PW Botha and Kenneth Kaunda Hold an Otiose Meeting

PW Botha and Kenneth Kaunda Hold an Otiose Meeting

On 30 April 1982, President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia met the apartheid Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, in a mobile home that had been set down in the middle of the African bush across South Africa’s border with Botswana to discuss the political situation in South-West Africa (Namibia) and South Africa. Official sources hinted that the mobile home had been devised to enable the two leaders to confer across the border without involving either Zambia or Botswana in what could be construed as a formal gesture of recognition of the South African racist regime.

This was the first meeting between any leader of a Front Line State and a South African premier since the Victoria Falls meeting between apartheid Prime Minister B.J. Vorster and Kaunda on 25-26 August 1976. The two leaders were together for nearly four hours and parted amicably after approving a communiqué of only four sentences. The meeting on 30 April took place at the initiative of the Zambian President, who told a South African interviewer in March 1982 that he was ready to meet Botha to try to head off “potentially explosive developments” in southern Africa.

Both Governments avoided being more specific about an agenda for the talks, but it was presumed that they were supposed to inevitably dwell on the stalled diplomatic effort to bring independence to the territory of South-West Africa, which later, after independence, became known as Namibia. Afrikaner sceptics were muttering that independence for “South West,” as they used to call Namibia, would just bring another Marxist government to power on South Africa’s borders.

By then, it was exactly four years since apartheid South Africa accepted a plan put forward by Five Western nations, including the United Kingdom and the United States, for a pre-independence election in South-West Africa, a territory under United Nations supervision. It was also a full year since the Reagan Administration undertook to revise the original plan, with the hopes of overcoming South Africa’s evident reluctance to agree on a ceasefire, which was supposed to end the border war it had been fighting with guerrillas of the South West Africa People’s Organization (SWAPO).

The revision involved spelling out certain constitutional and procedural principles that were left vague in the original proposal, so that the apartheid Government could defend itself in its own white political arena against the charge that it had “sold out” the territory’s white population. At that time, the convoluted negotiations were at an apparent impasse because of resistance by the Namibia’s liberation movement, SWAPO, to a formula for electing a constituent assembly through a complex combined system of voting.

According to SWAPO’s Secretary for Information and Publicity, Hidipo Hamutenya, “The choice of the combined electoral systems is not innocent as the Five Western Powers would like the world to believe. Otherwise there would be no need for South Africa and the Five to insist on is so unyieldingly. South Africa has realised that SWAPO is popular and that its electoral strength cannot be undermined by conventional electoral procedures. Therefore, the combination electoral system is intended to serve as a double-edged sword intended to cut SWAPO’s strength from two angles. The two elements to be used in this combination are racism and tribalism. First, there are the whites who are a minority and scattered throughout Namibia. The white settlers are expected to vote against SWAPO in defence of their own privileges.”

Hamutenya continued that “the single member constituency would, therefore, be necessary to make it relatively easy for the black tribal puppets to hopefully win some seats within narrowly demarcated constituencies centred around small tribal communities. In other words, under single member constituency system, South Africa aims at using tribal factors against SWAPO. While under proportional representation the racial factors will be brought into full play. The combination of advantages which Pretoria hopes to gain from the use of electoral double standards is hoped to result in a situation where SWAPO will have no working majority and whereby the puppets can be used to engage in endless debate aimed at frustrating the adopting of a constitution and proclaiming the independence of Namibia” (Sechaba, July 1982).

In an interview the week before the Kaunda-Botha meeting, the leader of SWAPO, President Sam Nujoma, was quoted as saying that the voting formula was intended to serve the interests of “the Pretoria racist regime”. The Five Western governments, which had accepted the formula, had chosen not to interpret that comment as a formal rejection. However, SWAPO continued to insist that “The Five know that it is precisely because Pretoria is afraid of overwhelming SWAPO victory at the polls that it is denying the Namibian people a free and fair election”. President Kaunda had consulted with Nujoma, but it was unclear that the Zambian President was in any better position to serve as a diplomatic go-between than he proved to be in 1975 when he and apartheid Prime Minister B.J. Vorster attempted to work out a settlement of the Rhodesian conflict.

Since then, the fragile political understanding between South Africa and Zambia had disintegrated. Then it was thought to envision a gradual normalisation of relations following the independence of Rhodesia – now Zimbabwe – and Namibia, as well as moves to dismantle apartheid inside the apartheid republic. Kaunda’s real concerns were shown by the report that he told Botha, that unless SA’s rulers withdrew from Namibia and made reforms in SA, “the resultant explosion would make the French revolution look like a Sunday school picnic”. Actually, Kaunda feared that such an “explosion” would affect the whole of Southern Africa – including Zambia itself.

Pretoria accused Kaunda of allowing representatives of the outlawed African National Congress (ANC), the main movement of resistance to apartheid rule in South Africa, to base in Lusaka. For their part, apartheid military strategists regularly described Zambia as a centre for subversion and intrigue against the white regime. This was because Zambia was one of several countries in southern Africa, known as the Frontline States, which came together to support the liberation movement in South Africa. Other countries included Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Because of this support the South African government launched many raids and cross border attacks during the apartheid era, in an attempt to disrupt the liberation struggle and to destabilise the Frontline States.

Earlier on in April 1982, an official white paper presented to Parliament by the apartheid Defence Ministry described Zambia as a “Marxist satellite state” engaged in a Soviet-inspired conspiracy against South Africa. The composition of the South African delegation also emphasised this belief, that Botha dwelled on the security threat that South Africa faced from the ANC, as the delegation largely included his top security advisers, including General Magnus Malan, the Defence Minister, Lieutenant General Johan Coetzee, the head of the security police, and Lieutenant General P.W. van der Westhuizen, the head of military intelligence.

In October 1980, Kaunda had accused the apartheid regime of sending “assassins” into his country, with the aim of installing “puppets” to rule the Zambian nation. The South African security forces frequently engaged in cross-border raids into neighbouring countries, including Zambia, primarily to target anti-apartheid activists and bases of liberation movements. Cross-border raids contributed to instability in the region, increased tensions between South Africa and its neighbours, who raised serious questions about the apartheid regime’s respect for international law and sovereignty. These raids, often involving military action and targeted attacks, were a key aspect of the apartheid regime’s strategy to suppress opposition and maintain its racist rule.

The meeting with the apartheid Prime Minister, P.W. Botha, was characterised as being otiose since Kaunda’s stated aim was to advance the ending of apartheid, but the meeting did not yield any significant political results, and Kaunda was heavily criticised in the African media for the meeting. Kaunda had claimed that “as a result of my meetings with John Vorster in 1975 and with Mr Ian Smith” that the Patriotic Front leaders Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo were released from prison in Zimbabwe – “the essential first step to Rhodesia becoming independent Zimbabwe”.

It was reported that Kaunda had told Botha that if the apartheid government wanted “racial peace” it would have to release from prison black leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and others, and negotiate with them. On the other hand, with such meetings, and his talk of reform, P.W. Botha was vainly hoping to buy time and to convince the international community that he was driving closer to change.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Headman Sasa”, Kaunda and Botha – Talks Will Not Help Them”, Inqaba ya Basebenzi, No. 8, August 1982.
Sechaba Correspondent, “Reaching the Canadian People”, Sechaba, July 1982.
Chris Saunders, “Kaunda and the Liberation of Namibia: Towards an Assessment”, Zambia Social Science Journal, Vol. 9 No. 1, 2021/2022.
Shaka Sisulu, “Kenneth Kaunda Former President of Zambia Interviewed About His Personal Life and Career”, African Oral History Archive, 2 April 2014.
Bruce W. Nelan, “South Africa The Front Line Begins to Wobble”, TIME, 17 October 1988.
Joseph Lelyveld, “South African and Zambian Meet in Bush Country”, The New York Times, 1 May 1982.
Amma Fosuah Poku, “This Day in History: 30th April 1982”, Modern Ghana, 30 April 2012.
Reginald Ntomba, “Zambia and Kaunda’s role”, New African, 5 July 2018.

Castro Khwela
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