increasingly active. Originally, RENAMO had been the creation of Ken Flower, the head of the Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) of Rhodesia, who set it up in 1976, using disaffected members of FRELIMO. In 1980 South Africa undertook to finance and support RENAMO. Although at the time of Zimbabwe’s independence RENAMO had been reduced to little more than banditry, it became increasingly active in 1981 (as South Africa provided it with resources) and began to attack transport communications and especially the Beira Corridor which was vital to Zimbabwe. This renewed activity led FRELIMO to recall former commanders and to arm the people of Maputo as the threat posed by RENAMO grew. FRELIMO, though espousing Marxism, was always pragmatic rather than ideological and in 1982 Mozambique began to court the United States and exert pressure upon South Africa to stop supporting RENAMO. In 1983 the US State Department admitted openly that South Africa was providing the bulk of RENAMO’s finances and arms while Chester Crocker suggested that it might be possible to ‘pluck Mozambique from the Soviet orbit’.

President Machel continued the tentative shift to the West in April 1983 when he visited Portugal, France, Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia to present his country’s case against South Africa. This softer line towards the West arose in part from necessity and in part as a result of Mozambique’s membership of SADCC whose second top-level meeting of November 1980 had been held in Maputo.

In the years 1980–84, although providing overt support for RENAMO, South Africa also made overtures to Mozambique but, ‘FRELIMO believed that to be truly independent Mozambique had to break away from its economic subjugation to South Africa, Rhodesia and Portugal. This objective was supported by current thinking among other Third World countries and among the grouping of non-aligned states that at the time was particularly influential.’ Such an attitude had been encouraged by the precipitate withdrawal of most of the Portuguese in 1975.14 However, a combination of circumstances – drought, failed economic policies and the RENAMO war – forced Machel to agree the Nkomati Accord with South Africa on 16 March 1984. The two countries agreed ‘not to allow their respective territory, territorial waters or air space to be used as a base by another state’s government, foreign military forces, organizations or individuals which plan to prepare to commit acts of violence, terrorism or aggression’ against the other country. What this amounted to in fact was that Mozambique would withdraw its support from the ANC, and South Africa would cease providing support to RENAMO. Subsequently, however, while Mozambique stood by the terms of the Accord South Africa did not. Already in December 1984 Machel accused South Africa of dishonouring its side of the Accord and there was plenty of evidence that it continued to support RENAMO through 1985. In June 1985, at a meeting in Harare between Machel, Mugabe and Nyerere, Zimbabwe and Tanzania agreed to assist Mozambique fight RENAMO, a promise that subsequently led to the stationing of substantial numbers of Zimbabwean troops in Mozambique, especially along the Beira Corridor, and a more limited number of Tanzanians along the railway from Malawi to the Mozambique port of Nacala. The Nkomati Accord represented the high point of South Africa’s policy of destabilization against its neighbours and was seen in Pretoria as a major victory. The Sunday Times said the Accord was the result of ‘diplomacy backed by unchallengeable military superiority’.

Rubbing salt into Mozambique’s wounds the South Africans suggested that their businessmen could revitalize the broken Mozambican economy to prove the advantages of white capitalism over socialism and destroy SADCC in the process. South Africa expected to act as the conduit for any foreign capital destined for Mozambique because it was the ‘natural’ economic centre of the region. This view had already been put to Machel by Margaret Thatcher on his visit to London in October 1983 when she said any British capital investment would be routed through South Africa. The United States and West Germany made the same point.15 It is not clear exactly why South Africa entered into the Nkomati Accord since it did not keep it. Partly, perhaps, through arrogance for it had forced Machel to do what he must have hated doing. And partly, perhaps, it reflected a split in the South African cabinet between the hard-liners who only wished to destabilize the country’s neighbours and the moderates or liberals who harked back to the earlier idea of a constellation of states controlled by Pretoria. Pik Botha called on Western countries to ‘help Mozambique’ with investment routed through South Africa. When the Mozambican Chamber of Commerce sent a delegation to the United States, it found that the Americans would try anything to ensure that their initial investments should go through South Africa and Portugal.¹⁶

One result of these complicated relationships was that in 1985 Machel was able to ask Britain’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, for military assistance and she felt obliged to comply for several reasons: because Machel had pressured Mugabe into accepting the Lancaster House agreement of 1979; because he had signed the Nkomati Accord; and because on the eve of his visit to Downing Street in September 1985 documents had just been captured by FRELIMO forces when they attacked the RENAMO base at Gorongosa that proved South Africa had not kept its side of the bargain. As a result a BMATT (British Military Assistance Training Team) was sent to Mozambique in 1986 to help train FRELIMO troops for the war against RENAMO. It was one of the many ironies in the whole Southern African scenario that the Thatcher government should provide military training for the FRELIMO army fighting RENAMO which was supported by apartheid South Africa that Thatcher did all she could to protect. At one level it could be seen as a British attempt to store up credits against the day when apartheid finally collapsed. Britain would have done better to pressure South Africa into abandoning its support for RENAMO.

Following a summit in Malawi between the leaders of Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe in October 1986 that led to the expulsion of RENAMO bases in Malawi, the plane carrying Machel back to Maputo crashed in circumstances that have never been adequately explained and Machel was killed. However, his death did not cause the disintegration of FRELIMO as it might have done and Joaquim Chissano, then Prime Minister, succeeded to the presidency.

The civil war escalated steadily for the rest of the decade and by 1988 one million Mozambicans had fled to become refugees in Malawi (650,000), Zambia, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Swaziland. At the same time a further four million people had become displaced inside the country and large districts had become ‘no go’ areas outside government control. The Beira Corridor was always an essential highway for Zimbabwe although it had been partly closed for a time in the early 1980s, though trains could use the line provided they had heavy military escorts. Zimbabwe then committed 3,500 troops to assist the Mozambique government keep the corridor open. South Africa’s strategy was to use RENAMO to close the corridor so as to force Zimbabwe to use transport links to the sea through South Africa. In the mid-1980s massive financial and technical aid for the rehabilitation of the railways (the Beira line from Mutare in Zimbabwe to Beira on the Indian Ocean, and the Limpopo line from Chicualacuala on the Zimbabwe–Mozambique border to Maputo) was provided by Western aid donors through SADCC. At the same time Zimbabwe increased the number of its troops in Mozambique to approximately 10,000 (a fifth of its army) to assist the Mozambique government in guarding the Beira Corridor, the Tete Corridor (linking Malawi through the Tete province of Mozambique to Zimbabwe) and the Limpopo railway in the south. By 1989 the FRELIMO government had entered into peace negotiations with RENAMO, a process that was given a boost when de Klerk delivered his speech of 2 February 1990. At the 1989 FRELIMO party congress Chissano announced the abandonment of Marxism-Leninism so that early in 1990 the US officially recognized that Mozambique was no longer a Marxist state, a precondition for receiving US aid.

While Savimbi in Angola based his claims and determination to keep fighting upon the premise that the MPLA had not been endowed with full legitimacy at independence, ‘By contrast, however much RENAMO sought to destroy Mozambique’s infrastructure and eliminate FRELIMO cadres, it never seriously entertained the belief that it could itself challenge FRELIMO’s historical place in contemporary Mozambique.’ It could only legitimize itself as a party if FRELIMO recognized it as such. ‘Savimbi wanted total power; Dhlakama (the leader of RENAMO) wanted a share of the spoils.’17 By the end of the decade the FRELIMO government only exercised authority in major coastal towns and some garrisoned towns inland while RENAMO had substantial support or exercised control in the northern and central provinces across the Zambezi. By 1990 Mozambique had suffered three decades of devastating warfare and the country was in ruins with approximately a quarter of its population refugees, either inside or outside Mozambique.

THE REST OF THE FRONT LINE

Malawi under Hastings Banda had persisted in its isolated stand in relation to South Africa, and Rhodesia until 1980, though there was little evidence that it had benefited the economy. On the other hand, Malawi had joined SADCC as a founder member and hosted the organization’s November 1981 meeting. Although relations with Mozambique were uneasy – Malawi had maintained especially close relations with the Portuguese prior to 1975 – Machel visited Malawi in October 1984 when the two countries signed a general co-operation agreement. However, in July 1986 Mozambique accused Malawi of assisting the RENAMO guerrillas. In September Banda denied these allegations in a meeting with Machel, Kaunda and Mugabe at which Machel warned that he would close the border if such help continued. After the air crash in which Machel died South Africa claimed that documents found in the crash wreckage revealed a plot by Mozambique and Zimbabwe to overthrow the Malawi government. Events in Mozambique forced Banda to reconsider his policies. In April 1987 Malawi committed 300 troops to assist FRELIMO and the Tanzanians guard the strategic Nacala rail link from RENAMO attacks although this new accord was endangered later in the year when a civilian Malawi aircraft was shot down over Mozambique. By July 1988 Malawi was further affected by the war in Mozambique when it found itself acting as unwilling host to 650,000 Mozambican refugees, an event that saw a real shift in Malawi’s support from RENAMO to FRELIMO.

Ever since its independence in 1966 Botswana had resolutely opposed apartheid and refused to establish diplomatic relations with South Africa although it was always obliged to pay careful attention to South Africa’s preponderant regional power. Under Seretse Khama and his successor Quett Masire, Botswana pursued a non-racial approach to politics and enjoyed universal suffrage while, generally, managing to avoid full-scale confrontations with its neighbour. During the 1980s, however, it became a target country for South African destabilization tactics and in 1981 joined with Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique to denounce South African tactics. In July of that year Machel visited Gaborone. There was already a Soviet embassy in Gaborone and Botswana then began to purchase arms from the USSR. This produced a series of press attacks upon Botswana in South Africa and the accusation that it was becoming a Communist base. Late in 1981 President Masire accused the US of backing South Africa’s ‘intransigent attitude’ and warned that South Africa was preparing to attack Botswana. Early in 1982 he warned that South Africa wanted to turn Botswana into another Lebanon.18 Despite huge pressures from Pretoria, for example, to enter into a non-aggression pact with South Africa that was designed to curb any ANC presence in Botswana, or the May 1986 cross-border raid at the time of the Eminent Persons Group visit to South Africa, Botswana had the satisfaction during the second half of the 1980s of seeing its currency, the pula (backed by its diamond wealth), becoming stronger on the international money markets than the rand. Already by 1984 diamonds accounted for 76 per cent of Botswana’s exports. Indeed, Botswana had been skilful in the way it had ensured maximum returns for the country for De Beers had been involved from the beginning and the government was always wary of South Africa exercising too much control over its diamonds. When the size of the Botswana deposits became clear this greatly strengthened the government’s hand. Diamond prices were kept high by a marketing monopoly that included the USSR. Botswana was able to insist on a series of renegotiations with De Beers and got from it one of the best mineral exploitation contracts in the world. Debswana was a 50–50 joint venture from which the Botswana government received 75 per cent of the profits. Despite South African pressures Botswana allowed the ANC to remain in the country, though not to use it as a base for attacks upon South Africa, and it had an open-door policy for refugees from the Republic.

Lesotho under Chief Jonathan had a troubled independence especially after Jonathan had aborted the 1970 elections, which he was losing. He boosted his position by periodic attacks upon the apartheid policy of his giant neighbour whose territory completely surrounds Lesotho. Jonathan’s main political opponent, Ntsu Mokhehle of the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP), had become exiled in South Africa from where his Lesotho Liberation Army (LLA) launched periodic attacks into Lesotho. These attacks acted as a destabilizing factor upon Jonathan and as such suited the South African government. Violence by the LLA had first erupted in 1978 and continued into 1979. From South Africa Mokhehle said he would only take part in elections if representatives of the Communist bloc were expelled from Lesotho. After further confrontations in 1982 and 1983 Jonathan promised to hold new elections. His own popularity declined sharply through 1984 and 1985 and at the beginning of 1986 South Africa effectively blockaded Lesotho after Jonathan had refused to sign a joint security pact or expel members of the ANC. On 20 January 1986, Jonathan was deposed by Maj.-Gen. Justin Lekhanya and placed under house arrest. He died in April 1987 while in South Africa for medical treatment. Jonathan’s role had been unimportant in real terms though he did manage to act as a constant irritant to South Africa.

Deeply conservative and pro-Western, Swaziland nonetheless proclaimed its neutrality in international affairs, much to Pretoria’s satisfaction since its eastern border with Mozambique meant, had Swaziland chosen such a course, that it could have acted as a dangerous conduit for ANC forces passing through into South Africa. Swaziland improved its relations with Marxist Mozambique after the signing of the Nkomati Accord in 1984. In an attempt both to neutralize and bind Swaziland closer to it, South Africa proposed in the late 1970s to transfer to Swaziland the adjoining KaNgwane Bantustan or homeland of the Swazis then in South Africa and another area, the Ingwavuma region of KwaZulu that would have given Swaziland direct access to the Indian Ocean. Whether South Africa really intended to do anything of the sort is doubtful but the prospect of Swazliand regaining its ‘lost lands’ persuaded King Sobhuza II to enter into a secret security agreement with South Africa in 1982, following which the Swazi authorities harassed the ANC and expelled its representatives from the country. Following strong white and black opposition, South Africa dropped the land transfer proposals in 1984. This did not appear to affect Swaziland’s close relations with South Africa. After the signing of the Nkomati Accord, the Swazi government disclosed its secret agreement with South Africa and over the following year deported more than 200 alleged members of the ANC to Zambia or Tanzania. Defying the rest of the front-line states at the January 1985 SADCC meeting, which was held in Mbabane, the Swazi prime minister defended his country’s close links with South Africa. Later that year at the Commonwealth summit at Nassau in the Bahamas, Swaziland was the only country to support Margaret Thatcher’s opposition to Commonwealth sanctions against South Africa. Despite this record, South Africa was not deterred at the end of 1985 from raiding border villages for supporting the ANC and continued to raid into Swaziland over the next three years.

The British role in Southern Africa was crucial to any resolution of the apartheid-fuelled confrontations of the region. Seven of the nine SADCC countries, as well as Namibia, had been British colonies and Britain had always had strong links with Mozambique, much of whose development had been financed from London. But it was always firmly biased towards South Africa and the Thatcher government in particular, though claiming to oppose apartheid, went to great lengths to defend the South African position and maintain a regional status quo. ‘No other country has stronger links with the southern African region than Britain. Given the consequences of South Africa’s regional policy, Britain’s especially strong links with South Africa heighten its responsibilities towards the whole region, to help resolve the interlinked issues of apartheid, conflict, and economic decline … Of all the elements of Britain’s long and complex colonial history in Southern Africa, its history in South Africa, especially its role in laying the foundations for apartheid, is perhaps of greatest significance to present-day southern African affairs. Although apartheid was introduced by the National Party after it first came to power in 1948, nevertheless the foundations of disfranchisement and institutionalized racial discrimination at all levels of society had already been laid’ by Britain when it agreed the peace treaty with the Boers in 1909 that betrayed the black populations of the Boer Republics and effectively prepared the ground for lasting white-minority rule in the most economically powerful nation of the region.19

SOUTH AFRICA

Despite the ‘Muldergate’ scandal that ended the political career of Vorster, and the many problems that white South Africa had faced through the 1970s, the regime entered the new decade as strongly entrenched as ever. P. W. Botha, the new Prime Minister, tried to soften the government’s policy by eliminating ‘petty apartheid’ although retaining core apartheid – the denial of equality of rights to the black majority. But the impossibility of making apartheid work in a state where the white minority depended on the black majority for the smooth functioning of the economy meant that the system began to break down through the 1980s as black opposition to apartheid erupted on all fronts. A central source of South Africa’s strength had always been its huge and lucrative mining sector that historically had attracted British, American and other investments. At its core was the giant Anglo American Corporation with tentacles all over Southern Africa and big interests in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe as well as Namibia. Its subsidiary De Beers dominated the non-USSR diamond mining and marketing and its interests included Angola and Tanzania. The story of mining exploitation in South Africa is one of the least defensible aspects of that country’s history²⁰ although Anglo’s Harry Oppenheimer, by judicial statements deploring apartheid and with donations to the Progressive Party, attempted to present an acceptable mining face to the world, though few were fooled by it.

In 1979 a mysterious flash in the South Atlantic was interpreted as a South African nuclear test; the US, safeguarding its ally, said that its monitoring service had not detected anything but the denial was not believed and South Africa was suspected of having become a nuclear power. Later, in 1993, President de Klerk admitted that South Africa had a number of nuclear bombs or warheads and agreed to destroy them. UN Resolution 558 of December 1984, which requested all states to stop importing arms, ammunition or military vehicles produced in South Africa, was passed unanimously.

In 1982 the UN General Assembly proclaimed an International Year of Mobilization of Sanctions against South Africa. In 1984 the General Assembly rejected the new South African racially segregated tricameral constitution. By 1985, as violence escalated throughout the South African townships, the Security Council condemned the Pretoria regime for killing defenceless Africans. Despite these expressions of UN disapproval, the coming to power of President Reagan in the US and Prime Minister Thatcher in Britain tilted the diplomatic battle at the United Nations in South Africa’s favour for much of the decade. From 1985 onwards there were specific calls for the release of Nelson Mandela while three attempts to extend mandatory sanctions to South Africa – in 1985, 1987 and 1988 – were vetoed by Britain and the US while France abstained. Altogether, there were 45 Western vetoes on South African questions between 1974 and 1988. During all this turmoil education remained strictly segregated and the government spent seven times as much on the education of a white child as on a black child. A telling sign of the breakdown of apartheid was the increasing urbanization of Africans and though some Africans were recognized as ‘urban insiders’ legally entitled to live in the metropolitan areas permanently, the pass laws were still used in an attempt to keep others out; but it had become a losing battle. In 1984, for example, 238,894 Africans were arrested for pass law offences but neither such arrests nor other measures could stem the flow of Africans into the urban areas. As a result, accepting what it could not prevent, in 1986 the government repealed a total of 34 legislative enactments that between them constituted the pass laws, and announced an ‘orderly urbanization’. Further, the government repealed other segregation laws, bans on multiracial political parties and inter-racial sex and marriage and ceased the reservation of particular jobs for whites only. At the same time it opened up business centres in cities to black traders and desegregated some hotels, trains, restaurants and other public facilities. One of the most telling pressures upon the ability of the whites to maintain control was the country’s changing demography: in 1936 whites represented 21 per cent of the population, by 1960 19 per cent, by 1980 16 per cent and by 1985 15 per cent while officials predicted that the figure would have fallen to only 10 per cent in 2005.21

The South African government was on the defensive throughout the decade. The so-called Soviet ‘total onslaught’ could only be countered with a ‘total strategy’ at every level. In 1982 the chief of the SADF, Gen. Constand Viljoen, announced a new ‘area defence system’ to meet the growing ‘area war’ assault by the ANC. This ‘legitimized’ attacks upon the front-line states. The police and the military worked together in maintaining internal order and by and large the police were seen as more repressive than the soldiers. Thus, after 800 children, some as young as seven years, had been arrested following school boycotts, Brig. Jan Coetze, the Soweto Police Chief, said: ‘We are cracking down. We will not allow 5,000 stupid students to disregard law and order in Soweto and South Africa.’22 The same Coetze had remarked the previous July, ‘In our operations, the South African Police and the South African Defence Force operate as one unit.’ The apparent relish with which senior policemen such as Coetze spoke of dealing with Africans was partly aimed at their black populations in the hope – unrealized – of intimidating them, partly it was a form of defiance aimed at an increasingly hostile world and partly, perhaps, a cruel gesture of despair as even the most obtuse members of the police must have begun to realize that the situation was getting beyond them. Police violence reached its height during the disturbances of 1985–86. ‘The incidence of violence in South Africa involving the police has now reached almost pathological proportions. Police are easily provoked into drawing lethal weapons, their treatment of suspects and arrestees is frequently disgraceful and their use of unnecessary force in respect of minor offenders has become so common as to be considered normal conduct.’²³ The police budget, meanwhile, rose steadily.

Following the Nkomati Accord South Africa had begun to speak of itself as the regional power whose interests always had to be taken into account so that, for example, it had the right to demand the withdrawal of the Cubans from Angola, according to its Foreign Minister Pik Botha.²⁴ Further, the more the US and the USSR paid attention to South Africa, the more they confirmed its belief in itself as the regional superpower. However, in the long run the state of the economy would dictate what should happen. ‘Before the political turmoil of the mid-1980s, South Africa was a net importer of capital. However, during the first half of the 1980s, a foreign debt had begun to be accumulated and when, in August 1985, President Botha declared that the government would not be pressured into abolishing apartheid, and foreign banks began to call in their loans, the country was turned into a net exporter of capital.’²⁵ Constant violence and the absence abroad or in prison of black political leaders led to the rise of Bishop Desmond Tutu as a spokesman for the oppressed, and a gentle churchman was transformed into a political orator. He had risen rapidly in the Anglican Church, had been made Bishop of Lesotho in 1976 and now used his church platform to speak out against apartheid. When in 1984 a government commission attacked the South African Council of Churches (SACC) for identifying with the ‘liberation struggle’ Tutu, its Secretary-General, said: ‘Until my dying day I will continue to castigate apartheid as evil and immoral…’ He was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1984 for his non-violent approach to apartheid and was elected Archbishop of Cape Town on 14 April 1986. Meanwhile, the constant police brutality that was shown night after night on television in Britain over 1985–86 had a significant impact upon British public thinking. Many British people who to that time had usually adopted a ‘kith and kin’ sympathetic approach to the plight of the white South African minority began to change their attitudes. They did not, perhaps, become anti-apartheid activists but they certainly no longer defended the white position and the change represented an important shift in British thinking.

When he came to power after the Vorster era, P. W. Botha intended to act as a new broom. Apartheid, as it had been applied up to that time, was no longer working and Afrikaners, he said, ‘must adapt or die’. The essential was change, ‘rapid, visible change: the replacing of outdated political principles, the restructuring of race relations, the rejection of racial domination (baaskap), the removal of humiliating discrimination and injustice, equal opportunity and rights, fewer restrictions – and a new disposition’.26 Botha’s ‘vision’, if that is what it amounted to, was clouded by his belief that South Africa was experiencing the full onslaught of Marxism, and so with Gen. Magnus Malan, then head of the SADF (Botha had previously served as Minister of Defence), he devised the ‘total strategy’ to meet the Marxist onslaught and this meant coordinating military activity, foreign policy and domestic, social and political administration in order to ensure security and internal unity. South Africa would use force as and when necessary. This total strategy demanded that the neighbouring front-line states, as they had come to be called by the beginning of the 1980s, must either co-operate or knuckle under and in order to encourage them to follow a path acceptable to South Africa international law could be set to one side in the interests of national security. The logic of such an approach led naturally to the cross-border raids and destabilization policies that South Africa pursued throughout the decade. However, the modest reforms that Botha attempted split the National Party into the Verkrampte and Verligte camps of hard-liners and enlightened with the former breaking away from the NP to form the new Conservative Party under Andries Treurnicht. The Conservatives were not sufficient in numbers to challenge the NP although the 18 who formed the party represented 20 per cent of the white electorate. Nonetheless, ‘The disintegration of Afrikanerdom had begun’. ‘The policy of the Botha administration was a complex attempt to adapt to changing circumstances without sacrificing Afrikaner power. It included efforts to neutralize South Africa’s neighbours, to scrap apartheid symbols and practices that were not essential to the maintenance of white supremacy, to draw English-speaking citizens into the party, to win the co-operation of big business, to intensify the ethnic and class cleavages among the subject peoples, and to suppress domestic dissidents.’27 This policy represented a tall order by any standards but it contained too many contradictions and was bound to fail as it did.

Britain had always been the principal source of investment in South Africa and remained so throughout the apartheid years. British interest in Southern Africa was essentially in the Republic and its policy there was to protect its trade, investments and loan finance; to maintain access to South Africa’s strategic minerals; and prevent the mass exodus of those whites who qualified for British passports (an estimated 800,000) to Britain. In 1984, for example, direct private investment by British companies in the SADCC region totalled £100 million, about 3.6 per cent of the value of British direct investment in South Africa, while British trade with South Africa was nine times greater than its trade with all the SADCC countries combined. In 1980 there were 1,200 British companies in South Africa as opposed to 350 from West Germany and 340 from the United States. In 1982 British private investment in South Africa amounted to US$6,342 million, that from the US to US$2,800 million and from West Germany to US$260 million. Foreign direct investment in South Africa had begun to tail off following the 1976 Soweto uprising, forcing South Africa to increase its borrowing. During the 1980s there was a growing and complex disinvestment trend, most marked among US companies. The International Chamber of Commerce estimated that over 500 foreign companies sold their South African holdings between 1985 and 1989. They were concerned to project a more positive public image, to maximize foreign currency returns on investments and to keep enough control over their former subsidiaries to allow re-entry into South Africa at a later date.²⁸ According to the UN Commission on Trans-National Corporations, of the 535 with more than 10 per cent interests in South Africa, 216 were British-based and they were slower than US transnationals to disinvest. Even so, between 1985 and 1989, 132 British transnationals did disinvest while another 16 reduced their equity interest. Britain’s total investment in South Africa, direct and indirect, was estimated as follows: 1986 – £8,586 million; 1987 – £7,924 million; 1988 – £6,400 million. Britain provided approximately 40 per cent of all foreign investment and 80 per cent of the European Community total.

South Africa’s debt crisis really became severe in 1985 when the state of emergency led US and European banks to refuse to ‘roll over’ their loans. Even the British government was urging change by the late 1980s. Addressing the Royal Commonwealth Society in London during May 1988, Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, said: ‘… the sooner white South Africans accept the need for negotiation and change, the greater the odds that change will be peaceful and democratic… The South African Government have to take the lead. Dialogue cannot take place against a backcloth of violence and repression’. At a public meeting in London an ANC spokesman told Lynda Chalker, the Foreign Office Minister, that ‘it has to be understood that Britain’s international anti-sanctions crusade is widely viewed in South Africa, by people of all political persuasions, as a policy which protects the South African government and undermines the right of the disenfranchised South African people to determine their own future’.29 At the 1989 Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Heads of Government summit, Britain still stood out against pressures upon South Africa and issued its own unilateral communiqué after signing the official consensus communiqué. Even Margaret Thatcher changed her stance on her visit to South Africa in November 1989 when she said: ‘I do not see how, in the modern world, it is possible to achieve political stability except on a basis where all adults have the vote.’³⁰

President Reagan was as active in his support of white South Africa as his political ally Margaret Thatcher. ‘US foreign policy is riddled with contradictions. Sanctions are right for Nicaragua or Poland, but not South Africa. The MPLA should be pressed to include UNITA in the government, but no pressure should be put on white South Africa to include the ANC in government. It was hardly surprising that constructive engagement and linkage pleased Pretoria.’ One Johannesburg newspaper correspondent talked of ‘South Africa’s new ally, Mr Ronald Reagan’.³¹ It was soon clear that constructive engagement under Reagan was wholly one-sided in support of South Africa. His instinctive sympathies lay with a global philosophy of assisting and installing pro-Western governments and holding back the Soviet threat. ‘All he knows about Southern Africa,’ one of his own officials privately commented, ‘is that he is on the side of the whites.’³² By the end of 1984 it was clear that Western policies were buying time for South Africa while it was impossible to continue the fiction that US engagement was constructive. On the other hand, the Soviet threat or ‘total onslaught’ was always exaggerated by the South Africans. Although Moscow had had a long-standing interest in the region through the South African Communist Party’s early involvement with the black union movement and the ANC, that interest rated a lower priority than either the Middle East or the Horn. Already by 1986 a shift in Soviet-South African policy was discernible when Russia began to make plain its determination to achieve a rapprochment with the United States and consequently wished to eliminate points of confrontation, whether in Africa or elsewhere.

THE CRUCIAL YEARS: 1983–87

Following the 1983 referendum that established Coloured and Asian ‘parliaments’ and at the same time split the National Party, The Economist commented: ‘No government which has recently introduced a racially classified parliament, segregated local government, and a segregated welfare state can seriously expect the world to believe it is intent on dismantling apartheid.’ The attempt to have tame council elections in the townships was a fiasco: there was a 5 per cent poll in Soweto, 11 per cent in Port Elizabeth, 15 per cent in the Vaal Triangle, 19 per cent in Durban, 20 per cent on the East Rand. Few respected black leaders put themselves forward for election and most of those elected were regarded as quislings. The government also proposed that townships should be financially self-supporting since they had their own councils and that they should raise their own revenue from rents, which was asking for trouble. ‘And so it was that while the whites applauded the reforms, the blacks mobilized opposition to them. In August 1983 more than five hundred community, church, professional, sports, workers’, students’, women’s, and youth organizations formed an alliance called the United Democratic Front (UDF) to campaign against the new constitution and the “Koornhof Bills”.’33 Piet Koornhof, the Minister of Cooperation and Development, had introduced three bills that set up black councils to run their ‘own affairs’ of the townships, granted urban status only to those who had jobs and ‘approved accommodation’. Under the new constitution there were to be three uniracial chambers: a House of Assembly of 178 whites voted by whites; a House of Representatives of 85 Coloureds elected by Coloureds; and a House of Delegates of 45 Indians elected by Indians. A joint session meant an automatic white majority. A cabinet drawn from the three chambers would deal with general affairs while uniracial ministers’ councils were to be responsible for ‘own affairs’. The State President, elected by a college of 50 whites, 25 Coloureds and 13 Indian members of Parliament, appointed the cabinet and the ministers’ councils. He could dissolve parliament at any time and was responsible for the ‘control and administration of black (that is, African) affairs’. When the elections under this new constitution were held in August 1984 only 18 per cent of the Coloureds and fewer Indians voted.

Botha’s clumsy attempts at divide and rule led, predictably, to revolt. ‘The 1984 insurrection was more intense and lasted longer than any previous one. For three years it raged, resulting in more than three thousand deaths, thirty thousand detentions, and untold damage to property and the national economy. The government had to mobilize the army and declare two states of emergency to bring it under control, and even then it was only partially repressed.’³⁴ Black anger was met with white repression and escalating violence and it was Botha’s good fortune that ‘The Thatcher government in Britain, the Reagan administration in the United States, and Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democrats in West Germany were all disposed to share in some measure Botha’s contention that the black nationalists in his country were violent radicals being manipulated by Moscow and to look favourably on a reform programme that would neutralize them and bring in the “moderates”.’35 The Botha cabinet now split between the reformists and the securocrats. The former – Chris Heunis, the Minister of Constitutional Affairs, and Pik Botha, the Foreign Minister – overpersuaded Botha to commit himself to reform in a clear statement; believing they had succeeded, Pik Botha flew to Vienna for a June meeting with American, British and West German diplomats at which he told them to expect a dramatic statement from Botha at the Natal Congress of the NP the following August. Meanwhile, there were vigorous demonstrations against apartheid in every city and nearly every homeland. At the end of 1984 official figures listed 175 dead in the disturbances and many strikes and acts of sabotage. The figures for 1985 were far worse: 879 deaths and 390 strikes involving 240,000 workers. The protests continued into 1986 and in the townships many of the newly elected councillors resigned to be replaced by informal groups. Between July and December 1985 the rate of killing was 3.3 persons a day.

At Durban on 15 August 1985 with the largest-ever international press corps in attendance Botha delivered his much-heralded ‘Rubicon’ speech and contrary to the expectations that had been aroused conceded nothing at all, telling the assembled press that he was not to be ‘pushed around’. At that time 67 per cent of South Africa’s US$16.5 billion foreign debt was made up of short-term loans that could be called in at any time. The US Chase Manhattan Bank now did so and its example was followed by other banks; South Africa faced demands for US$13 billion in loans to be repaid by December. The rand fell in value by 35 per cent in 13 days and South Africa became a siege economy. Later in 1985 the Commonwealth Heads of Government met in Nassau (Bahamas) where Thatcher stood alone against the rest of the Commonwealth in resisting demands for sanctions against South Africa. It was however agreed that an Eminent Persons Group (EPG) led by Malcolm Fraser of Australia and Gen. Obasanjo of Nigeria should visit South Africa to meet all shades of opinion and try to move the country towards real reforms. When the EPG appeared to be making significant progress in 1986, Botha ordered attacks on ANC bases in Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe on 19 May and the EPG at once left the country. Even so, ‘Its results were surprising. The EPG quickly established that there was both a widespread desire among ordinary people for a negotiated settlement and, on the face of it, enough potential common ground among all major political groups to get negotiations going.’³⁶ As the violence began to subside, Adriaan Vlok, the minister of law and order, admitted (12 February 1987) that 13,300 people, many of them children, had been detained under the emergency. Other estimates suggested 29,000 while 43 people had died in police custody and 263 had been hospitalized. There had been widespread use of torture and violence against detainees, including children.

The violence of these years had given new impetus for demands to apply sanctions to South Africa. In mid-1985 the front-line states Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe backed the call for sanctions against South Africa and called upon Western countries to broaden and intensify pressures on South Africa. Lesotho also made clear its support for sanctions although Malawi and Swaziland maintained silence. Then on 31 January 1986 the annual SADCC conference called for co-ordinated pressure, including sanctions, to be mounted against South Africa. The argument that had arisen in the early 1970s that US companies could stay in South Africa and promote reforms wore increasingly threadbare during the 1980s as pressure groups – churches and students for example – persuaded an increasing number of institutions such as universities to disinvest from companies operating in South Africa and by the end of 1985 disinvestment by US state and local governments had led to US$4.5 billion being withdrawn from companies involved in South Africa. Substantial sanctions were imposed in late 1986 by Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the Scandinavian countries, while lesser measures were adopted by the EEC. In 1987 Sweden and Norway imposed full trade embargoes while 48 Commonwealth countries agreed to ‘widen and tighten’ sanctions. Reacting to these growing anti-apartheid pressures, US companies began to disengage from South Africa: 40 in 1985, 50 in 1986. In 1985, President Reagan said South Africa had ‘eliminated the segregation we once had in our own country’ but the anti-apartheid movement was so incensed that he felt obliged to impose limited sanctions on South Africa in order to pre-empt demands for more. The strategy did not work for in October 1986 Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act over the president’s veto to ban new investments, bank loans, to end South African-US air links and to prohibit a range of South African imports. Congress also threatened to cut off military aid to allies suspected of breaching the international arms embargo on South Africa.37

The whole apartheid structure was imploding and so one National Party MP with the impeccable Afrikaner name of van der Merwe wrote an article in 1985 entitled ‘And what about the black people?’ in which he said: ‘It has long been clear that political rights cannot be withheld from black people forever… Large numbers of black people (as many as 60 per cent) will not be able to be accommodated physically or politically in the homelands and will, therefore, have to exercise their political rights in South Africa.’³⁸

The ANC had represented the core opposition to the apartheid regime throughout the years: the oldest black political party on the African continent, dating from 1912, it had always believed in a democratic multiracial society and during the worst oppressions of the apartheid era stuck to that ideology. In the 1980s it found its position outside South Africa becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. Once in power in Zimbabwe, Mugabe had turned on ZAPU, which was a close ally of the ANC and had close South African links, while following the Nkomati Accord Mozambique and Swaziland were closed to it as well. The ANC, therefore, began to concentrate more upon operating inside South Africa where two powerful allies in the form of the UDF and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) became formidable anti-apartheid organizations during the decade. The ANC shifted its position during the second half of the1980s but did not change its ideology about the type of democracy and society that it favoured. Its strategy, to reach the ‘new South Africa’ through negotiation was about the only thing the ANC had in common with the government. The NP, on the other hand, had elaborated a democratic vision that was anathema to the ANC. It was founded on concepts such as ‘group rights’ and ‘minority protection’ from ‘majority domination’ and NP ideas for a new South Africa would do little to redress the legacies of apartheid. The ANC, then, came to embrace the South African Communist Party (SACP) and the trade union federation (COSATU), a tripartite alliance that symbolized the unity forged by different groups in the struggle against apartheid. ‘Formed in 1985 by a merger of a number of smaller unions, the UDF-aligned COSATU became instrumental in the latter half of the 1980s in the mobilization of workers for strikes, boycotts and stay-aways.’39

In September 1985 a group of South African businessmen led by Gavin Relly, chairman of Anglo American Corporation, flew to Lusaka to meet Oliver Tambo and other ANC leaders to talk of the future South Africa. Then in July 1987 61 white South Africans led by F. van Zyl Slabbert went to Dakar for three days of talks with members of the ANC led by Thabo Mbeki. Such contacts broke through the absolute divide that had existed up to that time between the ruling whites and the ‘demonized’ ANC. COSATU, like the UDF, was formed on 1 December 1985 and was born out of the political turmoil of the time. It began its existence, after four years of negotiations, with 33 black unions and a membership of 558,000. It proclaimed its non-racial, anti-apartheid credentials and demanded the repeal of the pass laws and the existing state of emergency, the withdrawal of troops and police from the townships, the unconditional release of Mandela and other political prisoners, the dismantling of the homelands and the end of the migrant labour system. It worked closely with the UDF and by 1989 had a paid-up membership of 925,000.

Another, very distinct political player emerged during the 1980s in the person of the Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi. He built up his Inkatha Movement, which he had established as a Zulu cultural organization, into a political party. Buthelezi was concerned both with national power and Zulu regional power in the new South Africa. Increasing violence between members of Inkatha and the ANC or its allies of the UDF and COSATU became a feature of the late 1980s and into the 1990s and accounted for more than 4,000 deaths in Natal over the last years of the decade, with further violence to follow in the 1990s. Buthelezi, who had ‘worked’ the homeland system, was tainted with accusations of collaboration with the apartheid government. ‘The sharp increase in violence in the townships surrounding Durban during 1983 led to allegations of collaboration between Inkatha and the state. Township dwellers, violence monitors, and journalists cited examples of how Inkatha “impis” received direct help from the police, with transporting “impis” to scenes of violence, police declining to interfere when residents were attacked, and systematic inability on the part of the police to arrest those responsible for attacks.’40 One of the most incisive critics of the whole apartheid system was Allan Boesak, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and President of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. In a book titled If This Is Treason he argued that neutrality was not possible. ‘More particularly: in a situation where there is a constant struggle for justice and human dignity and against structures promoting iniquity, neutrality is not possible. On the contrary, neutrality is the most revolting partisanship there is. It is to take the side of the powerful, of injustice, without accepting responsibility for it.’ He deals with the argument that Africans in power might behave as badly as the whites and therefore that the whites are justified in holding onto power.

But this is a false dilemma. The question is not so much what shall we do one day if a black government should do something wrong. The question is what are we doing right now, while this white government is doing what it is doing… Saying ‘yes’ to co-operation with the very government that maintains this violent system without first fundamentally changing it is taking responsibility for the continuation of violence. The choice for violence, therefore, has not been made by those who resist the perpetuation of the system in the hope of working for a better society, but precisely by those who have abandoned the struggle for a better society by strengthening the present one.⁴¹

Boesak became a major thorn in the side of the government; one of his principal arguments was that the violence came from the government side and that the oppressed had every right to answer it with violence.

By the end of the decade most options for South Africa looked bleak. As the journalist Allister Sparks pointed out, there was the possibility of producing a generation of black youth so brutalized and desensitized by its violent encounters with white South Africa’s repressive forces that it would lose all sense of life’s values. On the other side, there was no northern country to which the whites could withdraw, with the result that ‘White South Africans will change only when the perceived consequences of changing seem less painful than the perceived consequences of continuing as they are. And that is a matter of perceptions rather than of reality’.42 Further, as a result of Afrikaner dominance, ‘Three decades of power and deferential treatment had wrought its own changes. The poor whites had come in from the cold, had been cosseted into middle-class prosperity and were enjoying the warmth. The spread of capitalism was doing its corroding, corrupting work. The ethnic fire of the Afrikaner cracker’s belly was going out, to be replaced by the acquisitiveness and consumer culture of an urban bourgeoisie.’ It was to the poor whites that Treurnicht, with his adherence to rigid apartheid, appealed.

Luckily for South Africa as a whole the whites did begin to see that change would be less painful than holding on to a system that was collapsing about their heads. Moderate Afrikaners moved towards the liberals and the process of change was lubricated by overwhelming economic pressures as South African big business made plain that if it had to choose between the future expansion of business and maintaining apartheid, then it was ready to ditch apartheid. And so at last, after a century of conflict and pain, the whites accepted that a real accommodation with the black majority was essential to their own survival. As early as 1981 Botha had announced that Mandela’s release would be considered if he would give guarantees not to commit acts that violated the laws. Mandela rejected the suggestion and said, ‘Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts…’ What is fascinating about the 1980s is the increasing awareness on the part of the whites that they could not perpetuate their system; they could only buy time for it to continue a little longer. By the middle of the decade the largest white exodus since Sharpeville was under way with about 50,000 leaving the country on what came to be called the ‘chicken run’, with a majority heading for Britain. About 1.7 million whites then qualified for foreign nationality.⁴³ The Israelis, surrounded by hostile Arabs, compared themselves with the white South Africans, surrounded by a majority of hostile blacks. ‘Diplomatically isolated though she was, South Africa could rely on the support of Israel. Prime Minister Golda Meir had made the analogy with the Afrikaner clear when she said: “It is not as though there was a Palestinian people in Palestine considering itself as a Palestinian people and we came and threw them out and took their country away. They did not exist.”’44 That was denial on a grand scale but it gave the hard-liner Afrikaner a certain comfort. In fact, even if some whites held out to the bitter end for the maintenance of white domination, the decision to abandon apartheid was taken in 1986 when the Urban Areas Act, which was the basis for the pass laws and influx control, was abolished to be followed by the repeal of the Mixed Marriages and Immorality Act and the Prohibition of Political Interference Act.

The government faced formidable demands for change, which it only appeared able to counter with repression. In the townships the ‘young comrades’ were more in control than the government while opposition to apartheid was orchestrated by church leaders such as Desmond Tutu and Allan Boesak. As the 1987 election approached, the NP suffered a number of defections by its more liberal members, the most notable being Denis Worrall, a former ambassador to London. By 1988 the signs multiplied that the National Party government under Botha had lost its way. It had attempted timid and wholly inadequate reforms whose main effect was to unleash forces it had no idea how to manage except by repression. Moreover, its policies wrought devastation throughout the region. As the ECA estimated in 1989, ‘South Africa’s military aggression and destabilization of its neighbours cost the region US$10 billion in 1988 and over US$60 billion and 1.5 million lives in the first nine years of this (1980s) decade.’

In January 1989 President Botha had a stroke, and F. W. de Klerk, who had been in Parliament for 17 years and had held a number of portfolios as well as being chairman of the Transvaal National Party, the most important provincial power base, was elected leader of the ruling National Party. Elections for the tricameral parliament were held on 6 September: the NP won 93 seats (a drop of 30 from the 123 it had held in the previous parliament); the Conservative Party increased its seats from 22 to 39 and the Democratic Party gained 12 on its former 21 seats. The Asian and Coloured electorates were more concerned to boycott the elections than return members. Black defiance continued and on the day of the elections the Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) called a general strike. A new group, known as the ‘new nationalists’, composed of businessmen and younger, more radical members of the NP who advocated an end to apartheid and negotiations with the ANC, emerged. On the far right the Afrikaanse Weerstandsbeweging (AWB) (Afrikaner Resistance Movement) under the leadership of Eugene Terre’Blanche opposed any concessions and prepared for violence. Perhaps the greatest irony of all for South Africa and its whites was the degree to which they depended upon the black majority: ‘For all its military might, it is the peculiar weakness of white South Africa that it is totally dependent on the people it represses.’⁴⁵

When de Klerk came to power in 1989 he announced his commitment to change though no one knew what or how much change he intended to implement. In October he released eight political prisoners including the veteran leader Walter Sisulu. Then on 2 February 1990 he gave his speech to the Cape Parliament in which he unbanned the ANC and 33 other black political organizations and announced his determination to end apartheid. A week later he released Nelson Mandela and on 2 May 1990 held the first ever negotiations with the ANC. It is a mistake to imagine that people suddenly change the political and racial views which they have held for a lifetime. They do not. President de Klerk and those closest to him had not undergone any Pauline conversion on the road to Damascus. Rather, they had been brought to reverse the policies of a lifetime because these policies were no longer working; not only were they not working but the whole political edifice which had been so painstakingly created by Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd and Vorster was on the verge of collapse.