Pik Botha delivered a lecture at Rhodes recently, calling on the world to pay much greater attention to climate change, and also to "give Zuma a chance".
Pik Botha delivered a lecture at Rhodes recently, calling on the world to pay much greater attention to climate change, and also to "give Zuma a chance".
The former South African foreign affairs minister and a cutting edge verligte of the old National Party, with his signature husky voice – recalling decades of chain smoking and enough whiskey to float Die Tafelberg – still managed to grasp the attention of a sceptical audience at a memorial lecture marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall held at Rhodes University last Sunday.
The lecture formed part of a two-day symposium on Cold War studies called “After the Wall: 20 years on. Scholarship and Society in Southern Africa”.
Botha traced a loose history of the Cold War and spoke at length about how it shaped his career from the early days as an ambassador to the United Nations until he ended up serving as the country’s foreign minister from 1977 to 1994.
He read from his prepared notes for most of the presentation, but left the script to recount an anecdote about his first encounter with US President Ronald Reagan during the time when the National Party government was banished from the international community.
In the early 80s, South Africa desperately needed nuclear fuel from France to run the recently built Koeberg power station. The previous US administration under President Jimmy Carter had put pressure on the French government to withhold the much needed fuel due to international sanctions opposing the apartheid government.
Botha said the purpose of his meeting with Reagan was to convince the leader of the western word “to lift pressure on France not to supply fuel for Koeberg”.
“If Koeberg had not come on stream it would have been the biggest white elephant,” he said. It is correct protocol, according to Botha, to have a preparatory meeting with the secretary of state about the issues that you intend raising with the president. The purpose of this meeting is to make sure that the president is fully up to speed with the matters under discussion.
However, Botha took a calculated risk in not mentioning his concerns about the nuclear fuel to secretary of state Alexander Haig because he could not count on him to allow him a sympathetic hearing. When Botha eventually broached the subject with Reagan, Haig immediately began protesting this breach of protocol. But it was too late as Botha had already won over the newly elected American president. Soon the pressure on Paris was removed and Koeberg received its nuclear fuel.
Botha easily held the attention of the audience for the better part of an hour. it was clear that his audience were keen to gain an insight into the psyche of a man who defended South Africa’s apartheid policies for most of his political career, yet now urges his compatriots to “give Zuma a chance”.
He reminded us that as far back as 1986, when President PW Botha ruled the country with an iron fist, he almost lost his job because he dared “state publicly that South Africa would get a black president in the future”. After his retirement from active party politics, Botha has spoken out against the lack of political will to take action against climate change. He said, “The world is now confronted by a far more lethal cold war. The abominable difference is that the leaders are indeed aware of the devastating consequences of climatic change, but they refuse to take the required action.”
He compared the impending climatic disaster with the devastation wreaked by the asteroid that caused mass extinction almost 65 million years ago. “Earth is faced with climatic change which might already have reached the point of no return in destroying all life on Earth,” he emphasised.
He explained that he has been urging intellectuals, leaders and people of influence to make their voices heard in the fight against global warming. He had written to former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, with a proposal to create a new international body similar to the UN Security Council; an Earth Rescue Council.
This council would have the responsibility and power to regulate all governments on issues that might affect the climate of our planet. Kissinger wrote back expressing his admiration for Botha’s idea but said that his being 85 years old he was not well placed to take an active role in the movement.
