Dr Piet Koornhof, the South African ambassador in Washington, recently phoned the African National Congress offices in New York to offer help with arrangements for the funeral of ANC leader Johnny Makatini. The ANC member who took the call, Solly Simelane, said Koornhof had offered his condolences and his government's assistance in allowing South Africans to travel to Lusaka for the funeral.
Koornhof, speaking from Washington last night, confirmed that he had phoned and spoken to Simelane, but said he bad not known until afterwards that it was the ANC office he had called. It was only an "humanitarian call" to help Makatini's parents to get passports, he said. He had phoned at the request of a "top American gentleman" who gave him the phone number but did not tell him whose it was. Asked if he had offered condolences, Koornhof said: "I can't recollect. If I did it was only on humanitarian grounds." And asked if he had offered general assistance with the funeral, he said: "Why would I? That isn't true … All I wanted to know was if the father and mother had applied for passports." He later phoned Pretoria and asked them to assist with passports for Makatini 's parents.
The ANC chief representative in New York, Tebego Mafole, said yesterday that the call came on Monday, December 5, two days after Makatini died of diabetes in Lusaka. Makatini had been based in New York for many years. "He (Koornhof) expressed his condolences and also offered to give any kind of assistance. Specifically, he asked for a list of people who wanted to attend the funeral so that he could assist with passports for them," Mafole said. "Our response was that we could not provide a list, but we did expect that a number of people -friends and family – would want to go to the funeral and we would hope the government would not interfere with them. "Dr Koornhof indicated that his government would give whatever assistance was possible," he said.
According to the ANC, as many as 90 people travelled to Lusaka for the occasion, which was conducted along the lines of a state funeral. The guests included well-known internal leaders, such as the Reverend Frank Chikane and the Reverend Beyers Naude, members of the Makatini family, old friends and a delegation of the Natal Organisation of Women. Combi-loads of South Africans, their vehicles bearing Natal number-plates, could be seen in Lusaka on the day of the funeral, December 18.
The conversation with Koornhof was confirmed by an official ANC representative in Lusaka. "Whether this had any effect on the number of people who came from home to the funeral, I don’t know. But a large delegation carne up," he said. The revelation of official contact between the Washington embassy and the ANC mission in New York is likely to have political repercussions, particularly because of the harsh threats the government has levelled at people who meet the ANC. There has been speculation about new legislation stopping individuals and delegations from being in contact with the outlawed organisation. And as Koornhof was speaking to the ANC, the authorities back home were going to extraordinary lengths to stop a memorial service tor Makatini in his home town, Durban. They published a special government gazette requiring police permission for any such service and then withheld that permission until the service had been cancelled.
Makatini was a senior member of the ANC old-guard. He was also one of the best-known because of his long-standing role as an international diplomat and his reputation as the person responsible for the ANC's success in gaining recognition at the United Nations. At the time of his death, aged 58, he was a member of the ANC's national executive committee and head of its international relations department Mafole said he was surprised at the call from Koornhof. "It's not every day that a representative of the South African government offers condolences to ANC members.
Over the years, we have had South African government forces crossing borders and attacking ANC personnel in neighbouring states; ANC members have been attacked, assassinated and threatened by forces related to the government. "So we were surprised they should offer condolences to us." He added that he knew of no previous contact between Makatini and Koornhof, nor of any phone calls be tween his office and the embassy. Ironically, the phone call was taken by Simelane because the ANC's chief representative was at the UN, where the General Assembly was voting overwhelmingly for new measures against Koornhof's government.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.