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Aziz Pahad – walking with two presidentsBack in 1994, a few months after the African National Congress government took over the reins, it encountered a foreign policy dilemma: to continue diplomatic ties with Taiwan, or to tie the knot with the People’s Republic of China.
What was not known to the public at the time, was that the battle by both Taiwan and China to court the new South Africa was so fierce that millions were spent in an attempt to influence the new ruling party.
This is among the controversial subjects that Aziz Pahad – the retired and longest serving deputy minister in Foreign Affairs under presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki – has begun to explore in his memoirs.
In his home in Johannesburg, Pahad for the first time begins to lift the lid on the evolution of South Africa’s foreign policy.
By mid-1994, South Africa was the jewel of Africa, attracting countries from far and wide to seek a place under its potentially economically viable sun.
That South Africa should have kept the moral high ground, which the struggle for liberation had wrought, and shunned the pariah nations, proved idealistic.
Former foreign minister Pik Botha’s secret visit to China set a precedent for future secret communication, and liaison structures were continued under the rule of the Government of National Unity.
“Taiwan had invested $2 billion, and had already spent millions wooing political parties.
“They took delegations from every party to visit Taiwan and built a lobby within the Foreign Affairs Ministry,” said Pahad.
“Then director-general Rusty Evans was very strongly committed to Taiwan, and I think wrongly believed we could achieve a two-China policy.
“Taiwan had a form of democracy, but there were many problems, and Taiwan did not really have human rights.”
“Mandela went to China only in 1993 and that was after the Chinese had sent several invitations. On his visit, the Chinese offered the ANC $10 million and material support, and immediately the Taiwanese offered $25m,” he added.
It was inevitable that South Africa would follow the one-China policy in the end and join the rest of the world – but money “spoke”.
“Given the realities of Taiwanese investments, financial and political lobbying, it took longer than I expected,” said Pahad.
In a November 1996 press conference, Mandela – flanked by Foreign Affairs Minister Alfred Nzo and Pahad – announced that within a year, South Africa would terminate its diplomatic relations with Taiwan and establish relations with China.
In 1998, The People’s Republic of China opened an embassy in South Africa, although the Taiwanese Liaison Office remains.
Pahad has been at the forefront of the diplomatic marriages with countries regarded by the United States as “rogue states” since his appointment as the deputy head of the ANC government’s Department of International Affairs.
Having served as deputy foreign minister from 1994 until his resignation in 2007, he was placed ideally to view South Africa’s descent to self-interest.
The events that Pahad is recording in his memoirs at the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) – the first of its Memory Project – for the first time reveal Mandela’s role in foreign relations, which Pahad describes as “hands-on” in conflict situations.
He describes Mandela’s reliance on then deputy president Thabo Mbeki and on Jakes Gerwel, who was the director-general of Mandela’s office and Cabinet secretary.
Together with Nzo, they sealed diplomatic relations with Burma in 1997/98.
“Nzo was misunderstood,” said Pahad. “He worked behind the scenes, while the rest of us were drinking and chirping.”
Pahad was close to Mbeki, their relationship dating back to their student days at Sussex University, where Pahad graduated with an MA in International Relations.
Asked to justify the government’s support of Burma, given its lamentable human rights record, Pahad takes up the challenge. “Burma was a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). We spoke with India and Malaysia and South Korea, and even China, about the Burmese situation and less important members of the association.
“We always work on the principle that when dealing with countries that are part of other sub-regions and groupings, you discuss with the countries in the region.
“Because of the principle of universality, if countries want to establish diplomatic relations and are members of the United Nations, of ASEAN and the Non-Aligned Movement – as Burma was – we would not refuse it just because we did not agree with their policies,” he explained.
And the real world?
“Yes, you quickly learn that the real world is different from what our critics imagined and you can’t ignore the rules of the game,” said Pahad.
“We opened an embassy in Burma, but we constantly raised our concerns with the ambassador in South Africa about the military’s repression of the opposition party, and the imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader.
“We met with representatives of the various opposition groups, both at the UN and in South Africa.
“With the Libyans, it was the same. It is true that Libya supported many liberation organisations, including the IRA [Irish Republican Army], which earned them pariah status. We did not see it like that and wanted to help them solve the Lockerbie issue,” he added.
In December 1988, two Libyans, Abdelbaset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifah Fhimah bombed a civilian plane, killing all 259 people on board, and 11 residents of Lockerbie, Scotland, who were struck by the debris.
The decision of Britain and the US to allow the Lockerbie trial to go ahead in The Hague, under Scottish law, was in no small measure due to the work of special envoys Gerwel and the Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan.
Mandela himself went to Tripoli in March 1999 to broker a deal with Libyan leader, Muammar al-Gaddafi. He persuaded then US President Bill Clinton and United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair to allow justice to take its course in this way.
Why did Mbeki not get along with Gaddafi?
“We had a good working relationship with Gaddafi, but had tactical differences on some issues,” said Pahad.
He continued: “Mandela also took a very hands-on position on the Lockerbie issue and on the East Timor issue, where Jakes [Gerwel] was also a special envoy.
“Our relationship with Indonesia was criticised. It was a major player in the Third World.
“Mandela had, during his visit, put them under much of pressure for the release of East Timorese leaders and had, in fact, had meetings with them in prison,” he said.
“He later sent Jakes to have more discussions in order to secure their release, so they could progress to independence.
“Of course, there were many difficulties. I believe, even though the massacres took place, that the intervention of Mandela led to the independence of East Timor in 2002,” he added.
Closer to home, in 1995, Ken Saro-Wiwa, the Nigerian author and environmental activist, was about to be hanged along with other Ogoni activists for the non-violent campaign he had waged against environmental degradation by the petroleum giant Shell, and against [former de facto president of Nigeria] General Sani Abacha’s military government.
Pahad recalled: “Mbeki and myself talked to Abacha and the real powers and kept trying to convince Abacha to create conditions for democracy.
“Mbeki was an ANC representative in Nigeria in the old days and had a wide spectrum of contacts.”
When Mandela’s bid to stop Abacha from carrying out the executions was thwarted, the president’s response was dramatic.
“Mandela went for the big kill, and was unsuccessful. In his anger – he does get angry – he called for sanctions and none of the big powers supported us, the Commonwealth would not support us,” said Pahad.
So what are the lessons we have learned?
“Even if one has a lot of pressure on one to act and assist, one is limited by what the objective is and by our own limitations. If we were in laboratories, we would understand that. We had to learn by doing. We were new,” he said.
This idea of the newness of the liberation movement as it made the transition to government, and the idea that historians may make sense of events in hindsight, is a theme that ran throughout our conversation.
But Pahad appeared to have come to terms with the process that led to the new ANC-led government “abandoning its expressed conviction that it would deal only with countries with impeccable human rights records”.
The ANC’s Department of International Affairs was a powerful structure, its members had grown up with international struggles and were hostile to cold war politics.
Its politics were tested within months of its arrival into a new world.
By 1994, the Berlin War had fallen, the Soviet Union and socialism had collapsed. The anti-imperialism of Pahad’s generation gave way to a new world reality – essentially the cold rigour of realpolitik, driven by the pursuit of self-interest and material gain.
“In our earlier documents, we said consistently that human rights were the basis of our foreign policy, but very quickly we tried to explain that you can’t force-feed foreign policy through bilateral structures and try to promote foreign policy through good governance,” he said.
Also, the ANC had not elaborated fully on its human rights policy – possibly due to inexperience in government, according to Pahad. “We were one of the first to establish a diplomatic mission in Ramallah. Palestine was considered a pariah state at the time.”
Among South Africa’s other perceived “dodgy” friends, one of the biggest trouble-spinners was Cuba.
“Our consistent opposition to sanctions against Cuba through the UN, or any other multilateral institution, has brought us the most criticism.
“Even during the Clinton administration, where our relations were very good, Cuba tended to be a bone of contention,” said Pahad.
Other questions remain: about Mbeki’s non-relationship with Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, and the failure of quiet diplomacy to shift Robert Mugabe’s intractable position in Zimbabwe – questions that time and protocol do not allow answers for in this interview.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Maureen Isaacson
“Sunday Independent”, March 2010
