South Africa – Quo vadis?
A German View
Klaus Baron von der Ropp
It was a pleasure and an honor when Prälat Stephan Reimers asked me whether I was prepared to write a paper for a Festschrift to be dedicated to Joachim Gaertner, as I am sincerely indebted to him. For it was Joachim Gaertner. who more than anybody else paved the way for me back into EKSA (Evangelische Konferenz für das Südliche Afrika) and other fora of our church, dealing with African and particularly Southern African issues. Having spent my professional life in politics, I had always been aware of the fact that, in the debates on Southern Africa, I was a dissident. For me the key to overcoming racism in the Republic had always been an appropriate answer to the question with which the Federal Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in May 1977 surprised US Vice-President Walter Mondale who had told him that the West should do everything in his power to force Pretoria to abolish Apartheid. Schmidt's question was „and replace it with what'?" Being aware of the enormous complexity of South Africa's problems and of its successful transformation into a stable democracy, my view had always been that only, if the solution was not equitable or „sacrificial“ partition, Egon Bahr, the leading German thinker on foreign policy issues, gave the adequate answer when, in an interview with the Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt (10.07.1977, p. 8), he took the view that, as one person one vote was not the adequate answer, „a hitherto unknown model of co-existence with equal rights and special protection for minorities“ had to be developed for South Africa.
Politics in both parts of divided Germany and in more or less all other parts of the world ignored both Schmidt's question and Bahr's answer. As in the very early 80's I had been excluded from the corresponding debates in our church I do not have a clue why apparently the same occurred in church circles. It probably happened out of solidarity of the EKD with the South African Council of Churches and the latter's struggle against Apartheid. But today, in both South African and in German church circles the question is asked what the results of decades of struggle against a racist order that had developed in 350 years are like. While the conservative camp gives the impression of being helpless and therefore mute, the more progressive camp asks, with former political prisoner Breyten Breytenbach, whether democratic South Africa will not soon go through the enormous variety of acts of barbarism.
Visiting South Africa in 2002 a German is fascinated by the many activities of a vast number of German NGOs. All of them, from church organisations to private and business initiatives and, particularly important, the political foundations of all six parties represented in the Deutsche Bundestag, help to reconstruct and develop democratic South Africa (SA) with a maximum of dedication and know-how. The same is true for German state institutions. It must not be over looked, that the European Union (EU), with reunited Germany as the main financial contributor to its generous aid-programs, is also active in the sames fields. All the institutions in charge of German and EU development projects in South and Soudiern Africa are aware of the fact that the development of a successful market economy, of a lasting system of rule of law and a stable democracy are keys to SA's successful transformation from a 350 year old racist order to a model state in the subcontinent. This German and EU engagement is all the more remarkable, as today, besides our traditional partners in the Third World all the former communist states ask for our support in redeveloping their often rotten national economies.
On the other hand, it must be noted that, since the mid-90's, western parliainents and governments have virtually ceased to pay the much needed continuous attention to political and economic developments in southern Africa. This is particularly true for Germany. Of course there is quite a debate on Zimbabwe, whenever President Robert G. Mugabe's policy of destroying this once highly developed country reaches a new climax. But the German government and also the opposition and governing coalition parties mutely ignore problems in SA and Namibia; the same seems to be true for all other western countries with the exception of the UK. There are two reasons for Britain's continued and intensive interest. On the one hand, the British and South African national economies are very closely interwoven. On the other hand, it was British diplomacy that, being confronted with the growing successes of the liberation movements and later, as a result of the implosion of the Soviet empire, the loss of the fear that the USSR and its satellites would try to tum the whole of southern Africa into a giant Cuba, toppled the white minority regimes in Zimbabwe (1979/80), Namibia (1988-90) and finally by means of an up to today hardly known secret diplomacy in South Africa (1989-94), thus bringing democratic majority governments to power.
1. Will SA Follow Zimbabwe's „Model“?
However understandable it may be that western foreign and security policy to day focuses on the „War against Terrorism“, it seems wrong not to discuss theconsequences of Robert Mugabe's „revolution“ for the neighboring states, particularly the Republic of South Africa (RSA). It is improbable that President Thabo Mbeki's government will ever follow Zimbabwe's „model“. However, it is known that Mugabe's „land reform“ meets with a lot of sympathy both within the African National Congress (ANC) and its caucus in the national parliament. It remains to be seen, whether leaders of the ANC's alliance partners, namely Cosatu (Congress of South African Trade Unions) and the SACP (South African Communist Party), will one day organise the South African Lumpenproletariat numbering in the millions, into a Zimbabwe-like „revolution“ against the order existing since 1994. It must not be overlooked that this Lumpenproletariat, since the change from the ancien régime to democracy, has largely increased in number – p.a. SA loses about 100,000 jobs in the formal sector – and got even poorer.
The German indifference towards the background of the murder of some 1250 white South African farmers in the last decade is completely incomprehensible when we take into consideration that the killing of „only“ seven white farmers in Zimbabwe has often made headlines in the German media. Of course the killings in South Africa can be an element of the widely spread wave of violent crime. But it may also be the case that black activists in SA, similar to those in Zimbabwe, want to drive white farmers off their land. In contrast to those in Zimbabwe, the white farmers in South Africa are a power factor not to be underestimated. Its number is at least ten times that of the white farming community in Zimbabwe. They are armed to the teeth and have reorganised. Finally they meet a lot of sympathy in the circles of those white South Africans, who after having left the police and the armed forces following May 1994, today hold the key positions in the private security companies. Germany and the EU, in the interest of stabilising democratic SA, must do everything at their disposal to include them into the new order instead of ignoring them as reactionaries. This policy can only succeed by showing them and their children a perspective in the new SA. For these white South Africans and the many others, who, out of rejection of the new order, abstain from voting, can destroy but they can also help to restabilise and economically develop the new SA. It is to be feared that if countries like Germany, the UK and the USA do not take this into consideration military structures, known or not yet known, will develop and put into danger South Africa's democracy.
The many strikes we observe in South Africa today might escalate to hunger marches, which could lead to the illegal occupation of white suburbs and/or industrial and agricultural production sites. Then the member-countries of the EU will be confronted with the problem of having to protect their some 1.4 million
citizens, among them some 700,000 British, 500,000 Portuguese and approximately 80,000 Germans, against anarchy and chaos. In this context, it is to be remembered that the press got hold of British, Portuguese and German plans to evacuate the more than 30,000 of their citizens living in this southern African nation when the Zimbabwe crisis came to a head in April 2000 and in summer 2001. If their evacuation should ever become a necessity it will have to be organised over a distance of nearly 10,000 km. Of particular importance will then be the giant and mysterious US Airbase, built in the early 80's in Molepolole which lies west of Gaborone/Botswana and, therefore, close to its border with SA.
2. Western Indifference towards South Africa?
Of course, Germany, like any other state, has plans at its disposal to evacuate its citizens from countries, including SA and its neighbours, if they get into existential troubles. It goes without saying that these plans are not subject to public debate. But it is not at all understandable that debates on how South Africa's democratic order can be stabilised, so that these plans must not be implemented never take place. In all western capitals it is remembered that, in the past, the British government, after having got the support of Washington, excluded its EU allies from its initiatives to meet first the Namibian and then the South African challenge. London was not always particularly happy with the policies of its European allies and correctly took the view, that these partners were just not aware of the complexity of the two conflicts and, for domestic reasons, glibly offered easy solutions. More than any other foreign politician or diplomat, the British ambassador to Pretoria (1987-91), Sir Robin Renwick – the Sunday Times (21.04.1991) correctly called him an „Excellent Excellency“ – helped the parties to the South African conflict to ban the danger of a civil war and to agree on a new constitution. There is the predominant impression, that the other EU countries are, instead of developing national policies and diplomacy, content with backing those of the UK. London continues to watch SA like an eagle and undoubtedly has developed plans to restabilise it.
In the Western world since 1994/95. other than in the UK. the discussion on South Africa has ceased to develop. It is hardly noticed, that the Africans inherited a deeply ruined country from the white Afrikaners and the „English“. One must only consider the fact that for 40 years, other than in Zimbabwe, Africans in SA only received Bantu Education instead of proper schooling. When Nelson Mandela took over from Frederik Willem de Klerk as President in May 1994, after a democratic election and on the basis of a perfectly democratic constitution,
there was even more euphoria all over the world than in 1980 when Mugabe started to transform racist Southern Rhodesia into the independent Republic of Zimbabwe, on the basis of democracy, rule of law and racial tolerance, after 15 years of liberation war.
3. Missed Chances of New Stability
After 1994 it was obvious that Mandela and the governing alliance of the ANC Cosatu and the SACP made a blunder by not including strong Afrikaner individuals in his cabinet, namely the dissident Frederik Van Zyl Slabbert and the moderately conservative former four star general Constand L. Viljoen as well as a conservative English businessman. They thus missed a chance of stabilising the young and therefore very fragile South African democracy. By taking former state president de Klerk and other NP (National Party) politicians into his cabinet, Mandela did not achieve anything, for they were all marked by their racist past and by their miserable performance in Kempton Park. The same will be true if Mbeki takes one or two members of the New National Party into his cabinet. As far as the regaining of internal stability is concerned, they will be useless. It still holds true, what Patti Waldmeir, by far the best informed journalist in this issue, wrote in an article for the Financial Times (10.09.1993, p. 3): „Democratic niceties will have to be sacrificed to the overwhelming need to restore stability.“ Particularly with Viljoen in the cabinet, the governing alliance would have found it much easier to handle the enormous challenges of transformation, the urgent need for a land reform being only one of many.
In this context, it is important to remember that after de Klerk and the NP had capitulated in Kempton Park in late 1993, US Ambassador Princeton Nathan Lyman and his new British colleague, Sir Anthony Reeves, helped a high ranking delegation of ANC officials to meet regularly with a delegation of conservative Afrikaners, headed by Constand L. Viljoen. Their deliberations on April 23, 1994, hours before the first democratic elections, on the role of the Afrikaners in the new SA led to the agreement that provided for Afrikaner Self-Determination on a non-racial basis. It was later introduced into the country's constitution in Art. 235 and Art. 185. Its implementation failed, as in following years Viljoen's political followers were totally at odds with each other and could not agree on how to interpret and realise their claim to Self-Determination.
A visitor to South Africa will today immediately notice the tremendous gap be tween the hopes of 1994 and today's realities. He will be contorted with the weak state administration, the decline of important sectors of the national econ-
omy in the only emerging country in Africa, a massive and still growing strucrural unemployment, a bloodthirsty wave of crime and the catastrophe of the AIDS pandemic everywhere he goes.
Seen from the point of view of a potential local or foreign investor, affirmative action, however politically understandable it may be, has led to increased inefficiency and corruption. Its consequences are fatal with the police, the criminal justice system, the SANDF (South African National Defense Force), customs immigration control etc. Thus, millions of refugees and criminals enter SA illegally from neighboring countries. This weak state made hundreds of thousands of predominantly white experts of all professions leave the country. As Anne Paton wrote in a London Sunday paper as she was leaving SA for the UK some years ago: „Fly the beloved country.“ She was referring, of course, to her late husband Alan's anti-apartheid novel „Cry the beloved country“. The fear that SA might follow the „example“ of Mugabe's Zimbabwe drastically increases the number of emigrants. Parallel to their emigration, huge amounts of money leave the country, legally and illegally. A disastrous scenario, for SA is in desperate need of new investments to create new jobs. Since Mugabe led Zimbabwe into chaos, even more local and foreign potential investors share the view expressed by David Roche, the chief strategist of the London based Independent Strategy/Global Investment Consultants, in his article in the Wall Street Journal Europe (09-09-1998, p. 10), that because of the low rate of domestic saving „of all emerging markets, South Africa has the biggest need for foreign capital and the lowest potential to attract it.“
Policy Recommendations
- Western SA policies must recognise that what is true for all other countries in the world, also holds true for SA, namely, to quote a leading German political scientist, Klaus von Beyme: „Democracy is not given, it is a permanent challenge“. Repeating the view of Patti Waldmeir, constitutional concessions have to be made to make democratic SA regain that minimum of stability without which economic and other development cannot take place anywhere in the world.
- Germany, with its numerous experiences in the protection of its German ethnic minorities in Russia, the Ukraine, Poland and Romania strongly diminished by the outcome of World War II and yet still existing, should discuss copper-bottomed guarantees of existence for minorities that are a precondition to political stability with Pretoria, preferably within the framework of the European Union.
- By implementing Art. 235 and Art. 185 of the constitution, and thus, be it on a territorial basis or not, realising the Afrikaners' claim to self determination Pretoria will assure Afrikaners that there is a future for them and their children in the new SA. Furthermore, it is to be hoped that the above mentioned unknown military structures will not one day destroy SA, but will be instruments that allow President Thabo Mbeki's government to restabilise the country. When Germans were given a new chance after 1945, it paid off for the whole world. Afrikaners deserve the same; it will pay off for the whole of Southern Africa.
- President Thabo Mbeki should be advised to take one or two strong Afrikaner individuals and a representative, therefore conservative, English-speaking businessman into his cabinet and give them key positions.
Suggested Reading:
- Garth le Pere. „A Stable and Prosperous Region?/Scenarios on the future of Southern Africa“. Africa Insight, Pretoria, vol. 30, No. 1, pp. 58-63.
- Heribert Dieter, Guy Lamb and Henning Melber. „Prospects for Regional Co-operation in Southern Africa“. Regionalism and Regional Integration in Africa, Nordiska Afrikainstitutet: Uppsala, 2001, pp. 54-74.
- Martin Pabst. Zimbabwe at the Crossroads: SAIIA Country Report No. 3, Johannesburg, 2001.
- Klaus Baron von der Ropp. „Der Spider Afrikas - Eine Sicherheitspolitische Herausforderung Hit Europa?“. Österreichische Militärische Zeitschrift, Wien, 1/2000, pp. 39-44.
- Klaus Baron von der Ropp. „The challenge of change: comparative lessons from the experiences of the EU and SADC“. African Security Review, Pretoria, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 27-38.