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Authors: Robin Renwick
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yourselves ⦠If you want to get out of a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging.â Unless South Africa repealed the remaining apartheid laws, they would get no further support from us.
This was splashed all over the South African press. Pik Botha complained to me formally about the speech, as he was bound to do, while also telling me that he agreed with it. Several other members of the government told me that they agreed, without bothering to complain.
May 1988
PW Botha, meanwhile, was fulminating against the English-speaking universities, which he regarded as hotbeds of subversion. He was threatening to introduce a bill in parliament to curtail the political activities of both students and staff. The vice chancellors of the universities appealed for help, and Helen Suzman and I went separately tosee De Klerk, as the Minister of Education, about this. We were told that he had no intention of pushing through such a bill in the current parliamentary session. We seemed to have found one minister who was prepared to stand up to his irascible President.
CHAPTER V
âThe IRA have the vote, the ANC do notâ
9 June 1988
Meeting with the Prime Minister in London. I was asked to tell PW Botha and the other members of the South African government of the growing difficulties South Africa would face unless progress was made towards the release of Mandela, a settlement in Namibia, normalisation with Mozambique and steps to dismantle the remaining apartheid laws. Above all, Margaret Thatcher insisted on the release of Mandela. I told her that no reliance whatever could be placed on PW Botha, but that he was becoming increasingly isolated.
July 1988
I told Pik Botha that, if he wanted us to be able to exert any influence on an incoming US administration, there would have to be progress on Namibia and Mandela. He said that he agreed, as did Kobie Coetsee, but the security chiefs were still arguing that with Mandelaâs release the situation would be out of control. I protested about draftlegislation seeking to ban foreign funding for civic organisations in South Africa. He said that this would be modified. He claimed that support for Renamo was being cut off.
I delivered a reply to Dr Jannie Roux, secretary-general to the President, about his further complaints about the ANC office and visits to London by Ronnie Kasrils, head of intelligence for MK, and Joe Slovo, general secretary of the SACP and also chief of staff of MK. We would not, I said, permit any office in the UK to be used for the purpose of preparing violent acts abroad. If the South Africans had any evidence to that effect, they would need to present it to us.
Dr Roux and the Presidentâs security advisor, General Pieter van der Westhuizen, the two officials closest to PW Botha, inspired as little confidence as the President did himself, with Dr Roux telling me that he regarded Robben Island as the kind of place where he too might end up some day, with others like him, if the ANC came to power. He and his master regarded majority rule as solving our problems but not theirs.
The Prime Minister saw Buthelezi and Laurens van der Post at 10 Downing Street. She agreed that he could not be expected to negotiate with the government with Mandela still in jail, a point she emphasised in a further message to PW Botha. She was, she said, deeply concerned that Mandela remained in prison after twenty-six years. If he died in prison, the consequences would be disastrous.
August 1988
The Prime Ministerâs message served only to produce a long argumentative reply from PW Botha, which she found âfar from helpfulâ,claiming that Buthelezi was uncooperative and that Kasrils had been allowed to visit London again even though MK had declared that it would be targeting âsoftâ, i.e. civilian, targets.
I asked the Prime Minister to meet Willem Wepener, the editor of
Beeld
, one of the two leading Afrikaans newspapers. He had published an
This was splashed all over the South African press. Pik Botha complained to me formally about the speech, as he was bound to do, while also telling me that he agreed with it. Several other members of the government told me that they agreed, without bothering to complain.
May 1988
PW Botha, meanwhile, was fulminating against the English-speaking universities, which he regarded as hotbeds of subversion. He was threatening to introduce a bill in parliament to curtail the political activities of both students and staff. The vice chancellors of the universities appealed for help, and Helen Suzman and I went separately tosee De Klerk, as the Minister of Education, about this. We were told that he had no intention of pushing through such a bill in the current parliamentary session. We seemed to have found one minister who was prepared to stand up to his irascible President.
CHAPTER V
âThe IRA have the vote, the ANC do notâ
9 June 1988
Meeting with the Prime Minister in London. I was asked to tell PW Botha and the other members of the South African government of the growing difficulties South Africa would face unless progress was made towards the release of Mandela, a settlement in Namibia, normalisation with Mozambique and steps to dismantle the remaining apartheid laws. Above all, Margaret Thatcher insisted on the release of Mandela. I told her that no reliance whatever could be placed on PW Botha, but that he was becoming increasingly isolated.
July 1988
I told Pik Botha that, if he wanted us to be able to exert any influence on an incoming US administration, there would have to be progress on Namibia and Mandela. He said that he agreed, as did Kobie Coetsee, but the security chiefs were still arguing that with Mandelaâs release the situation would be out of control. I protested about draftlegislation seeking to ban foreign funding for civic organisations in South Africa. He said that this would be modified. He claimed that support for Renamo was being cut off.
I delivered a reply to Dr Jannie Roux, secretary-general to the President, about his further complaints about the ANC office and visits to London by Ronnie Kasrils, head of intelligence for MK, and Joe Slovo, general secretary of the SACP and also chief of staff of MK. We would not, I said, permit any office in the UK to be used for the purpose of preparing violent acts abroad. If the South Africans had any evidence to that effect, they would need to present it to us.
Dr Roux and the Presidentâs security advisor, General Pieter van der Westhuizen, the two officials closest to PW Botha, inspired as little confidence as the President did himself, with Dr Roux telling me that he regarded Robben Island as the kind of place where he too might end up some day, with others like him, if the ANC came to power. He and his master regarded majority rule as solving our problems but not theirs.
The Prime Minister saw Buthelezi and Laurens van der Post at 10 Downing Street. She agreed that he could not be expected to negotiate with the government with Mandela still in jail, a point she emphasised in a further message to PW Botha. She was, she said, deeply concerned that Mandela remained in prison after twenty-six years. If he died in prison, the consequences would be disastrous.
August 1988
The Prime Ministerâs message served only to produce a long argumentative reply from PW Botha, which she found âfar from helpfulâ,claiming that Buthelezi was uncooperative and that Kasrils had been allowed to visit London again even though MK had declared that it would be targeting âsoftâ, i.e. civilian, targets.
I asked the Prime Minister to meet Willem Wepener, the editor of
Beeld
, one of the two leading Afrikaans newspapers. He had published an
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