Life of diplomatic intrigue amid radical changes
Leo “Rusty” Evans, the director-general of SA’s foreign affairs department during the transition, has died of pancreatic cancer at his Pretoria home.
Evans, one of few bureaucrats who served in a senior position in both pre- and post-apartheid SA, was 74 years old.
He was long-serving foreign minister Pik Botha’s right-hand man, but was kept on after the 1994 general election, serving under Nelson Mandela’s foreign minister, Alfred Nzo.
He was an unlikely English speaker in a predominantly Afrikaans administration.
In an interview a month before he died, he told me of his interview for the job at foreign affairs by GP Jooste, an admirer of Hendrik Verwoerd and a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist.
“I was told: ‘If you don’t speak Afrikaans, there’s no place for you in foreign affairs.”
He was turned down for the job. “But a month later, I got a telegraph,” and soon he was working for the state.
He worked his way up the public service and was training young diplomats when Pik Botha was appointed minister of foreign affairs. “Pik said training’s finished. I resigned.”
He thought his career as a diplomat was over, but a week later, he got a call from Botha’s office. “He vaguely looked at me and said, ‘Go through those files on my desk’.”
Without a formal discussion about his new job, he became Botha’s confidant and would eventually be given a series of major assignments.
Although close to Botha, Evans sometimes questioned his judgment. Botha had met Kissinger to discuss the government’s planned invasion of Angola in 1975. “Kissinger was responsible for the Angolan invasion. He gave Pik to understand that if we went in, the Americans would not oppose it,” Evans said. But, he added, “discussion took place around whether Pik Botha had not been a little gung-ho in interpreting the American position.”
After taking its forces to the doorstep of Angola’s capital, Luanda, SA was forced to withdraw as it encountered a growing number of Cuban troops and as the international outcry over the invasion grew with the US refusing to back it.
SA continued to back Unita long after the rest of the world recognised the Angolan government. It provided military backing to Jonas Savimbi, the Unita leader, and Evans recalled flying in for at least “half-a-dozen” meetings with him in the southern Angolan bush.
He was posted to Washington, where he developed a relationship with Chester Crocker, the US special envoy who coined the concept of “constructive engagement”.
It was to be a steep learning curve. “When you get into a discussion with the Americans, the dice is loaded,” he told me.
Evans would be posted to London and would also be appointed head of the department’s Africa office.
He recalled the meeting between PW Botha and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher at her Chequers residence — seen by most as an astonishing moment of accommodation between the UK and the pariah apartheid state. Botha believed he had an ally in Thatcher, although the discussion was stilted.
“PW was not exactly the most entertaining socialite.
“Then Mrs Thatcher put her arm across the table and said: ‘Mr President, you must understand I don’t support sanctions but I can never support apartheid’.”
Botha had firmly been put in his place.
Despite global isolation of the Botha regime, Evans and Pik Botha built relationships with several African states. The high point was the conclusion of the Namibian settlement, which was negotiated in Cairo and Brazzaville.
The shuttling had its moments of danger, not least when Botha was almost a victim of the Lockerbie bombing. “Pik was supposed to be on that Pan Am flight. He was in Cape Town for his budget speech. “It ran late and so we had to change the booking at the very last moment.”
Evans recalls other lessthan-savoury negotiations that involved corrupt middlemen such as Tiny Rowland of mining company Lonhro.
Because of sanctions, South African Airways (SAA) flights to Europe had to fly “around the bulge” to avoid flying over African countries.
Negotiations took place country by country over a direct route over Africa.
“Tiny Rowland had very close relationship with [Kenyan president Daniel] Arap Moi.
“Tiny took me to Nairobi. He told Arap Moi straight that SAA wanted to fly to Nairobi and [the president] agreed.”
The airline company also landed the contract to service Kenyan Airways aircraft.
Attention now turned to Sudan, where Lonrho had sugar plantations. One evening, Rowland called Evans to say, “We’re going to Sudan tonight.”
“Tiny embraced [Sudanese president Omar] al-Bashir and introduced me. It became a regular negotiation. We negotiated an overfly agreement. There were so many African heads of state in his pocket.”
As it became plain that the apartheid project was unsustainable in the face of growing protest and international isolation, Evans and the foreign affairs team began to assert themselves within the government.
An opportunity arose when the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) visited SA to try to kickstart talks.
“That was an important initiative that should have come off,” said Evans.
Instead, the intervention was torpedoed by the military hawks, who under PW Botha’s direction orchestrated a raid on Botswana even as the EPG was meeting with all parties to plot a way forward.
“Pik — not for the first time — nearly resigned.”
The tension between the reformist and conservative factions in the National Party was mounting.
Eventually, the “verligtes” gained the upper hand and negotiations began with Nelson Mandela, then still in prison.
The reopening of the global diplomatic world to an SA in transition was to become the key preoccupation of the foreign affairs department.
Among the tasks was the reintegration of homeland “embassies” and “diplomatic staff” into a new single public service. Under apartheid, a series of absurd developments had occurred. Bophuthatswana had an embassy in the Transkei. Transkei had an embassy in Ciskei. Ciskei had an embassy in Venda. There were even homeland embassies in other pariah states such as Taiwan.
After 1994, Evans was tapped by Mandela to manage foreign affairs under his administration.
“I was in his office. Thabo [Mbeki] was there as well. Mandela said: ‘I want continuity. Rusty, we’d like you to continue through this period.’”
Mandela had apparently been impressed by the attitude taken by the foreign affairs staff when the new president moved into the Union Buildings.
“By the time FW’s [de Klerk’s] crowd moved out there was nothing much left. We’d been quite helpful in helping him settle in the West Wing.”
Evans and Mandela’s director-general, Jakes Gerwel, formed a close bond. “He took me 100% into his confidence.”
Together, he and Gerwel managed SA’s return to global credibility, accompanying Mandela on his many trips abroad and helping to establish the country’s reputation as a pre-eminent democracy in the developing world.
On a trip to Paris, Evans oversaw Mandela’s behind-thescenes meetings with former Mozambican first lady Graca Machel as their romance blossomed. I wrote the Sunday Times front-page lead, “Mandela’s Paris romance” based on an account of these secret encounters with a little help from Evans.
New president Mbeki would eventually replace Evans with Jackie Selebi.
The greater part of Evans’s career was spent trying to sell the apartheid regime to a sceptical world. At the end of it, there was some redemption. How would he sum it all up? “I had a fantastic career, notwithstanding that I had a career with a regime that should have been unacceptable to me.”
TINY ROWLANDS EMBRACED SUDAN’S OMAR AL-BASHIR. SO MANY AFRICAN HEADS OF STATE WERE IN HIS POCKET