Hidden behind the dove is a tribal hawk

Press, 1 June 1984, Page 16

Hidden behind the dove is a tribal hawk

South Africa’s Prime Minister, P. W. Botha, is in the midst of his European tour, and on the eve of his lunch with Mrs Thatcher the London “Observer” published this profile on Mr Botha, written by its African affairs expert, Allister Sparks.

When Mrs Margaret Thatcher has Mr P. W. Botha to lunch on Saturday there will be no small talk. The South African Prime Minister is a one-dimensional person who has spent his whole life in politics. Apart from a fascination with the military, he has no outside interests or intellectual pursuits to divert his conversation. Perhaps they will get on. It is ironic that this irascible, hawkish politician, who sent shivers of trepidation down many spines when he became Prime Minister six years ago, should be the first South African Premier to get a personal invitation to Number 10 since Smuts dined there with Churchill in the days of the War Cabinet. That is the kind of stamp of acceptability that Afrikaner nationalism has craved through the Wz decades of isolation that their apartheid policies have brought upon South Africa. Mr Botha the hawk has achieved it because he has managed to present himself as a reformist and regional peacemaker. The presentation may not be an altogether accurate reflection of what Mr Botha is doing, but it is true that he has made some significant changes to the political structure of South Africa and that these could start a process that will develop its own momentum. This has been thought sufficient to warrant some encouragement. The changes have required courage. They have split the National Party and the whole Afrikaner Volk, a trauma of a kind which is not readily comprehensible to Europeans. It would be better understood in Black Africa, which has the same kind of tribal political culture. The schism is called a Volkskeuring, a rending of the people, and is something of which an Afrikaner leader’s nightmares are made. For an old tribal party boss like Mr Botha, it must have been an agonising thing to contemplate. But Mr Botha’s main characteristic is a bulldozing determination. He is intolerant of opposition and nothing is further from his nature than tact. Once he has decided on a course of action, he pursues it with a singleness of mind that can be heedless of consequences. His forcing through of changes at the cost of Afrikaner unity has earned him a degree of admiration from liberal opponents, but this does not extend to a liking for the

man himself. Mr Botha is not lovable. Even close colleagues who have worked with him for years say there is no warmth in the relationship. He has mellowed somewhat since becoming Prime Minister, but his manner remains aggressive and authoritarian. He addresses his audiences in a hectoring style, waving an admonishing finger at them like an angry schoolmaster. He has a blazing temper which can erupt in a flash if he is opposed or contradicted. One former Cabinet Minister who has now left the party tells how only the intervention of a secretary prevented Mr Botha from assaulting him physically during a row in the Prime Minister’s office. Mrs Helen Suzman, the veteran liberal, confesses to an abiding dislike of the man. She has sat opposite him for 31 years in the Cape Town Parliament and says he is the only Cabinet Minister with whom she has never been on speaking terms. “He may love little children and dogs for all I know, but I have only encountered him as an aggressive, hostile politician,” she says. An admirer who worked closely with him for 30 years says there are really two Bothas: the uncompromising, hard-hitting politician, and a flexible administrator who knows how to pick the right man for the job and who listens to advice. He describes him as dynamic and single-minded, a man who knows how to get things done. “But beware if you cross him,” the old staffer says. “He gets very emotional about certain things, and if you catch him in an angry mood it’s better to shut up. You will never win the argument when he’s upset; he just overwhelms you. Rather let him cool off for a few days, then he will be reasonable again.” Pieter Willem Botha was born on a farm near the small Orange Free State Dorp of Paul Roux on January 12,1916. He went to high school in nearby Bethlehem, then to university in the provincial capital of Bloemfontein, but dropped out after a year of law studies. He is thus the first of South Africa’s nine Prime Ministers without a university education. Some people think this has given Mr Botha a sense of inferiority which accounts in part for his aggressive manner. After dropping out of university

Mr Botha went straight into the National Party as a full-time organiser. That became his total career. He is a party apparatchik, the complete machine politician. By the time he was 20 he was the chief organiser of the National Party in Cape Province. The party was in opposition then and the young Mr Botha relished the rough side of the Afrikaners’ struggle for political supremacy. He organised youth groups which broke up meetings of Smuts’s ruling United Party. In 1943, he married Anna Elize Rossouw, daughter of the Dutch Reformed Church minister in the picturesque Western Province town of Swellendam. The couple have two sons, Pieter Willem and Rossouw, and three daughters, Ilanza, Amelia, and Rozanne. They are a close-knit family. “P.W.’s only interest outside politics is his family, who think the world of him,” says a friend. Mr Botha entered Parliament when the Afrikaner nationalists came to power in 1948 and he is today the longest-serving parliamentarian by five years. His rise was steady and his experience varied. He held half a dozen Cabinet posts before becoming Minister of Defence in 1966. That was a watershed. During his years as a party organiser and Cabinet Minister, Mr Botha acquired considerable experience as an administrator. That became his primary skill. Now his association with the military brought him into contact with an organisational system whose authoritarian structure appealed to him immediately. During his 12 years as Defence Minister he soaked it all up, learning too about theories of military strategy. The army became his university. In 1976, the University of Stellenbosch gave him an honorary degree in Military Science. He became Prime Minister fortuitously in 1978. The disclosure of a Watergate-type scandal in the Information Department destroyed Prime Minister John Vorster and his heir apparent, Information Minister Mr Connie Mulder. In the crisis the choice of successor fell on Mr Botha, who was the longestserving member of the Cabinet. It was not long before the new Prime Minister with the Ariel Sharon image, who had ordered South Africa’s rash invasion of Angola in 1975, began unexpectedly making some doveish gestures. He became the first Prime Minister to

visit the black township of Soweto, outside Johannesburg. He extended trade union rights to blacks. He held two meetings with big business, traditionally dominated by the opposition English-speakers. And he began speaking of the need for change. “We must adapt or die,” became his catchphrase. This caused large numbers of white South Africans who had tried to dissociate themselves from apartheid to turn to him. They want reform, but they are fearful of black rule, and Mr Botha appeared to offer the magical combination of change with the tough maintenance of white control. At a referendum last November he won an overwhelming 66 per cent endorsement from white voters for a new constitution that will give a subordinate role in the central government to the Coloured and Indian minorities, but will continue to exclude the black majority. He attracted enough new support from the traditionally opposition English community to more than make up for the loss of Afrikaner hardliners in the Volkskeuring. Was it a conversion? Not really. What had happened was that Mr Botha’s military mentors had persuaded him to adopt a new “total strategy” to make the last bastion of white rule more secure. Afrikaner politics are predicated on survival at all costs. With no roots left in Europe after three centuries, and with black nationalism reclaiming all of Africa, the 2,800,000 Afrikaners feel themselves to be an endangered species. To ensure their survival they feel they must remain in control. If they let that control slip out of their hands, they will become a minority group in a country run by others, and then they will lose what they regard as their God-given right to exist as a nation. It follows that a man like P. W. Botha, whose whole life has been devoted to serving Afrikaner politics, has that purpose in mind. In this sense there has been no fundamental shift or change of direction. The changes Mr Botha is making are designed to reformulate, rather than reform, the apartheid system; to help ensure the continuation of Afrikaner control in the face of mounting internal and external pressures that are beginning to threaten it. He is not preparing to hand over to the blacks.