South Africa-Mozambique Talks in Paris
On 5 December 1980, a four-man apartheid South African delegation led by the Director-General of Foreign Affairs, Brand Fourie, secretly met with a three-person Mozambican delegation headed by the Minister of State for Security Affairs, Jacinto Veloso, in Paris, France. The apartheid South African Department of Foreign Affairs report on the meeting was classified as “Top Secret”.
Addressing the meeting, Fourie, maintained that for his government the major element breeding suspicion was the problem of the African National Congress (ANC) in Mozambique, as was the case with the South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Angola, as it pertained to South West Africa/Namibia. Veloso responded that the ANC was there but was not operating from Mozambique, which unfortunately did not allay apartheid South Africa’s suspicions.
According to Veloso, the Mozambican government did not support the ANC, though it did give full political support to the achievement of equal rights for all people in South Africa. Veloso ventured into a thought whether the ANC could be accommodated politically inside South Africa. If P.W. Botha continued in the reformist direction he was taking, Veloso argued, the ANC would have no justification for acting against apartheid South Africa from outside. Veloso further added that the ANC would have no justification for styling itself a “liberation movement” at all.
Responding to Veloso’s assert
