Gaye Davis
THE man in charge of compiling the document which will lay the basis for South Africa’s future foreign policy was in charge of the Department of Foreign Affairs’ “image- building” section at a time when sanctions were beginning to bite hard.
Dr Gerrit Olivier returned this month from his posting as South Africa’s ambassador to Russia to head, at the request of Foreign Affairs Director-General Rusty Evans, a team of three Foreign Affairs staffers charged with producing a “discussion document” from which a white paper on foreign policy will eventually
>From 1986 to 1991, when he was made ambassador, Olivier was attached to and later headed Foreign Affairs’ communication and planning division — responsible for selling South Africa abroad and in Africa after the Info Scandal in the late 1970s forced the government to abandon covert propaganda plans, and international pressure against the apartheid government mounted.
A former professor of political science at the University of Pretoria, he was first seconded to Foreign Affairs’ Africa section in 1983, where his duties included liaising with the South African Customs Union and Secosaf — a body created by the South African government in 1986 to regulate its relations with the
After a sabbatical at Harvard University’s Centre for International Affairs, Olivier returned to Foreign Affairs as a director in its communication and planning division. At the request of then-director-general Neil van Heerden, he became head of the section in
He said he was “instrumental” in closing down SA Digest which was “too government-centred and propagandistic” and was costing R13- million a year, launching instead SA Profile. He said he also “terminated distribution” of another foreign affairs publication, the infamous Panorama.
“I don’t want to be apologetic about anything. I can stand on any platform and answer questions if there is something dubious or a shadow hanging over me,” he said.
He said he was never a member of the Broederbond or the Rapportryers — a campus- based organisation which served as the secret society’s nursery. “I grew up on a farm and paid for my own education from Standard Six. I’m a member of the proletariat,” he said.
Nevertheless, his long service in the department has prompted questions in political and academic circles about his ability to breathe a new vision into South Africa’s foreign policy as a changed country in a changed world.
Concerns have also been raised about the openness of the process by which Foreign Affairs intends formulating the new policy. Said a foreign policy analyst: “It is not a very open process. By the time outside agencies get to comment, the department will already have set the framework and the parameters of the document. Foreign Affairs has to demonstrate it is open-minded and prepared to tinker with the basics.”
Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Aziz Pahad promised in June — after the department had come in for a barrage ofcriticism for failing to produce new policy reflecting South Africa’s new priorities — that a green paper would be published “soon”.
Olivier said this week the “discussion document” would be compiled from the proceedings of September’s heads of mission conference and other workshops the department had held. To be completed “before Christmas”, it would be first discussed “in-house” and a revised document would then be made available in February to foreign policy role-players and interest groups.
“This kind of paper cannot be written by a committee, but people must not get the impression we’ll be passing something down from the top like the Ten Commandments,” Olivier said. “The document won’t be cast in stone. We want this policy to be democratically approved and open and we will be talking to people while we work on it. It must be a legitimate document. We haven’t tried to be covert about anything. Every idea is welcome.”
ANC MP Raymond Suttner, chair of Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Portfolio Committee said: “We would like to be involved at an early stage to make inputs, rather than after it has been written. It would be more constructive to have discussions around an overall perspective for our foreign policy so that we don’t end up with a series of ad hoc positions as a
Professor Peter Vale of the Centre for Southern African Studies at the University of the Western Cape said: “The department itself has failed to understand the principles around which foreign policy should operate. If it is to decide these principles, then we must ask whether it is sufficient to have them set within the department.”