For over 15 years, Shridath (Sonny) Ramphal served as head of the Commonwealth Secretariat, in which time he helped guide Zimbabwe along the difficult path to independence, preventing the association from being derailed along the way. As Secretary-General, he oversaw the operations of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) and its mission to South Africa, providing it with the space and the support needed to successfully conclude its sensitive assignment.
Global: How difficult was it to reach an agreement on the Commonwealth Accord on South Africa, which called for establishment of an Eminent Persons Group?
Sir Shridath Ramphal: It wasn’t easy because it wasn’t orchestrated, it wasn’t prenegotiated.
We needed a catalyst to break a rather sterile debate on sanctions with Mrs Thatcher holding out against the whole Commonwealth. Fortunately, the Commonwealth Trade Union Council, to which Bob Hawke [Prime Minister] in Australia was very close, had come up with the idea of linking sanctions to dialogue. Now, dialogue with South Africa was the very antithesis of the Commonwealth’s basic strategy of isolation, but this was something new and seemed to offer the possibility of a way forward.
Bob Hawke became its advocate in Nassau and had the whole meeting with him.
The basic formulation of the EPG emerged as a possible basis for getting Mrs Thatcher to come on board in relation to both sanctions and a united Commonwealth policy.
To what extent was Margaret Thatcher instrumental in persuading the South African President, P.W. Botha, to accept the Commonwealth team?
Bear in mind that Mrs Thatcher herself was looking for a way out – she was not enjoying the stalemate or being alone on South Africa. So, when she went along with the idea of dialogue through an EPG she really imposed on herself an obligation to bring Botha on board, because if the mission had foundered on the basis that South Africa had scuttled it, that would have been bad for Mrs Thatcher. So she felt an obligation to get him to cooperate. He was very, very unwilling and the correspondence between them shows that to get him on board she pandered to him. In the end, he agreed to receive the EPG and cooperate and work with it. So we must give her credit for doing that but what her motives were is a different matter.
As you have said, with the EPG mission, the Commonwealth had changed from a policy of isolation towards negotiation with South Africa. How was the EPG viewed by black South Africans? Was it supported by the African National Congress (ANC) and the trade unions?
Well, initially there was scepticism on the part of the ANC, the UDF [United Democratic Front] and the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Britain. But the Commonwealth had, by then, built up – and I like to think that I personally had built up – enough credibility with all of these elements for them to give us the benefit of the doubt. They said: “We’re unhappy about this, we’re not sure it is going to work but if you think it is the right way forward we’ll go along with you, but be careful, don’t stumble, don’t fail.”
Were you worried that the EPG would fail, that it would stumble?
I thought that there was a very real possibility that the EPG would be aborted by South Africa, not that it would fail in its basic mission but that South Africans would feel that it was so near to succeeding that they would kill it. And that, of course, is exactly what they did, and in doing so they made it succeed.
What was the EPG’s remit? Can you tell us about the ‘Negotiating Concept’ that the Group developed?
The remit was to examine the situation in South Africa, to determine the way forward, and within that to look at the possibilities of dialogue, of the dismantling of apartheid and of sanctions. The members took that all on board and out of it they forged what they called a ‘Negotiating Concept’: five elements which should form the basis around which negotiations could begin. They included the dismantling of apartheid, the release of Nelson Mandela and the other political prisoners, the unbanning of the ANC, and the suspension of violence on all sides. Now, these were tough criteria to meet but it was the only way that there could be an end to apartheid in South Africa.
During the group’s visit to South Africa, who was it given access to and under what circumstances? It had 21 meetings with the government.
It met Nelson Mandela three times within Pollsmoor Prison. It had meetings with all the political parties and all the political activists. It went wherever it wanted to go. It even went on whites-only beaches – black and white members of the EPG together to make their point. So it had a pretty clear run of the scene, which is what made the report so authentic – the EPG could speak to the world about the realities of apartheid in South Africa.
The meetings with Nelson Mandela, were they overseen by the government?
They were all held within the precincts of the prison, in the drawing room of the warder’s house, so it was a reasonably civilised environment. He [Mandela] made an enormous impression on them. They had only to talk with him to realise that here was the future of South Africa locked away. At all the meetings there was a South African government presence – South Africa didn’t take that chance – but nor did Mandela seem to be inhibited by their presence. He spoke freely and honestly, he didn’t try to negotiate. He was conscious that the ANC was in charge – not he, Mandela in prison.
Following the South African Defence Force attacks on Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia on 19 May, it was decided to withdraw the EPG. Was the timing of the raid connected to the group’s mission?
Expectations were rising in South Africa that the EPG was making progress. It had developed the confidence by then of the ANC and the UDF, and I think that the South African government was beginning to get nervous that this thing was getting out of hand – success was looming. On the day following the raid, they [the EPG’s members] were due to have a critical meeting with the Cabinet Constitutional Committee. The Group reacted – I think correctly – by interpreting the bombing raids as a message from the South African government that they wanted no more to do with this. So they had to take a decision: Did they go on with the meeting as if nothing had happened? Did they go on with the meeting while making a protest? Or did they end it? And end it they did, rightly so because the whole world saw that with success a possibility South Africa had scuttled the process.
Were you pleased with the report?
I was extremely pleased. I felt that it was, and everybody whose opinion I value regarded it as, a historic document which changed the course of the debate in South Africa and on South Africa, and which made international sanctions possible. It is the internationalisation of the South Africa question that I think the EPG contributed heavily to.
What do you think were the lasting effects of the mission?
It ended the opposition to sanctions, even on the part of Mrs Thatcher – it was then only a question of which sanctions. It stirred the international community: it influenced the US Congress and countries all over the world – the Nordic countries came on board within weeks and ultimately even the EEC [European Economic Community], which had dragged its feet for so long, came on board. South Africa then faced the force of international action: they began to feel the effects of sanctions on the rand; body bags were coming from the fight that was taking place in Angola; and they fell under the weight that had been mobilised initially, and essentially, by the EPG.
