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.
Addressing the meeting, Fourie, maintained that for his government the major element breeding suspicion was the problem of the African National Congress (ANC). 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. 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 as a “liberation movement” at all.
Responding to Veloso’s assertions, Fourie stated that Pretoria feared the situation with the ANC in Mozambique developing over time into one akin to that with the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO) in Angola, whereby it would become an “irritant” and action could be taken. Actually that was how apartheid South Africa was beg
