Nato’s attacks on Serbia have been condemned by our government as an attack on the authority of the United Nations and as such a breach of international law. If that is the case, we can only assume international law has developed since South Africa sent its troops into Lesotho without a UN mandate.
Our intention in offering that observation is not to make a cheap point, but to underline the dangers of relying on international law in determining abiding principle in conflicts such as Serbia.
International law is an endlessly elastic codex – as lawyers at foreign affairs discovered, somewhat to their relief, when they were required to come up with a post facto justification for the disastrous Lesotho adventure as authorised by a distant relative of Shaka.
In assessing the rights and wrongs of the latest Balkan conflict it would perhaps be better for South Africans to rely on their own rich history. It takes only a few imaginative adjustments to that history – exercises in “what if …” – to put ourselves roughly in the place of the Serbians and the Kosovo Albanians.
What if, for example, the international community – the UN having cited apartheid as a crime against humanity – had decided to bomb the government of PW Botha into submission, instead of relying on international pressure (sanctions and so forth)?
Say, for a moment, Pretoria had not had the nuclear “deterrent” which we now know existed at the time. Imagine we had had cruise missiles and the like hurtling over Table Bay, the Karoo and the Drakensberg, hammering into selected military targets – Voortrekkerhoogte, Silvermine and the Castle, for instance – to the entertainment of a worldwide television audience comfortably watching from their armchairs.
The oppressed population would probably have enthused when the first bombs fell, in much the same way as they cheered foreign rugby teams when the foreigners slammed the ball across the Springboks’ try-line.
But, when the early excitement died, after the odd stealth bomber had been shot down and it became apparent that nothing more was to follow the missiles – by way of a land invasion – PW’s forces would, if anything, have been cock-a-hoop at surviving the worst in the way of high-tech weapons that the world’s superpower and its allies could throw at them. The security services would no doubt have celebrated their survival by cracking down ruthlessly on the townships, using as an excuse the rioting and the sporadic guerrilla operations which would have flared up.
The exultation among the oppressed majority at seeing the international community come to their aid would have quickly turned into resentment. “Why have you made life tougher for us?” would go the cry. “Why did you start if you were not going to finish?”
Of course we know the international community were not prepared to use force against PW & Co. And if they had gone as far as trying to bomb him and his followers into a civilised standard of behaviour, it is highly unlikely they would have “gone all the way”.
But that would have been in the context of apartheid as it was understood during the PW Botha era. Yes, apartheid was rightly judged a crime against humanity, but it fell short of genocide. The majority was suffering, but there was no organised attempt to exterminate them. There was time, it seemed to the outside world, to reform South Africa by economic and diplomatic pressure.
But what if there had been a programme of genocide. Say the attempts in such as the Roodeplaats laboratory, to develop bacteria which would selectively attack South Africans with dark pigmentation, had made progress and this had been known to the international community?
What if a Wouter Basson figure had been promoted – after successes with certain experiments on Swapo guerrillas – to head a “final solution” to South Africa’s race problem. Would the international community have committed ground forces?
There would certainly have been a strong hope among most South Africans that they would do so.
Such exercises in “what if …” would probably lead us to a foreign policy position with regard to the current European crisis by which we would give support for a military attack on Serbia once the charge of genocide is proven. But it would have to be subject to a commitment by Nato allies that they would all contribute to a land invasion if – as was likely – a bombing onslaught was insufficient to force the surrender of government troops.
Crucial to that position would be the demand that the decision to attack – and readiness to resort to a land invasion – be backed by informed domestic opinion in the democracies which make up the Nato alliance. In our view the charge of genocide in the Serbian context needs closer examination.
Without for a moment wishing to detract from the horrors which have been taking place, we would distinguish between “ethnic cleansing” and slaughter and the ultimate crime against humanity which is genocide. On the other counts Nato quite obviously fails the test. If they are unwilling to commit the ground troops, the members of the alliance clearly do not enjoy a democratic mandate back home to take the matter to its logical conclusion. As such they are worthy of condemnation for the resort to violence.