The End of Apartheid Read Online Free PDF Page A

that the right policy was to support President Joaquim Chissano, who had replaced Samora Machel following the latter’s death in a plane crash. Samora Machel had been effusive in thanking Thatcher for her success in resolving the Rhodesia dispute and had won her support for Mozambique to join the Commonwealth. She commented that the South Africans had been playing a double game over Renamo.
    She agreed with my main suggestion, which was that I should tell PW Botha on her behalf in the clearest terms that any major cross-border raids in the run-up to the next Commonwealth conference would make her position intolerable and result in the withdrawal of her support. She concluded grimly that there was no early prospect of political progress.
    In her sole meeting with him, she had found PW Botha charmless and inflexible, but she remained convinced of the importance of dialogue with other members of his government. As in her dealings with the Soviet Union, she was looking for a successor who might be prepared to set out on a different course. If I found anyone who fitted that description, I was to give him all possible encouragement.
    * * *
    Arriving in Cape Town, I was greeted by Pik Botha, the irrepressible South African foreign minister, with recriminations about Lancaster House. I said that, without an agreement, there would have been a military collapse in Rhodesia, and that had been the South African assessment as well.
    Pik Botha, changing tack, cheerfully agreed. He thought Mugabe would have preferred to come to power by military means and probably would have succeeded in doing so. The South African government had told the Rhodesians that they were not prepared to take over the war. Smith should have negotiated earlier. But Britain must understand the fundamental differences between South Africa and Rhodesia.
    I said that we did understand them. Wherever the South Africans ended up, it was not going to be at Lancaster House. Britain had no constitutional responsibility for South Africa. A settlement could only be achieved between South Africans.
    On the Commonwealth conference, I said that the Prime Minister was never worried about being alone when convinced that our position was right, but any more actions like the ones that had scupperedthe Eminent Persons mission would produce a reaction from her. Pik Botha said that he had been trying to improve relations with Mozambique. I warned against continuing South African support for Renamo, which of course he denied was taking place.
August 1987
    Before presenting my credentials to PW Botha, I arranged to have a drink with Ton Vosloo, head of the leading Afrikaans press group, the Nasionale Pers (now Naspers). I did so because, before arriving in South Africa, I had resolved to concentrate my efforts on the Afrikaners and the black leadership, rather than falling into the easy trap of consorting mainly with the more liberal elements of the English-speaking community, who, despite their best efforts, clearly were not able to have a decisive influence on events.
    I told Vosloo that Margaret Thatcher did understand the concerns of white South Africans and the historic dilemma confronting the Afrikaners. But, as friends of South Africa, we were concerned that PW Botha was driving his country into a cul-de-sac and at the increasing militarisation of the regime. In making public statements about the kind of changes we would like to see come about, I hoped that these might be carried in the Afrikaans press, especially
Beeld
and
Die Burger,
and not only in the English-speaking papers. Vosloo promised that the Afrikaans press would carry the Prime Minister’s views. He advised me to make some gesture to the Afrikaners. This I attempted to do, despite my own imperfect knowledge of the language, by delivering part of my credentials speech in Afrikaans. It duly was carried on the state-controlled television.
    In this, my first encounter with PW Botha, he expressed appreciation for