With the Tumpo Three battle out of the way, the belligerents were shepherded slowly towards negotiation by Crocker for the United States and by the Soviet Union’s Deputy Foreign Minister Anatoly Adamishin, who played a critical role behind the scenes in putting pressure on the Cubans and Angolans and conveying messages to the South Africans to ease their anxieties. At one stage in 1988, Adamishin even paid a secret visit to South Africa and made a helicopter trip over the gold mines of the Witwatersrand with Pik Botha.
The first official round of talks were held in London on 3–4 May 1988 in one of those slightly shabby ‘George Smiley’ clandestine settings in which the British specialise. The South African negotiating team which sat down at a U-shaped table in a characterless basement conference room at Durrants Hotel, in a side street in the centre of the British capital, was led by Neil van Heerden. His team included General Geldenhuys, Major-General Neels van Tonder of CSI, and Dr Niël Barnard, head of the civilian National Intelligence Service.
The Cubans and MPLA fielded a joint team. It was led by Cuba’s ‘Oom Kaspaas’ Jorge Risquet. His top assistant was General Ulysses Rosales del Toro, the Cuban military’s Chief of Staff, who inevitably became known to the South Africans as ‘Ulysses the Bull’. Foreign Minister Afonso van Dunem was there for the MPLA together with Justice Minister Fernandes van Dunem and the Fapla Chief of Staff, General Antonio dos Santos Franco.
Chester Crocker was in the chair, but before the talking began he had a meeting with Adamishin, who was in the wings throughout 3 and 4 May to be ‘helpful’ if needed. The superpowers had clearly reached agreement that there was a ‘window of opportunity’ for a settlement from which everyone could gain something.
The Cubans would stop losing young men in a lost cause. The Soviet Union and South Africa would be saved the cost of an expensive and unwinnable war. The South Africans would be rid of the Cubans from Africa. The international community would secure the independence of Namibia. But the biggest carrot for the South Africans was a secret one offered by the Americans: the chief prize resulting from a comprehensive agreement would be the expulsion of South Africa’s banned opposition African National Congress from its East European-financed military training camps in Angola and the delivery of the ANC to the negotiating table to reshape South Africa internally by peaceful process.
US State Department officials in Crocker’s weighty team said black African ‘Frontline’ states ‘bought’ the idea of South Africa’s withdrawal from Namibia followed by free multi-party elections there on the understanding that they had to take a tough line with the ANC. One State Department man said the message from Crocker to the Frontline states was: ‘If you keep your nose clean and don’t provoke South Africa, we will back you. But if you harbour ANC guerrillas and the South Africans come over the border and kick arse, don’t look to us.’1
An American official advising Crocker throughout the London meeting told the author of this book: ‘The Cubans want out. They have suffered too many health problems and deaths. The Angolans are bankrupt and not paying their fees. But Castro wants to get out without appearing to lose face and without being seen to abandon an ally. That will make it tricky, because we’re dealing here with something to do with machismo which, let’s face it, we don’t fully understand.’
Given that the sides regarded each other as Beelzebub, the London talks went remarkably well. Van Heerden, with Geldenhuys at his shoulder, pledged that South Africa would implement UN Resolution 435 on Namibia if the issue of Cuba’s withdrawal from Angola could be resolved. The Angolans repeated their March offer on Cuban withdrawal.
As grey English rain poured relentlessly down outside, the 60 or so negotiators from Angola, Cuba, South Africa, America and the Soviet Union – crammed into a room so ungenerous that it was difficult for them even to push back their chairs – began discussing in hypothetical terms the necessary ingredients for a comprehensive settlement.
There was a coffee bar outside the conference hall where the delegates, many of whom had been knocking hell out of each other physically and verbally for years, found they had no choice other than to mingle during breaks. The atmosphere was stilted and thick with dislike and suspicion. It took the military men to break the ice. Jannie Geldenhuys, dressed in a blue-grey business suit set off by an SADF red, white and blue ‘Border War’ tie, walked over and introduced himself to General Rosales del Toro, dressed in a uniform covered with more medal ribbons than South Africa has gold mines. Later that day the two men went off for a 90-minute private meeting, at which Geldenhuys told Rosales del Toro that a four-year period for the withdrawal of Cuban troops from Angola was too long. Del Toro, growing increasingly relaxed with his fellow soldier, replied: ‘OK, we’re open to offers.’
The essential process of establishing professional and personal contacts had begun. The shape of future negotiations had been established. Chester Crocker had written a detailed paper setting out Angolan-Cuban viewpoints and proposals as he had understood them in his talks in Luanda and elsewhere. The proposals included the four-year Cuban withdrawal period and a suggestion that the South Africans get out of Namibia within seven months. Neil van Heerden delivered a detailed, point-by-point written response to the Luanda-Havana proposal.
The Angolans and the Cubans did not like what they read. But, although there seemed to be irreconcilable differences, everyone agreed there should be another meeting, this time on black African soil, at which Crocker would begin the proceedings with a detailed paper setting out South Africa’s view of how a settlement should be reached.
South Africa and the other parties now embarked upon a period of intense secret diplomacy to iron out minor problems, explore new ideas, sort out misunderstandings and seek clarity on each other’s positions.
Derek Auret, Deputy Director-General in the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs, found he hardly had time to visit home between missions around the world and reporting back to the negotiations team working round the clock for days at a time at the Union Buildings in Pretoria on the options open to South Africa.
Van Heerden felt, since he had rejected most of the Cuban-Angolan proposals in London, that a heavy responsibility rested upon him to produce a detailed and coherent set of South African proposals for the next round of negotiations. When Auret finally had time to look at his diary he found he had flown out of South Africa 38 times in the course of the first six months of 1988 to gather information to bring back to the Angola-Namibia working group.
Planning for the next talks got bogged down in a prolonged argument over the venue. The MPLA got cold feet about the agreement reached in London on the next location, arguing that Pretoria was more interested in using the talks as a ‘Trojan horse’ for achieving a major policy goal of opening gates into black Africa.
Crocker’s team proposed a number of sites worldwide, each of which were rebuffed by one or other of the protagonists. Then a Crocker man had the bright idea of Cairo. Egypt could be considered part of Africa by Pretoria and part of the Middle East by Luanda, which would enable both to save face. The proposal was accepted.
While Luanda and Pretoria squabbled about which luxury international hotel they should meet in, Crocker and Adamishin met privately in Lisbon and reinforced their countries’ commitment jointly to pushing the Cuba-South Africa-Angola talks to a successful conclusion.
Speaking to reporters immediately after the Crocker-Adamishin meeting, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Michael Armacost said it had been so successful that there was likely to be more agreement on southern Africa than any other issue when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met for their fourth superpower summit in Moscow from 29 May to 2 June 1988. ‘There has been probably more extensive preparation for these discussions on regional issues than at any previous summit meeting in history,’ said Armacost.
In Moscow Gorbachev and Reagan set 29 September 1988, the 10th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations of Resolution 435 on Namibian independence, as the target date for a settlement of the Angola/Namibia conflicts. ‘The 29 September date is important,’ Chester Crocker told the New York Times Moscow correspondent. ‘Whether it’s realistic is another question.’
Anatoly Adamishin, who continued his relationship with Crocker in intense behind-the-scenes talks at the Moscow summit, publicly committed the Soviet Union to playing a more active role in the negotiations and offered its services as co-guarantor of an eventual peace settlement.
It was clear by then that the Soviet Union was eager to settle the southern African conflict both to enhance Gorbachev’s image as a peace-maker, already emerging since Soviet troops began their withdrawal from Afghanistan just before the Moscow summit, and to plug yet another expensive drain on the Soviet military budget.
Mr Adamishin declined to discuss with reporters how much aid the Soviet Union was giving Angola, although American officials said it was at least US$ 1 billion a year. ‘Of course, it is not cheap [for us],’ said Adamishin. He added that the MPLA’s resources, based entirely on oil from its Cabinda fields, had been depleted by falling world petroleum prices and for the time being they were paying ‘not a kopek’ for the Soviet Union’s military help.
The Cairo meeting was finally convened from 23 to 25 June. It proved to be the most dramatic and acrimonious round in all the negotiations.
The South African delegation, which flew in low over the Pyramids to the theme tune from Lawrence of Arabia, was this time led by Foreign Minister Pik Botha, wearing a flashy white tropical suit, and Defence Minister Magnus Malan. Botha and Malan were the front men. In the engine room were more than a dozen officials led by Neil van Heerden and Jannie Geldenhuys. World traveller Derek Auret was also there.
Botha and Malan were received warmly by the Egyptians and they larked like little boys as they donned Bedouin head-dress to ride camels near the Great Pyramid, visit the Tutunkhamen collection, sample superb Middle Eastern food, including kebbe and hummous from Lebanon and spit roast lamb accompanied by exotic sauces. They shopped for expensive souvenirs in the souk and applauded raucously an amply constructed belly-dancer whose whirling navel made the South African foreign minister’s hyper-active eyeballs gyrate faster than normal.
Reports of their leader’s activities on the Nile did not go down well with Hannes Nortmann and the thousand other womenless and wineless South African soldiers sitting among flies and mosquitoes in the bottom of dirt trenches opposite Cuito Cuanavale eating corned beef with fat turned runny by the heat. Their tempers had not been improved when Ministers Botha and Malan sent a message with strict instructions that the Operation Displace team was not do to anything to jeopardise the Cairo talks. Nevertheless, they were still obliged to ‘hold the line’ while losing neither men nor machines.
The talks opened with Crocker presenting the Cubans and Angolans with South Africa’s proposals for a comprehensive settlement, drawn up by Van Heerden and his team. While Jorge Risquet, Afonso van Dunem and others digested Pretoria’s ideas, Botha, Malan and Geldenhuys travelled to the British Commonwealth War Cemetery at Heliopolis to lay a wreath, hastily made by a Cairo florist from a bowl of proteas in the first class lounge of the South African Airways Boeing 747 which had brought the Pretoria delegation to Egypt. Their visit was to commemorate the thousands of South African soldiers killed fighting Axis forces in North Africa in World War II.
Back at the conference hall, in the Hyatt el Salaam Hotel, the South Africans found the Cubans and Angolans in angry mood. ‘Oom Kaspaas’ Risquet was in danger of bursting a blood vessel as he reviled and mocked the South African paper which proposed, among other things, that the Cuban withdrawal from Angola should be completed over seven months, instead of the four years suggested by Havana, and that Jonas Savimbi be brought into an Angolan coalition government within six weeks of the adjournment of the Cairo talks.
Risquet grew more churlish as he denounced and rejected the proposals. He demanded that apartheid in South Africa be added to the agenda. This provoked a fierce broadside on human rights abuses in Cuba and Angola from Pik Botha. Chester Crocker, who believed both sides were intent on provoking the other to fold their tents and walk out, diplomatically called an adjournment.
There was no social intercourse between the delegations that night. The South Africans, believing their rooms were bugged, retired to a corner of the hotel gardens to talk about how they could contribute to keeping the talks going on the final day. Huddled behind giant coloured umbrellas to confound directional microphones, Botha, Van Heerden and the rest of the team worked late into the night trying to identify some principles which might be acceptable to both sides as a basis for further discussion.
The Soviet Union honoured its pledge from the Moscow summit to play an active role in keeping the negotiations on course. Chester Crocker approached the Soviet representative in a side room at the talks and told him about the crisis. Vladilen Vlasev, the top civil servant in the Soviet Foreign Ministry responsible for Africa, summoned the Cubans and Angolans to another late night meeting behind giant umbrellas in another corner of the garden and proceeded to read the riot act. It is not known what threats he made, but he saved the Cairo talks.
The next morning the South Africans were surprised to find the Cubans and Angolans had done a lot of overnight homework and had come up with proposals for resolving the deadlock. In a final day free from aggressive rhetoric, Crocker persuaded the two sides to leave both their papers on the table. Some proposals were acceptable to both sides, but there were also cavernous differences. Crocker suggested that officials try to marry the two documents in a series of informal discussions prior to the next round of official negotiations. Both sides agreed.
Over the couscous and sweetmeats war had been avoided in Cairo. But elsewhere blood was about to be shed again in the War for Africa.
1 Richard Dowden, ‘Collapse of ANC: The prize for Pretoria in Namibian deal.’ The Independent, London (Wednesday 11 May 1988).