A LETTER written by one of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s lawyers to Nelson Mandela says it all: “Were quiet diplomacy pursued in South Africa … I doubt you would be alive today.” Our humiliation at Friday’s executions in Nigeria is complete.
The question facing South Africa now is how to proceed. We have snubbed the Nigerian national soccer team and there is pressure to expel Miss Nigeria from the Miss World contest. Perhaps there is a place for such measures — symbolic snubs were, after all, telling weapons in the anti-apartheid struggle — but at the moment they look like nothing more than cheap gestures. Even sanctions, if they come, will be more of a burden to other nations. For us there must be a quick atonement and a stand taken on pride. Nzo must go.
The catalogue of blunders by our government — notably, but not only by Foreign Affairs — is detailed elsewhere in this newspaper. We allowed ourselves to be seen pandering to a dictatorship. We failed to appreciate the immediacy of the threat to Saro-Wiwa and his comrades. We ignored the cogent advice and desperate appeals of Nigerians of the stature of the Nobel laureate, Wole Soyinka.
And there are questions which need to be formally put to government, most obviously by a critical Parliament. Who was responsible for policy-making — Alfred Nzo as Foreign Minister, or Thabo Mbeki, or President Mandela himself ? What intelligence did they rely on? What part (if any) was played by the South African Secret Service? Our High Commission in Lagos? Why did the High Commissioner and a succession of envoys fail to see the democratic opposition in their prison cells?
But for the meantime one thing is obvious: we blundered. And someone has to be held responsible. Nzo must go.
The concept of ministerial responsibility is an old one, going back to Westminster in the 19th century. It holds an individual minister responsible for actions falling under his authority — ; whether or not the minister had personal knowledge or involvement in the decision-making process. Nowadays in the United Kingdom it is, admittedly, honoured more in the breach, but that is no matter to us — it remains a fundamental tenant of our system of government and one to which we, as a young and idealistic democracy, should hold firmly.
There was one striking example in recent times of a British cabinet member accepting ministerial responsibility: on the occasion of the Argentinian invasion of the Falklands when Lord Carrington immediately resigned as Foreign Secretary. It was a fine demonstration of the principle at work on a foreign policy issue. Carrington was at the time one of the most highly-regarded politicians in Britain.
His personal responsibility for the Falklands invasion was not established. But he went. Britain had been humiliated; Britain was angry and there was no better way for Britain to signal to the Argentinians and the world its deadly sense of purpose than to accept the sacrifice of its minister. The Argentinians ignored the signal. And the warships sailed.
The same signal now needs to be sent by us to the Nigerians. We are humiliated; we are angry. We will not be sending warships, but be assured that we have an equally determined sense of purpose.
As with Carrington, Nzo may not be personally to blame for the Nigerian debacle. There are grounds for thinking that his position was in fact usurped by others who may carry a greater burden of culpability. But those are issues which we trust will be investigated by the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs. As with Carrington, it is the principle which needs be acted upon now.
There are some — perhaps many — cynics who will snort at the idea of an ANC-led government sacking or accepting the resignation of Nzo. They might say that the ministry was given to him in the first place not for his likely competence, but as a reward for loyalty during the grinding years of exile and there is little chance of their depriving him of it no matter how high the principle at stake.
If that proves to be the case then not only our humiliation, but our betrayal will be complete of the men who last week died on the gallows at Port Harcourt.