He made his own rain

Only 10 of the 19 ministers of PW Botha’s 1984 Cabinet now survive, after Piet Koornhof’s death.

Born in 1925 in Leeudoringstad, North West, Koornhof wanted to be a preacher and obtained a BA degree at Stellenbosch University with an eye to a theology qualification.

He was one of the Maties students who turned up to give Jan Smuts, then prime minister and leader of the United Party, a hard time when he addressed the university. But Smuts spoke of the suffering of the burgers of the two Boer Republics during the South African Anglo-Boer War and of the death of his own 16-month-old son, Koosie Smuts, in 1900 in Pretoria, while he was away fighting. He learned of Koosie’s death two months after it happened.

This made a deep impact on Koornhof and gave him an insight, which was to become the guiding principle of his political career: listen to your opponents, rein in your objections and soberly analyse their point of view.

Giving up his plans to enter the ministry, he won a Rhodes scholarship and obtained a PhD in social anthropology at Oxford University. His thesis, The Drift from the Reserves of the South African Bantu, ran counter to the National Party’s grand apartheid policy, but his intellectual ability impressed Hendrik Verwoerd.

His political rise was meteoric: from National Party organiser in 1956 he rose to general secretary of the Broederbond in 1962, MP in 1964, deputy minister of bantu administration in 1968, minister of cooperation and development in 1978 and head of the President’s Council in 1984.

On my recommendation he was appointed South Africa’s ambassador in the United States. After his return in 1991, he started a relationship with Marcelle Adams. I commend his wife, Lulu, who took him back and cared for and stood by him until his death. On his personal vagaries late in his life, I have nothing to say.

Koornhof and I started from the same political point of departure. We supported each other in efforts to reverse the country out of its apartheid blind alley.

He was given the undeserved nickname ‘Piet Promises” after he did his best to remove racial discrimination in sport with a plan for ‘multinational international sport” up to club level. He was frustrated by the ideological hardliners.

Koornhof wanted to do away with apartheid. If you publicly propose to initiate integration in sport and you are blocked, you have broken no promises — your efforts have been foiled.

I had the same experience: I still have a Conservative Party placard that warns: ‘Met Pik is jou toekoms pikswart [With Pik your future is pitch-black].”

In those days the Transvaal had 76 of South Africa’s 166 constituencies. Koornhof’s constituency, Primrose, was his pride and kingdom. Year after year it pulled in the largest financial contributions.

He perfected the art of persuading business leaders to put their hands deep in their pockets. The irony is that his fiercest verkrampte opponents brought in less than 10% of what he collected.

Koornhof was a big-hearted man — sharing, hospitable and jovial. He sometimes made me think of a river that overflows its banks in a time of drought. He made his own rain. He must be remembered for his efforts to free South Africa from apartheid.

I know that more than 350 000 black people were forcibly removed while he was minister of cooperation and development. He agreed with me that these removals did the country incalculable harm, both domestically and abroad. But he was caught up in legislation that his predecessors had initiated in Parliament.

He made repeated attempts to amend the laws, but resistance from the party’s verkrampte wing hobbled him. It was no easy task to overcome this. I know how long and hard we struggled to get the Immorality Act and pass laws overturned.

Fortunately, the hardliners finally left the party to fight under the banner of the Conservative Party. Only then could the work of scrapping apartheid begin in earnest.

Piet Koornhof, born August 2 1925; died November 12 2007