What is one to make of the government’s offer of a state funeral for PW Botha — and the flying of government flags at half-mast — when every ANC activist would cheerfully have strangled the man in his political heyday? Respect for the dead is taken to almost superstitious lengths in South Africa, and this may partly explain why we persist in heaping praise and honour on villains like Botha and Kaiser Matanzima. But there is also a confused notion that such double-speak fosters national reconciliation — Botha was once the leader of South Africa’s whites, the argument apparently goes; even if he was a monster, it would be impolitic to say so.
It is important to place on record the kind of man and leader PW Botha really was. He was not “the great demolisher of apartheid”, as one newsÂpaper commentator described him. Under mounting international pressure and internal dissent he did dismantle many discriminatory laws. But apartheid was never about segregation — it was about white minority power. The real issue was the conquest of political freedom and the vote. And on this, Botha was absolutely immovable.
During his nine-year presidential tenure the ANC remained banned and draconian clamps on any form of support for it intensified. The homeland system was clearly part of Botha’s long-term plan for South Africa, which envisaged ongoing white political stewardship, with coloureds, Indians, and perhaps ultimately urban Africans, as junior partners. And to stave off majority rule he hugely expanded the size, power and resourcing of the state security apparatus. During the emergencies of the late 1980s, with the security forces given free rein, tens of thousands were detained, jailed, tortured, maimed and killed. Dozens of organisations were banned; newspapers were silenced by fiat. Death squads plied their grisly trade here and abroad. Huge sums of public money were secretly ploughed into propaganda, “contra-mobilisation” and support for “moderate blacks”. The economies of neighbouring states seen as harbouring “terrorists” were systematically disrupted.
South Africa can count itself lucky that a “cerebral incident” and FW de Klerk’s party coup arrested this murderous rampage. With Botha at the helm, the country would have slid inexorably towards a full-blown South American-style military dictatorship and, almost certainly, a racial holocaust.
What was it all for? After all the misery, waste and broken lives the ANC was unbanned and now rules South Africa. President Thabo Mbeki was wrong to say, in his message of condolence, that Botha understood “in his own way” that resistance to change was futile. One of the worst features of this arrogant and truculent man was his utter lack of contrition for the pointless suffering he caused so many innocent people. He could have tried to make his peace with them; he could have helped the truth commission heal the wounds he inflicted. Instead, he withdrew into a haughty sulk at his George home, on the state Âpension the ANC government continued to pay him.
Reconciliation does not mean placating people like Botha or drawing a discreet veil over what they were. There are many other white Afrikaners, men and women like Bram Fischer, Beyers Naudé and Antjie Krog, to hold up as appropriate role models. A united South Africa will only emerge when our atrocious history is unflinchingly confronted, so that it becomes a history we all own.
Burn baby, burn
Virgin Airlines’s Richard Branson met airline owners in Britain this week to find ways of restricting travel because cheap flights are significantly fuelling global warming. Back home, SAA was launching Mango, a low-priced airline.
This week the UK government released a year-long study by an eminent economist which warns of the catastrophic costs of not trying to combat climate change. The message is clear: spend to fix the problem now or inherit economic consequences at least as dire as those of the Great Depression.
This turns the Bush argument, that the cost of complying with the Kyoto Protocol is too high, on its head. Many in the US believe we are already counting the cost of climate change, shown by the frequency and severity of hurricanes. In South Africa, insurers are settling claims arising from abnormal floods.
The World Wildlife Fund noted this week that South Africa makes a significant contribution to global warming. We emit almost as much carbon dioxide as Britain, which has an economy four times as large. Per capita we emit nearly three times that of China and nine times that of India.
Our government, to its credit, is putting new energy into planning a greener future. Where previously energy efficiency was Eskom’s responsibility, separate agencies have been set up under the Central Energy Fund to promote energy efficiency, including the use of renewables. The problem is that the R600-million earmarked for this purpose remains under Eskom’s control.
The treasury has produced a commendable report that seeks to align environmental and fiscal policy, but Trevor Manuel’s latest three-year planning provides no evidence that this is being implemented. Alec Erwin makes commitments to a nuclear future, with little or no transparency on costs. Consumers pay R600-million to promote energy conservation, but Eskom refuses to hand over the funds to the Central Energy Fund — despite a ministerial directive.
But there is plenty to spend — witness the pebble bed modular reactor, which has already received R3-billion in state funding and will get another R6-billion over the next three years towards a R16-billion development facility.
The jury is out on the mini-nukes; we should plough more into renewable energy.