1
THE STRUGGLE, SCAPEGOATS AND BOTHA’S BABYLON:
REFLECTIONS ON THE WAY THAT THE REGIME OF PW BOTHA VIEWED THE INTERNATIONAL ANTI-APARTHEID CAMPAIGN
JAN-AD STEMMET & MARIETJIE OELOFSE[1]
INTRODUCTION
During the early 1980s violent political conflict erupted across South Africa. The violence soon developed a dynamism, which seemed irrevocable as it hammered on with unprecedented intensity. Centering mainly around those forces in favor of the political status quo and those against it, apartheid’s violent crisis quickly caught the eyes and ears of the world. The international anti-apartheid movement lobbied across the globe in an attempt to end the carnage that was the apartheid crucible. Spurned on by the anti-apartheid movement the international community gave expression to their contempt for apartheid and that which it symbolized through a wide variety of anti-apartheid measures.
As the international anti-apartheid campaign reached the one after the other climax during the 1980s, the minority regime of PW Botha tried desperately to ward off these growing pressures. The regime, while dependent on the global community, started to increasingly take on a lager attitude and regarded the anti-apartheid movement with utter contempt. Declaring in August 1985 that the outside world should not “push us too far” the regime regarded foreign critics and anti-apartheid groupings abroad with defiance and loathing. Utilizing its Total National Strategy the regime employed a variety of tactics – some public, others covert – in an attempt to elude, coheres and or suppresses international interest in and or access to the apartheid crisis of the 1980s.
The regime regarded all anti-apartheid sentiments as not being indicative that their political status quo was abhorred, instead they concluded that it was all the result of a massive global conspiracy. A plot aimed not in fact against apartheid but instead against South Africa itself. In reaction the minority regime constructed an elaborate strategy. This so-called Total Strategy determined how the apartheid-government would manage their politics in the 1980s. According to this strategy the anti-apartheid campaign was merely a front for a highly sophisticated economic and psychological war waged against the country. In effect the Total Strategy made the total anti-apartheid campaign an all-enveloping scapegoat for all its woes.
STRATEGIC TOTALITY AND TOTALIZING STRATEGY
“It was not a race war! It was a war against Cuban and Russian communism. There is not such a thing as hatred between the Afrikaner and blacks…”[2]said the former State President PW Botha, during a private discussion with Dr Stemmet during 2000. More than a decade after the Berlin Wall crumbled, bringing the whole Russian empire crashing down with it; and more then ten years after his tenure as State President of South Africa came to an equally dramatic end, PW Botha is still steadfastly rigid when discussing the concept of Total Onslaught. “I predicted that there was a Total Onslaught against South Africa. I said so in parliament – there is a Total Onslaught, psychological, political, economic and military. And I said that we should develop a Total Strategy against it…In the eighties the onslaught against South Africa was bigger than before. It was an onslaught that manifested itself in South Africa, in Angola, in the fall of the Portuguese regions and was inflamed by international powers…”[3]
The genesis of the total onslaught, as perceived by the Nationalists and the motivation for the formulation of a national total strategy both lies in the political changes of the 1960s and ‘70s. During 1960, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan delivered his ‘winds of change’ speech, urging the minority Government to move with the times and away from its racial policies.[4] The speech, and the fundamental cleft it implied in Pretoria and London’s political reasoning, bewildered the Nationalists. A year later South Africa also dramatically gave up its membership of the Commonwealth, after the country came under attack in that forum as a result of its racial policies.[5] During the same year as Macmillan’s speech, 1960, the growing contemptuousness for the South African system of apartheid was intensified after a number of blacks taking part in a protest march were shot dead by South African police. The incident became known as the Sharpeville Shooting and resulted in the adoption of various resolutions by the UN.[6] Two years later, the organisation went further with the formation of a Special Committee on Apartheid and urged its members to isolate the Republic. 1963 saw the Security Council of the UN implement a voluntary arms embargo against Pretoria.[7]
Apart from apartheid, the Nationalists were also embroiled in an international controversy over Namibia, which South Africa had controlled since the First World War. Initially the saga took the form of a legalistic debate, culminating in the International Court of Justice refusing to accept Pretoria’s trustee claims in 1966 and ruling, in 1971, that South Africa’s occupation of Namibia was illegal.[8]
By the mid-1970s the Portuguese were evacuating their colonies in Africa, leaving a volatile power vacuum in Angola, which three opposing factions fought frantically to fill. After being prompted to do so by the United States, South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster sent South African troops to Angola to support the National Front for the Liberation of Angola [FNLA]. In pure military terms the exercise was a tremendous success for the South African Defence Force [SADF], which succeeded in moving and striking far and fast, and finally halted just twenty kilometers outside the Angolan capital, Luanda. It was there that Pretoria received news that the White House had reassessed its position on Angola, with the side effects of the Vietnam war still being felt, the Oval Office did not want to sit with an African Saigon. The South African forces were left twisting in the wind and without American assistance there was really no point in Pretoria keeping its forces in Angola.[*][9]
Not only did it leave more than one Nationalist embittered with regard to the US, but it also held serious diplomatic repercussions for the minority Government and specifically in Africa. Preceding the military exercise, Prime Minister Vorster had painstakingly tried to improve the apartheid state’s diplomatic position in so-called ‘black Africa’. The Angolan operation proved to be detrimental to his initiatives. Once again the minority Government was regarded as Africa’s biggest bully and the continent’s disdain for South Africa deepened.[10]
On June 16th1976, what would become known as the Soweto Riots broke out in the immense Transvaal township near Johannesburg. The rioting spread like wildfire to other townships and would eventually only subside after almost eight months. Vorster was adamant in his attempt to stamp out the unrest. Hundreds of people, many of which were children, died. Throughout this process the world was shocked by the savageness and apparent chaos in South Africa. In the aftermath of the rioting many young blacks fled South Africa to join the ANC and Umkhonto we Sizwe [MK], the military wing of the banned organisation. By the end of the decade they would return to South Africa, trained.[11]
In 1977, following the Soweto riots, the UN finally banned the sale of weapons to South Africa. The US also, officially, stopped supplying South Africa with any equipment that could be used during security operations. And then on the 11th of September 1977, popular black activist leader, Steve Biko became immortalised when he died at the hands of South African security personnel whilst in Police custody. As the details of his brutal death spread, it sent shock waves across the world. Once more reverberating in international condemnation of the white minority government and their system.
During this period, while the minority Government’s actions were increasingly being questioned by the international community and South Africa was evolving into a pariah state, Russian-backed Cuban troops were starting to become an increasingly prominent presence in Angola. On the other border, to the East, and making no secret of his Marxist inclinations, Samora Machel became Mozambique’s president.[12] During the 1960s and 1970s, while being ostracized to an ever-increasing degree by the world, the strategic value of the sea routes over which Pretoria presided, was highlighted by upheavals in the Middle East. In 1967, Egyptian leader Gamal Abdal Nasser closed the Suez Canal as part of the approaching Six Day War. This prompted Western leaders to again realize the value of the Cape route. While at the same time the West, and Pretoria, witnessed the introduction of the Soviet Navy into the Indian Ocean.[13]
To further exasperate the overall sociopolitical climate, by the latter half of the 1970s South Africa’s economy was stuck in the most severe recession in the country’s history. The real growth rate for 1978 being zero, furthermore during the time of the Soweto riots there were 2 000 000 unemployed blacks in South Africa, with labour unrest flaring up. To aggravate the situation there were also a number of attacks by MK.[14]
The idea for an extensive all encompassing security plan of action, had its origins in the 1960s. Already then the Nationalist prime minister Dr HF Verwoerd, made his Minister of Defence PW Botha attentive to the calamities the future might hold for the country, according to Botha, Verwoerd expected South Africa to come under the pressure and warned him to be vigilant in safeguarding the Republic.[15] Verwoerd also stated, on numerous occasions, that South Africa’s white minority had to realize that they would, eventually, stand alone in their politics. “Die witman moet hom handhaaf oral waar hy is, solank as moontlik…Aan ons almal is dit duidelik gemaak dat ons wat hierdie sake betref, op onsself aangewese is…die witman, al staan hy alleen, nie gaan padgee nie…Die witman van Afrika is egter intussen op sy eie gelaat…Ons moet helder en reguit wees. Die sentiment van ‘n statebond of van ‘n monargie, die gedagte dat ons sal beskerm en verdedig word, geld nie op hierdie terrein nie.” – HF Verwoerd, Policy Statement, Parliament, 9 March 1960.[16] As far as the minority regime was concerned all these crises and the growing anti-apartheid sentiments of the international community were all indicative of a very real and global conspiracy.
In its theoretical basis, Gen. Malan’s definition concurs, in a 1996 interview with Playboy Magazine he defined a total onslaught as follows: “A total onslaught is where you use all your power together to obtain your objective. For instance if you want to conquer a country you do it through physical power, through economic means, political means, all the means you have to achieve your objective.”[17] Although the understanding of the premise of a total war was thus not unique to the minority Government, what was unique was their finer conceptualization of the total war with respect to the groups the Government reasoned were involved and its motivation for waging the Total Onslaught. The crux of Total Onslaught, as perceived by the minority Government, was that the anti-apartheid campaign and struggle was part of an international conspiracy, lead by the USSR, to take control of South Africa as part of a Kremlin-engineered plot to conquer and rule the world. This onslaught was not only focused on a military level and manifested itself in all possible spheres. To muster support for the campaign against South Africa, the country’s internal situation was exaggerated and exploited under the anti-apartheid banner.[18]
In this regard the government thrived on statements like the ones made by dr. Igor Glagolev, who until he defected to the West in 1976, was a foreign affairs consultant to the Soviet Politburo, when he gave a somewhat enthusiastic appraisal of South Africa’s value to the USSR: “The Russians are determined to take South Africa and to get the full benefit of its tremendous mineral wealth…They know that once they take South Africa, once they take its mineral wealth for themselves and can benefit from its strategic position, they will eventually control the world. If they can take South Africa, nothing can stop them.”[19] During 1984, analysts at the American John F. Kennedy special warfare centre, alleged that Gen. Malan issued a secret directive to the SADF, prompting them to tone down their references to the ‘total onslaught’. Apparently, the General reasoned that an over emphasis of the concept could too easily have led to uproar and distorted assessments of the South African situation.[20] Nonetheless, the 1980s did nothing to diminish the Nationalists’ perception of a conspiracy that was waging total war against them. If anything the violent political upheavals and dramatics of the mid to latter half of the decade with the coming of age of the mass movement; township violence reaching ‘all time high’ proportions and the ANC blurring the distinction between hard and soft targets attracted attention to apartheid and South Africa on a more extensive global scale than ever before.
An example of how the Nationalists’ views about a hostile outside world intensified, or at least stayed rigid, and how even the West were seen by them as part of the problem, can be found in a 1979-speech of PW Botha in which he dramatically declared: “We have become disillusioned with the West.”[21] A year later he went even further: “There are people who…believe that the West will help us. Let me tell you this: If South Africa were to be confronted tomorrow by Communist forces, the West will not help us. Britain cannot help us, Europe cannot help us, and America does not want to help us.”[22] During the spring of 1983, PW Botha said: “South Africa is strategically important – because of its military and economic strengths as well as its strategic mineral production, its transport network and its modern harbours. Russian expansionism is threatening us and in spite of that other western countries are reluctant to acknowledge our real value.”[23] Throughout the 1980s PW Botha and his regime would blame the growing anti-apartheid actions emanating from the West on their governments having grown decadent, exploitative and their “inherent weaknesses.”[24]
One insightful example of how some commentators, who were susceptible to the concept of a total war being waged against the Republic, reasoned and regarded the threat of the Total Onslaught during the 1980s, can be found in an article published by KJ de Beer, under the heading: “The Total Onslaught On The Republic Of South Africa As Bastion Of The Free Western World”.[25] According to his 1987 article, South Africa found itself “in a war of ideas against everything” and under total attack on the following fronts, he identified fifteen:
1.Convictional.
2.Ethical – breach of international morals
3.Juridical – breach of international law
4.Aesthetic – boycott of cultural relations
5.Economic – disinvestment
6.Social – banning of diplomatic relations
7.Linguistic – breakdown of communications[26]
8.Historical – colonialism
9.Analytical – illogical attacks
10.Emotional – psychological warfare
11.Biological – population explosion
12.Physical – energy crisis
13.Kinematic – technological inferiority
14.Spatial – communistic expansion
15.Numerical – threat of one man one vote[27]
An underlying theme of the article, and indeed of South Africa’s concept of the Total Onslaught, was that the West was also not to be counted on for support in this struggle and that their anti-apartheid sentiments were misplaced and being exploited. Already in the 1970s, the then Prime Minister, BJ Vorster, drew a comparison between American pressure on Pretoria to communist subversion, saying “In the one case (the pressure on South Africa) will come about as a result of brute force. In the other case, it will be strangulation with finesse”.[28] Keeping in mind the world opinion on South Africa during the 1980s, it not surprisingly castigated the West for its so-called double standards when dealing with South Africa. For example, on the question of sanctions against the apartheid-state, according to De Beer, the United States “the prime upholders of the system of free trade” are curbing American investment in South Africa and thus “actually prescribing to entrepreneurs as to what they should do with their money!”[29] Calling on the West to change their attitudes towards South Africa, he wrote: “For the sake of the democratic and true Christian freedom of this bastion of the Free West, let us not divide ourselves but cooperate for coalition through peace.”[30]
In 1982, a document compiled for the State President broken down the objectives of the perceived Total Onslaught against South Africa into six phases: