It was a very simple query put to me by the Firm in 1992. Do you by any chance know anyone high in the South African government? And the answer was yes. Because of years patrolling southern Africa I had a passing acquaintanceship with Pretoria’s foreign minister, Roelof “Pik” Botha, even though by then I had not seen him for several years.
If the profession of foreign correspondent made very good cover for a bit of “enhanced tourism” on behalf of the Firm, an established author researching his next novel was even better. It enabled me to go just about anywhere, ask to meet just about anyone and pose just about any question. And all to be explained as research for a novel yet to be written.
Back in the Seventies the target had been the Rhodesia of Ian Smith and I made several visits to Salisbury, now renamed Harare. Once again my amiable but witless Bertie Wooster pose paid off. The men at the top were white supremacists, which is to say racial bigots. The bigot cannot resist an earnest inquirer who, basically sympathetic and seemingly right-wing, asks that the complexities of the situation be explained to him. I do not think any of them suspected as I listened, nodded and smiled that my views were the reverse of theirs.
In the Eighties, with Rhodesia now Zimbabwe, the target was the South Africa of the National party, the originator and enforcer of apartheid, which was both brutal and tinged with insanity. In the course of this I met Pik Botha, pictured, the only man among them that I liked. I suspected that, despite his position, he was a moderating influence on successive presidents and probably privately despised the extremists around him.
By 1992 it was clear to anyone with eyes that the rule of the National party was finally moving to its close. There would soon have to be elections and they would have to be one-man-one-vote, which the African National Congress under its recently released and newly elevated chief, Nelson Mandela, would win. The white president, the last, was FW de Klerk and Pik Botha was his firm ally and partner in reform.
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Nevertheless, there was something “our political masters”, as the Friends put it, urgently wanted to know and the “received wisdom” (as they also put it) was that an inquiry via our embassy in Pretoria was not the right channel. Too formal, too undeniable. What was needed was a quiet inquiry in a very private situation.
It was summer in Europe, winter in South Africa, and both parliaments were in recess. Pik Botha had two passions: game fishing and big-game hunting. He would be vacationing for a week at a game lodge in the Kalahari desert.
Of course there had to be a cover story. My two sons would come with me. Over the years I had tried to introduce them to as wide a variety of adventurous holidays as possible.
Bookings were made for me and the boys and we flew to Johannesburg, thence to Krugersdorp, and thence by light aircraft to a dusty strip in the grounds of the shooting lodge.
It was a very convivial week and Pik Botha was affable when we met again. He was eager to bag himself an eland and spent days tracking them.
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My opportunity came on the last day but one. A very small party would camp overnight in the wilderness. There was Pik Botha and his minder from Pretoria; the two sons of the owner of the ranch; my two lads and me. Plus two game wardens and several porters.
After a barbecue, or braai, sleeping bags were unrolled and we settled down to sleep. The atmosphere was relaxed. We were all round the dying fire with the four sleeping boys between the foreign minister and me. So I asked quietly: “Pik, when the ANC takes over, what are you going to do with the six atom bombs?”
South Africa had long had atomic bombs. Everyone knew, despite strict secrecy. London also knew there were six and they could be carried by South Africa’s British-built Buccaneer bombers. The problem was that the ANC had an ultra-hardline wing including several devoted pro-Moscow communists. It only needed Nelson Mandela to be toppled by an internal coup, as so many African leaders had already been, and . . .
My question hung in the air for a few seconds, then there was a low chuckle from across the embers and a reply in the Afrikaans-inflected voice. “Freddie, you can go back home and tell your people we are going to destroy the lot.”
So much for an elaborate cover story. The old buzzard knew exactly what I was, who I was asking for and what they wanted to hear. I tried to share the joke.
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Before the de Klerk government handed over power, they destroyed all six. Three of the Buccaneers still fly out of Cape Town, but only for tourist rides.