Foreign Relations of the United States, 1977–1980, Volume XVI, Southern Africa

123. Telegram From the Consulate in Cape Town to the Department of State¹

Cape Town, April 10, 1979, 1755Z

852. From Embassy Cape Town. Department also pass White House. Subject: (S) Namibia: Follow-up to Delivery of Carter-Botha Letter. Ref: Cape Town 830.²

1. S–entire text

2. I saw Brand Fourie this afternoon and tried to see what further reaction, if any, there had been to the letter I delivered to P.W. Botha yesterday from President Carter (reftel). Fourie was his usual friendly self but said little to elucidate where things may go from here on Namibia.

3. I explained that because of the more flexible position P.W. Botha’s government had been taking on certain domestic issues, including a well-received proposal that Plural Relations Minister Piet Koornhof had advanced for settlement of the Crossroads’ squatter problem,³ I had been encouraged to hope that with an internationally accepted settlement in Namibia the atmosphere would be greatly improved for U.S.-South African bilateral relations. Accordingly, I was very disappointed that South Africa had not yet accepted the UN plan for Namibia and that P.W. Botha reacted negatively to President Carter’s letter.⁴ I was frankly puzzled that Botha still seemed to act as if he believed there had been some kind of duplicity—some “sabotage of the UN plan” involved in the Western position. I wondered what it all meant, where we stood now, and where we go from here.

4. Fourie replied that he was not sure. In any event, P.W. will be answering President Carter’s letter, although he had reacted to the one sentence in the letter (the fourth paragraph) as if I had come in with a pistol. P.W. was still prepared to go ahead with the original plan, but regarded the Secretary General’s report as a deviation. The annex to the letter from the Western Five had helped a bit, but the Secretary General still had to issue a clarification. (I noted that the SYG was awaiting the SAG reply, which Fourie seemed to acknowledge.) In any event, while the issue of monitoring SWAPO forces in neighboring countries was difficult, Fourie did not think Botha could ever accept the idea of a SWAPO base or bases in Namibia, which had been an entirely new element. The monitoring issue was debated all along, but the base issue came out of the blue. I said I would not rehash the issue with Fourie, as the Five Ministers had already dealt with it as effectively as possible at the Proximity Talks. The point was that we had achieved very significant commitments from SWAPO and the Frontline States—not ideal from all points of view perhaps, but sufficient to permit a pragmatic solution that might never offer itself again. I was only disappointed that the Prime Minister was unwilling even to discuss it in its broader aspects.

5. Fourie at this point said the SAG was beginning to experience a new problem in Namibia: i.e., that having done away with ethnic representation and discrimination in the territory, the Administrator General was increasingly being asked to decide on certain issues between the contrasting views of different groups and that these issues, when submitted to the SAG, involved decisions that ran against the trend in South Africa, making them very difficult indeed. Fourie’s implication was that the SAG did not like this decision-making task. He did not carry the implication further to suggest the need for a responsible legislative body in the territory itself, but the hint was there.

6. Fourie noted that the Department had called Ambassador Sole in to protest Foreign Minister Pik Botha’s remarks about Don McHenry.⁵ Unfortunately, I still have only news reports of the protest, so commented only that I had not yet received a text. I added, however, that even before Pik’s latest remarks⁶ I was asked by the Under Secretary for Political Affairs and other senior officers in the Department why it was that the South Africans always seemed to pick on McHenry. I said that McHenry worked under instructions of the Secretary and others in the Department and was a highly professional diplomat. Some of the allegations I had heard about “behind the scenes” activities, such as suggested by Sunday Times reporter Fleur de Villiers,⁷ were quite ridiculous and I thought it unstatesmanlike at the least for Botha to repeat such stuff. In the circumstances such charges would strike Americans as being essentially racist. Fourie demurred, and I said I was talking about impressions that might be created without regard to motives. Fourie admitted that the chemistry between Pik Botha and Don McHenry was not very good.

7. Fourie noted that he had called in some other Ambassadors to protest the appeals they had made in case of the Mahlangu execution but had not called me in as they would be answering directly the letters received by the President and Prime Minister from President Carter.⁸ When I commented that it would hardly be appropriate to protest to me about a communication from my Chief of State, Fourie said that is what he had advised.

8. At the end of our conversation, Fourie said he was leaving tomorrow for 4 days fishing with his son over Easter. He hoped the people “up there” (Windhoek) would keep talking another week as things would be less busy in Cape Town. He spoke of retiring in a year or two, when he would be “out of it all.” He sounded less tired than resigned, though Brand Fourie is a good diplomat who usually just smiles and does not let on what he really thinks.

Edmondson

1. Source: Carter Library, National Security Affairs, Brzezinski Material, Cables File, Africa, Box 20, 4–5/79. Secret; Sensitive; Nodis. Printed from a copy that was received in the White House Situation Room.
2. See Document 122.
3. In telegram 804 from Cape Town, April 6, the Embassy transmitted Koornhof’s Crossroads statement, in which he announced the South African Government’s decision to relocate many of the residents and their families to a new township to be constructed near the squatter camp. He also said that influx control regulations would be strictly enforced and that black labor in the Western Cape would be more expensive due to higher fees and penalties levied on employers. (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790157–0749)
4. See Document 120.
5. In telegram 90013 to Cape Town, April 11, the Department transmitted text of the April 9 press statement following the meeting between Newsom and Sole: “The Department of State today called in the South African Ambassador to protest strongly the remarks directed at the United States and at Ambassador Donald McHenry by the South African Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. R.F. Botha, in Parliament on April 3, 1979. Similar remarks were made on April 5 by the South African Minister of Economics. During the April 3 parliamentary session, the Minister of Foreign Affairs referred, by implication, to the United States and to Ambassador McHenry as being among South Africa’s ‘enemies,’ an allegation which is totally unfounded. The United States, together with the other members of the Contact Group, has actively pursued a peaceful settlement to the Namibia problem, which we believe would be in the interests of all the parties, including South Africa. Ambassador McHenry has played a key role in the negotiating process. We categorically reject the allegations of improprieties made by the South African Foreign Minister. Unfounded charges of this sort must end if the parties are to turn to the real business at hand of concluding the Namibia negotiations.” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790165–1147)
6. In telegram 850 from Cape Town, April 10, the Embassy reported on Botha’s April 10 remarks attacking the Department and McHenry in The Argus: “The Argus reported that Pik charged that instead of protesting to Ambassador McHenry for his role in the Namibia settlement negotiations, the Department was attempting to get out of the mess McHenry created by ‘protesting to us (the SAG) for revealing his role.’ Botha reportedly charged that Ambassador McHenry had played a vital role in ‘deviations’ from the original settlement plan and it was not necessary to prove Ambassador McHenry’s alleged role because ‘he knows that this is so and that he did it to try to get the cooperation of SWAPO.’ Ambassador McHenry, the Foreign Minister charged, believed the only way to achieve peace in Namibia was to install SWAPO in power.” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790165–0442)
7. Reference is to a March 4 article in the Sunday Times in which de Villiers analyzed the current status of the Namibian negotiations. As reported in telegram 446 from Cape Town, March 5, de Villiers noted: “Add to that in turn a history of diplomatic duplicity on the part of certain Western negotiators who, while bemoaning the lack of trust between the participants, proceeded to fuel South African suspicions of double-dealing, a UN Secretariat liberally seeded with men who have long believed that SWAPO membership was a ticket to a UN heaven, and Western diplomats who believed that South African politicians do not have to account to their party or their electorate, and you have the simple recipe for failure.” (National Archives, RG 59, Central Foreign Policy File, D790101–0320)
8. Presumably a reference to Documents 119 and 120.