Acting State President FW de Klerk this week suggested that a front-page report in the Weekly Mail – that ”little newspaper” – had played an important part in the dramatic events that led to the resignation of PW Botha. De Klerk lashed out at the report, which said Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda would use his forthcoming meeting with the new National Party leader to discuss an African National Congress peace plan for South Africa.
In an address to an NP rally in Houghton on Wednesday night De Klerk said: ”Inferences were made as a result of reports in … a little paper called the Weekly Mail that the real purpose of discussions, should I meet with President Kaunda, would have been that he would transfer messages and documents from the ANC – that he would ad as an intermediary.” The acting state president then read extracts from a letter written by Kaunda to Botha at the height of Monday’s crisis. In the letter the Zambian leader said he had merely wanted to ”get to know” De Klerk, and that he had no specific strategy in mind when asking for the meeting.
But a series of events over the past few days confirm the accuracy of the Weekly Mail report. These include:
- A statement by Kaunda to United States congressmen in Lusaka on Tuesday – after the letter had been delivered – that he would use the meeting to find out what De Klerk stood for and would indeed report back to the ANC.
- On Wednesday morning Kaunda told a press conference at his State House that, after his meeting with De Klerk, he would report back to the OAU and the ANC ”so that they may decide on the next course of action on the apartheid issue”.
- Sources close to the ANC this week reported that while it had never been suggested that Kaunda had a ”mandate to negotiate” on behalf of the organisation, he was certainly expected to use the occasion to discuss the exiled movement’s proposal for a Namibia-style settlement.
- At the meeting of Frontline states leaders on Thursday last week – where the plan was unveiled-ANC delegates said they were prepared to send a representative to the Kaunda/De Klerk meeting.
- The ANC blueprint, which calls for an interim government to prepare’ for the election of a constituent assembly that will devise a new constitution for South Africa, is set to be endorsed at a meeting of the Organisation for African Unity on August 21 – only days before Kaunda meets De Klerk. This makes it almost unthinkable that it would not be raised as a topic of discussion between the two leaders.
In his letter to Botha, the Zambian leader said: ”Mr President, I plead that you have no anxiety at all about Mr de Klerk meeting me at this time. He will meet me as president of Zambia and not as the representative of any other country or organisation.” Kaunda’s attempt to cool Botha’s anger over news that the meeting was likely to galvanise ”talks about talks” with the ANC must therefore have been an effort to salvage the Livingstone encounter. Observers believe Kaunda is determined to broke an agreement between Pretoria and the ANC.
At his press conference on Wednesday, Kaunda warned that unless a solution to South Africa’s problems would ”explode” within the next two years. ”De Klerk says that he will not meet the ANC until they renounce and the ANC says they will not talk until apartheid falls.” It is this logjam that Kaunda clearly hopes could begin to be broken at Livingstone. Government sources yesterday told reporters Kaunda’s public undertaking to report back to the ANC after his meeting with De Klerk was not an embarrassment for the government. They said they were relying on Kaunda’s ”statesmanship to stick to the spirit of the letter”, but acknowledged they would have to ”take another look”.
Botha and De Klerk were not able to respond to requests for more details on precisely how the Weekly Mail report had added to the former state president’s pique over the Livingstone meeting. However, the following sequence of events is likely to have occurred prior to Botha’s withdrawal.
- On Thursday afternoon last week news agencies reported Kaunda’s announcement that De Klerk had agreed to meet him on August 28. Botha reacted negatively, and began to phone cabinet ministers.
- On Friday morning the Weekly Mail report linked the meeting with the just-revealed ANC peace plan. It is possible that Botha’s aides briefed him on the report even before the paper reached Cape Town.
- At about 9.30am on Friday, Botha sent a statement to the South African Press Association (Sapa) which revealed a significant hardening in his attitude. ”I am not aware of the discussions on 28 August as announced by Dr Kaunda,” he said, adding that he disapproved of the talks.
- On Friday and Saturday, meetings between De Klerk and all available cabinet ministers were held in Pretoria to deal with the escalating crisis. A ”common approach to the problem” was agreed.
- On Monday morning the cabinet met with Botha in Cape Town and, to a man, they told him he had to back down or bow out. That evening Botha announced his resignation on SABCTV.
Asked for clarification of De Klerk’s claims about the Weekly Mail‘s role in the unfolding drama, the acting state president’s media liaison officer, Caspar Venter, said pressing engagements had prevented De Klerk from responding. However Venter said it was common procedure for ministerial aides to go through all newspapers and bring urgent items to the attention of the ministers concerned.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
