The Downing Street Years (90 page)

Then it was back to more irrationality as the Special Conference opened in London. My meetings with heads of government before the official opening filled me with gloom. Brian Mulroney urged me to have Britain ‘give a lead’ and seemed to want me to reveal my negotiating hand to him in advance: but this I had no intention of doing, having on many an occasion seen such ‘concessions’ pocketed and then immediately forgotten. Kenneth Kaunda was in a thoroughly self-righteous and unco-operative frame of mind when I dropped in to see him at his hotel. He predicted that if sanctions were not applied, South Africa would go up in flames. I wound up the meeting smartly and said that it would be better if we postponed our discussion. Later I told Rajiv Gandhi that I would be prepared to move ‘a little’ at the conference. He seemed rather more amenable than he had been at Nassau, as indeed he usually was in private.

In fact, the formal discussions were every bit as unpleasant as at Lyford Cay, though at least they were shorter. My refusal to go along with the sanctions they wanted was attacked by Messrs Kaunda, Mugabe, Mulroney and Hawke. I found no support. Their proposals went well beyond what had been proposed the previous year. At Nassau they had wanted to cut off air links with South Africa, to introduce a ban on investment, agricultural imports, the promotion of tourism and other measures. Now they were demanding not only that these sanctions go ahead, but a whole raft of additional measures: a ban on new bank loans, imports of uranium, coal, iron and steel and the withdrawal of consular facilities. Such a package sacrificed the living standards of South Africa’s black population to the posturing of South Africa’s critics and the interests of their domestic industries. I was simply not prepared to endorse it. Instead, I had a separate paragraph inserted into the communiqué detailing our own approach which noted our willingness to go along with a ban on South African coal, iron and steel imports, if the European Community decided on it, and to introduce straight away voluntary bans on new investment and the promotion of tourism in South Africa. In the event we in the Community decided against the sanctions on coal, to which the
Germans were particularly strongly opposed, though the other sanctions proposed at the Hague were introduced in September 1986.

Perhaps the most extraordinary feature of these discussions was that they seemed to be carried on without regard to what was happening in South Africa itself. P. W. Botha’s Government was unimaginative and inflexible and the nationwide state of emergency had been imposed. But, as I was informed by our excellent new ambassador, Robin Renwick, and by others who had dealings with the real rather than the bogus South Africa, fundamental changes were taking place. Black trade unions had been legalized, the Mixed Marriages Act had been repealed, influx controls had been abolished and the general policy (though not without exceptions) of forced removals of blacks had ended. So had job reservation for whites and the very unpopular pass laws. Still more important, there was a practical breakdown of apartheid at the work place, in hotels, in offices and in city centres. The repeal of the Separate Amenities Act had been proposed and seemed likely to be implemented. In all these ways ‘apartheid’, as the Left continued to describe it, was if not dead at least rapidly dying. Yet South Africa received no credit for this, only unthinking hostility.

I was less prepared than ever to go along with measures which would weaken the South African economy and thus slow down reform. So as the 1987 CHOGM at Vancouver approached I was still in no mood for compromise. In some respects the position was easier for me than it had been at Nassau and in London. Events in Fiji and in Sri Lanka were likely to occupy a good deal of attention at the conference. My line on sanctions was well known and the domestic pressure on me had decreased: I had made headway in winning the sanctions argument at home during the London conference. But it would not all be plain sailing. It seemed to me that the Canadians, our hosts, wanted to be more African than the Africans — particularly since countries like Zimbabwe knew that they could not possibly afford to implement full-scale sanctions themselves and hoped that we would do it for them. Brian Mulroney was keen to gain agreement for setting up a committee of Commonwealth Foreign ministers to monitor events in South Africa, which seemed to me not just a waste of time but counterproductive — as I told Mr Mulroney at a meeting with him on the eve of the conference. I said that its only purpose would be to satisfy the ego of the Commonwealth heads of government and I would criticize it publicly and strongly.

I also had a talk with President Kaunda who was under some pressure to set his own country’s economic affairs in order to meet the requirements of the IMF. Our views were no more similar on South
Africa than they had been. At one point I said that I regretted that I had not yet been able to visit Africa, apart from my attendance at the Lusaka CHOGM in 1979. Mr Kaunda said that Africa was not at all my area, which I found intensely irritating. I retorted that he himself had charged me with the duty of bringing Rhodesia to full independence as Zimbabwe at the Lusaka Conference and that I had accomplished it. But his off-hand remark did confirm me in my intention of making a visit soon to black African countries.

In my speech to the conference I pointed out just how damaging sanctions and disinvestment were to those we were allegedly trying to help. I gave the example of an Australian firm which had just closed a fish-canning factory near Cape Town putting 120 non-whites out of jobs. I noted that a general ban on fruit and vegetable exports would destroy between 100,000 and 200,000 non-white jobs — and all those affected would have no social security benefits to fall back on. Nearer the knuckle, I said that I well understood why neighbouring countries had not imposed the whole range of sanctions. Eighty per cent of Zimbabwe’s external trade passed through South Africa. A million migrant workers earned their living there. Over half of Lesotho’s GNP came from their remittances. So I was more firmly convinced than ever that sanctions were not the answer. Of course, such arguments cut little ice with those determined on gestures.

As usual, the main decisions were deferred for the — this time mercifully quite brief — retreat at the Lake Okanagan resort up in the mountains. The discussions took place and meals were provided at a central hotel with individual chalets dotted around it. It was bitterly cold at Lake Okanagan. But the Africans, of course, felt it more than I did. They turned up at the central hotel with blankets over their shoulders. Rajiv Gandhi obviously considered that exercise was the best way to keep warm and always seemed to appear in a tracksuit having jogged between meetings.

The atmosphere at our discussions was not much warmer. I was not prepared to go along with the draft communiqué which they wanted. At a dinner given by Rajiv Gandhi back in Vancouver I was left to kick my heels for forty-five minutes on my own waiting for other heads of government to turn up. They had in fact been holding a press conference on South Africa to which I had not been invited and of whose existence I was unaware.

But we had given as good as we got. In reply to the sanctimonious criticism of our Canadian hosts, I had figures released which showed that Canada’s imports from South Africa had risen. It was a useful comment on the Commonwealth heads’ sincerity. Not just Mr Mulroney,
but almost everyone else it seemed, exploded with indignation at this intrusion of fact upon rhetoric. My suspicion that in this the political leaders were out of step with the people was confirmed when I received a rapturous reception from the crowds in Vancouver: one man kept on shouting ‘Hang in there girl, hang in there.’ I did.

Whatever Kenneth Kaunda thought of it, I was now determined to pay a visit to black Africa. It seemed absurd to allow the public arguments about South Africa to get in the way of that. I knew perfectly well from private discussions with African leaders that many of them wanted closer links with Britain. They also generally respect strength in leaders. No one gets very far in African politics without being tough. I also intended to use my visit for a purpose which was to become still more important during the rest of my premiership: I wanted to spread the message that a combination of limited government, financial orthodoxy and free enterprise would work for prosperity in underdeveloped countries as well as it did in the prosperous West. I chose Kenya and Nigeria for my first African political safari. In both cases this was with good reason.

Kenya was the most pro-western, most free enterprise of the important black African states. Nigeria was the most populous African state — one in four Africans is a Nigerian — and a country of huge potential, if only it could achieve sound public finances and public administration. Both President Moi of Kenya and General Babangida of Nigeria were pro-British, though Nigerian feeling towards us was more volatile and on the South African question extremely hostile. Britain was the largest foreign investor in both countries — and in the case of Kenya the largest aid donor too.

I arrived in Nairobi on the evening of Monday 4 January 1988, to be met by President Moi. He had a dignified, rather grave manner, with something of the tribal chief about him: we always got on well. But his human rights record was no better than that of many Commonwealth heads of government. Although we disagreed about South Africa, he was a moderate and one of the forces for common sense at CHOGMs.

Denis and I and our party stayed at the government guesthouse, which left something to be desired. Denis tried to run a bath but found that there was no water and it had to be brought up in dustbins from the cellar: we heated it up on gas rings in the kitchen. Then no sooner did we have hot water than the lights went out.

But whatever difficulties there were with the facilities, there was none with the welcome. President Moi, who loved nothing better than to get out of Nairobi into the countryside, accompanied me on a fascinating itinerary. Kenya, unlike some other African countries, has never lost sight of the importance of agriculture. Great efforts were clearly being put into improving it. I visited a Masai rural training centre and inspected their lugubrious cattle, toured a tea plantation, met a polygamous sugar farmer with twenty-three immaculately turned-out young children and then went on to what was described as a ‘Women’s Poultry Project’. This visit had been suggested by the British Overseas Development Administration (ODA) as a model small agricultural project. Unfortunately, the Kenyan Government, on learning that I was to go there, upgraded the whole project and moved the chickens into conditions of great luxury, which of course largely destroyed the point of the visit. Everywhere I went I was struck by the good-humoured reception I received. The bitternesses of the 1950s had clearly been forgotten. It was an encouraging start.

I then went on to make a fleeting visit to Nigeria. I arrived at Lagos on the morning of Thursday 7 January and had talks with General Babangida. He was a forceful, intelligent man, trying to put Nigeria’s economy on to a sounder footing and in due course, we hoped, to create the conditions for a restoration of democracy. We had helped Nigeria in its dealings with the IMF and this was appreciated. General Babangida seemed to be open to my suggestions about the need to curb Nigeria’s budget deficit, cut inflation and provide reassurances for foreign investors. We also saw eye to eye about the dangers of Soviet and Cuban involvement in Africa.

The next day I flew to the very north of the country to attend a Durbar as the guest of the Emir of Kano. It was a difficult landing because of the cloud of fine Sahara sand suspended in the air. Denis was sitting in the aeroplane cockpit and he told me afterwards that there had only been a relatively brief period of visibility before landing. This real danger was, however, entirely subordinated to one manufactured by the British press. On the way up to the Emir’s box, from where I was to view the horses and camels parading below, I lost contact with the rest of my staff who were jostled by an overenthusiastic crowd and then treated with some vigour by anxious security guards confused about their identity. Bernard Ingham received a none too gentle rifle butt in the stomach. Later in the day an anxious Nigel Wicks, my principal private secretary at No. 10, rang up to see whether we were still in one piece. In fact — unaware of the confusion — I had been enjoying myself hugely, holding on to a rather fabulous hat I
was wearing with the Nigerian national colours on it as horsemen charged in a cloud of dust up to where the Emir, Denis and I were seated. At the end I was presented with a horse myself as a gift; but, arguing that it would be happier with its own horse acquaintances than in a British stable, I prevailed on my hosts to keep it for me.

The success of this visit convinced me that I should make a more ambitious foray into Africa the following year and this was now arranged. I would go first to Morocco — which is essentially part of the Arab world — and then on to Zimbabwe, Malawi, possibly Namibia, and Nigeria once more.

I already had the greatest regard for King Hassan of Morocco, who was always underrated as a player in Middle Eastern politics. I had met him in London two years earlier when he was on a state visit. On this occasion our talk was mainly of the Arab-Israeli dispute and military co-operation between Britain and Morocco. As well as being enormously cultivated — he speaks half a dozen languages and can make an impromptu speech in any of them — the King has an icy nerve. When I heard from him about the measures he took to protect himself from further assassination attempts I understood that he, like me, understood what it meant to live as a terrorist target.

Then I flew to Lagos. This was just a stop-over visit and General Babangida came to the airport to have lunch with me. I was glad to learn that he was not just pressing ahead with, but actually toughening, the economic reform programme on which Nigeria had embarked. With our support, Nigeria now had the approval of the IMF and its main western creditors and had secured a rescheduling of debt to its public sector creditors. It is never an easy task to govern a country like Nigeria — it is a somewhat artificial creation divided between the Muslim North and the Christian and pagan South — let alone to do so under conditions of economic austerity.