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https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/return-to-the-rubicon
Return to the Rubicon:
The exclusion of blacks from the Tricameral Parliament turned out to be a major obstacle to any progress the government had hoped to make in attracting black leaders to the constitutional schemes it proposed.
Return to the Rubicon:
The exclusion of blacks from the Tricameral Parliament turned out to be a major obstacle to any progress the government had hoped to make in attracting black leaders to the constitutional schemes it proposed.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi, the most important internal black leader, expressed no interest in government proposals for a confederation. He demanded a statement of intent before any negotiations begin and also insisted that Nelson Mandela and other ANC leaders had to be released.
P.W. Botha showed no inclination to do so before Mandela had foresworn violence.
South Africa’s international isolation continued apace. On 25 July 1985 France recalled its ambassador and suspended all new investments. On 31 July the American bank Chase Manhattan decided that the risks of doing business with South Africa had become too high and resolved to
call in all maturing loans and terminate borrowing facilities.
Minister for Foreign Affairs Pik Botha recalls: ‘I shall never forget the night of 31 July when Barend du Plessis [minister of finance] phoned me. I still perspire when I think of it. Barend said: ‘Pik, I must tell you that the country is facing inevitable bankruptcy …
An American bank has decided to demand the immediate repayment of all its loans to South Africa. Can you help? Is there not someone in the United States who could talk to the bank’[2]
In a telephone call Pik Botha call implored the retired secretary of state Henry Kissinger to
In a telephone call Pik Botha call implored the retired secretary of state Henry Kissinger to
intervene, but Kissinger called back to say nothing could be done and that other banks would soon follow suit. Pik Botha later wrote that he was convinced that the land was headed for economic destruction.[3]
More than thirty-five years later, in April 2019 Fanie Cloete, who at the time was a director of constitutional planning in the Department of Constitutional Development, .discovered an unedited transcript of 133 pages of the proceedings in the archives at Free State University.
In his recent research Cloete interviewed some National Party (NP) ministers including F.W. de Klerk, Barend du Plessis and Adriaan Vlok, who attended the Sterrewag meeting. They all denied any knowledge of the meeting having been tape-recorded. Even P.W.Botha’s speechwriter and
biographer, who worked closely with him, was unaware of its existence.[4]
Botha was sceptical about having black local government bodies elected. He asked: ‘Are we not enforcing a form of local government on them that they are not accustomed to?’ He pointed out that traditional black leadership, were not themselves based on democratic elections.
He claimed that ‘most black communities were associated with witchdoctors’ He quoted a ‘witch doctor’ who alleged that ‘one man one vote is one of the biggest delusions in the world.’
Some fifteen years after the event Heunis told his son, Jan that at Sterrewag it was decided to include blacks in the cabinet, in anticipation of the outcome of negotiations over the accommodation of blacks.[6] When his son asked him whether that meant the unbanning of the ANC
and the release of Mandela, he replied: ‘Not at that stage, but it would inevitably lead to that. Once you admit that they have to be included in cabinet you also admit they are part of the South African citizenry and have the right to be part of government.’ [7]
De Klerk would later state in his autobiography the meeting took certain decisions to enable Heunis to embark on a new initiative in negotiations with blacks. The six non-independent homelands would ‘not necessarily’ be expected to progress to independence;
blacks outside the independent homelands would become South African citizens, and negotiations would take place with them on how they would be accommodated in a new constitution.
Black representation in the President’s Council would be considered. He described the Sterrewag decisions as the end of the policy of ‘grand apartheid’ and as an initiative that had the potential of persuading the world that real change was underway.[8]
The meeting adjourned in high spirits. Pik Botha departed for Europe in order to inform the leaders of the counties with which South Africa had the closest ties. President Botha was pleased with the Sterrewag meeting as well. In identical letters he wrote to Chancellor Kohl of
Germany and Prime Minister Thatcher of Britain he said that breakthrough proposals had been made to him to which he was giving serious consideration.[9]
The government was prepared to consider restoring the South African citizenship of black communities ‘including that of those living in the independent and self-governing states’.[10] Neither president nor Heunis’s department at that point considered Mandela’s release a priority.
Botha’s entire career up to that point had been directed at preventing blacks from gaining a foothold in, and then control over, government. Moreover, the report hinted at radical reforms that had not yet been canvassed in the NP’s caucus or provincial congresses.
Defence minister Magnus Malan recalled people in his circle saying it would take at least five years for the NP government to persuade the electorate to accept some of the Sterrewag proposals.[18]
The stakes for the country were very high indeed, but President Botha was not the kind of leader who could be pressurised. He possibly felt trapped by the snares prepared by the constitutional planners in his government and wanted to reassert his authority and control.
He did not understand how vulnerable to foreign pressure his government and the country’s economy had become. He decided to lash out, regardless of the consequences, and to re-establish his dominance in policy making.He instructed Daan Prinsloo in his office to rewrite the speech
he had received from Heunis in a way that he would be comfortable with.
The speech President Botha gave on 15 August was screened live to a world audience of more than 200 million. Instead of a heroic leader renouncing apartheid, they saw ‘an old president’s twisted, hectoring image’, making it difficult to listen to what he was saying.[23]
‘Don’t push us too far,’ he warned at one point with a wagging finger, confirming the stereotype of the ugly, irredeemable apartheid politician. Instead of a short, well-rehearsed statement with a core message, he delivered a long, rambling harangue.[24]
After nearly 40 years the NP finally admitted that black people had to be incorporated into the same system as whites. Here they would be considered to be full citizens sharing rights with others.
Pik Botha was devastated. Earlier he had told audiences the president’s speech would be the most important event for South Africa since Jan Van Riebeeck’s arrival, a turning point from which there was no going back. He phoned Time magazine’s Peter Hawthorne to apologise.
‘What can I do, Peter? What can I do to get this old bastard to change?’[28] But the ‘old bastard’ had lashed out: he made his own speech and had secretly taped all the inputs from ministers at the Ou Sterrewag meeting.
