The sacrifice to end South African apartheid - for what?

I managed to secure passes to visit political detainees at Modderbee Prison (male) and The Fort (female). I was the only diplomat in South Africa visiting political prisoners: after a few visits a Swedish diplomat joined me.

Despite the best endeavours of the Apartheid Regime the focus and pressure from the rest of the world increased after the 1977 bannings and death of Biko.

The World Council of Churches (WCC), the World University Service (WUS) and a range of other anti-apartheid organisations increased their activities. In time sporting sanctions were imposed followed some years later by financial sanctions.

Through Dr Beyers Naude, a wonderful Afrikaner minister of religion, I was conscripted to take money, donated by the WCC and channeled through Beyers, to the dependants of political prisoners living in the Eastern Cape. Beyers was the head of the Christian Institute and together with the organisation he was banned on October 19, but this had very little influence on his activities.

I was in demand because I had diplomatic immunity and could move around the country without hindrance. I took information (letters), money and people around the country or across the border. I was of use to a number of people who were in difficulty.

Many, many people around the world and inside South Africa of different religions, cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds worked very hard, took risks and sometimes sustained a great deal of harm to bring about an end to apartheid.

In the light of this it is becoming increasingly difficult to find excuses for the South African President, Thabo Mbeki, as he prevaricates over intervention in Zimbabwe and implementing the universally accepted treatment of AIDS.

Mbeki left South Africa to study in the UK in 1962 at the age of 20. He stayed overseas for the next 30 years fulfilling a number of different roles for the ANC including as representative in a number of African countries. In 1977, at the time of Biko’s death, he was the ANC representative in Nigeria; an appointment which, among other things, required him to spend time on the diplomatic circuit.

The ANC was funded by benefactors overseas including the Soviet Union. Later when change appeared inevitable it was funded by multi-nationals including the Shell Company, mindful of the need to secure their future in South Africa.

Both Mbeki and the Black resistance movement in South Africa were recipients of assistance from a wide variety of sources. Without this assistance the ending of apartheid would have been longer and bloodier.

Having been the recipient of generous assistance it is difficult to understand why Mbeki, when in a position to alleviate the suffering of neighbouring people, does nothing. I would have thought his expressed desire to be the pre-eminent leader in Africa would demand it.

Against this crisis, all other words and pronouncements, such as the importance of African unity, amount to pompous posturing. When considered in conjunction with the cruel denial of the cause of AIDS and senseless methods of treatment, enshrined in South African health policy, Mbeki has no right to call himself a compassionate man, far less a leader.

To sack the Deputy Minister of Health, Ms Nozizwe Mandla-Routledge for doing her job and caring for the needs of the South African people, while at the same time protecting the corrupt Minister for Health Dr Tshabalala-Msimang and endorsing her quackery, provides a measure of Mbeki that indicates a weak and vacillating man prone more to bullying than bravery.

Steve Biko would be horrified to see his sacrifice and that of all those who died or were injured in the struggle against apartheid reduced to such a cruel legacy.