An operation code-named Skrik vir Niks was a lost opportunity which could have saved the country four years of bloodshed, political unrest and economic damage, reports Marion Edmunds
A SECRET document which throws new light on the origins of the reform process and undermines the reputations of key reformists in the National Party has been uncovered.
As National Party secretary general Roelf Meyer concluded the final round of constitutional negotiations with the African National Congress this week, and Dr Neil Barnard accepted the position of director general of the Western Cape, their past returned to haunt them.
It is alleged that Roelf Meyer, then deputy minister of law and order, and Niel Barnard, then chief of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), stifled the proposals – known as the Skrik vir Niks project because it was so daring – to escape the wrath of P W Botha. According to an insider on the project, Barnard and Meyer engineered the sidelining of key civil servants involved in the project by taking away their security clearances, allowing Meyer to build his own political empire in the constitutional development department with Barnard eventually becoming his director general.
Stifling Skrik vir Niks is estimated to have delayed South Africa’s transition to democracy by up to five years.
Meyer, who left the constitutional ministry this year after successfully negotiating the transition with the ANC, this week denied he had played any part in sidelining former constitutional development chief director Professor Fanie Cloete, and former director of constitutional planning, “Kobus” Jordaan, saying there was absolutely no connection between the withdrawal of their security clearances and operation Skrik vir Niks.
“The two things were totally remote … if this document was the reason, why were the rest of the team left untouched?” he asked. He blamed Jordaan, now a Democratic Party MP, for keeping the story of his sidelining alive in the media over the last decade.
Meyer said initially his memory of the radical document which was buried almost as soon as it was signed by the 40 senior civil servants, was vague but said he might have seen it.
“It should have met with our approval, certainly mine, but perhaps it was put aside because this document was probably ahead of its time and (when it) was developed, talks had already started secretly with Nelson Mandela through Kobie Coetzee.”
Meyer later said he had confirmed this was so.
This contrasts with a number of reports that Botha was outraged at the proposals and that those who drafted it knew they were waving red rags at the “groot krokodil” by sending it to Cabinet.
The chairman of the Skrik vir Niks team, Professor “Jool” van Tonder, said this week: “There were long discussions over the document but in the end it was signed by every member of the committee … because I am a team player and if they give one a hiding, they give all a hiding. It was a consensus document …
“Chris Heunis, constitutional minister at the time, warned us that PW would not like it, but he said he would not stop us sending it through … We sent it through and spoke about it to one or two politicians such as Barend du Plessis who supported it and then we never heard anything about it again.”
Van Tonder said he had presumed it had been dropped because it was a time when “PW was putting a stop to everything”. A number of people involved in strategic thinking in the department at the time suspected that Cloete and Jordaan’s key role in drafting the document led to them being pushed out.
What has also emerged was that Cloete and Jordaan were pawns in a larger political fight between Heunis, constitutional development minister at the time, and a less liberal wing of the Cabinet led by then justice minister Kobie Coetzee and FW de Klerk, who had close ties with Meyer and Barnard, and who were both jostling behind the scenes to succeed PW Botha.
Heunis was excluded from the Mandela talks, and Meyer confirmed this week he may not have known about them, such was their secrecy.
This was a snub for a constitutional minister who had the further indignity of losing two of his best men because they were deemed a threat to the state.
“Heunis nearly wept when he heard about Cloete and Jordaan,” said a source,”but the orders came from the president’s office and nobody knew why it had happened.”
Heunis has refused to comment.
Another insider said this week: “Fingers pointed in the direction of Roelf. For him career advancement was crucial.” However, nobody the Mail & Guardian has spoken to has been able to confirm on the record the allegation that Meyer, with the help of Barnard, was behind the scuttling of the document which put the proposals on ice until 1990.
Fanie Cloete, now a professor at Stellenbosch University and a key adviser on the transformation of the current public service, said: “I had no knowledge of Roelf taking the initiative. The information at my disposal at the time indicated that the initiative was probably taken by PW Botha directly via the National Intelligence Service and the security police.”
Cloete said it had been a harrowing time in his life as he and his wife had been under surveillance. He said he still did not know what he could possibly have done to have led to such radical action being taken against him.
A source close to Meyer said Heunis had the right ideas but was a difficult personality and it would have been disastrous for the government to have had him leading constitutional negotiations with the ANC.
So the battle raged on in Cabinet and in the corridors of power, and when Heunis did resign in 1989, apparently in disgust with his colleagues, he paved the way for FW de Klerk to take over from PW Botha and to spearhead the negotiations himself, with Meyer, as his frontman and Heunis’ successor, to provide the discreet face of reconciliation and NP compromise. A role that eventually earned him powerful enemies in the Afrikaner establishment.
And with Heunis’s star on the wane and eventually out of the picture, a number of key jobs in constitutional development were given to NIS operatives Gustav von Bratt, Johan Spaarwater and Riaan Botha, with Barnard eventually becoming director general in 1992. Barnard was forced out of the department this year by the current constitutional minister, Valli Moosa, in a move seen by members of the department as ” liberating”.
“This department no longer has any secret functions,” said Moosa. “All its functions have been subjected to scrutiny and we are completely transparent.”
“You must remember that we are all people of our time,” said Meyer. “Perhaps in the year 2000 people will look back and criticise our mistakes and, for example, suggest that we were too soft on the ANC in the constitutional negotiations …” Meyer said he sympathised with Heunis now, because just as Heunis’s proposals had earned him the wrath of the party in the late 1980s, so Meyer’s position and negotiating stance had made him unpopular among his colleagues during the 1990s.