Former president FW de Klerk’s now infamous opinion that he did not believe apartheid was a crime against humanity produced the anticipated tsunami of opprobrium.
De Klerk said that the term was ‘an agitprop project initiated by the Soviet Union’, and that it was ‘simplistic’ to portray South Africa’s painful history in a ‘black/white, good/evil framework’.
In a typically aggressive, sarcastic and ahistoric analysis of the transition to democracy – with an adolescent use of expletives – Richard Poplak (Daily Maverick read here) poured expected scorn on the FW De Klerk Foundation:
‘The FW de Klerk Foundation issued a statement following SONA, making the utterly insane observation that, ‘the idea that apartheid was ‘a crime against humanity’ was, and remains, an ‘agitprop’ project initiated by the Soviets and their ANC/SACP allies to stigmatise white South Africans by associating them with genuine crimes against humanity — which have generally included totalitarian repression and the slaughter of millions of people’.
Apartheid is a crime against humanity – without any doubt. However, in 1973, apartheid didn’t conform to the definition in international law at the time. Under the Rome Treaty of 2002, which created the International Criminal Court, apartheid was declared a ‘crime against humanity’. And morally and factually it is a crime against humanity.
Apartheid is and was a crime against humanity. However, the 1973 Soviet-sponsored Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid in the United Nations (UN) was also agitprop initiated for Cold War purposes.
The Convention adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1973 determined ‘that inhuman acts resulting from the policies and practices of apartheid and similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination … are crimes violating the principles of international law, in particular the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations, and constituting a serious threat to international peace and security’.
The first twenty countries to ratify the Convention were members of the Soviet bloc – dictatorships with poor human rights records. The major Western states all refused to ratify the Convention, with the United States saying: ‘We cannot accept that apartheid can be made a crime against humanity. Crimes against humanity are so grave in nature that they must be meticulously elaborated and strictly construed under existing international law.’ This seems archly pedantic now, but it was the legal situation at the time.
Soviet Union never at risk
The supreme irony is that the Soviet Union, which introduced the resolution, persecuted its own citizens for its entire existence, imprisoning them in gulags preceded, or not, by show trials, and killed tens of millions of its citizens.
The communist Soviet Union was never at risk of being declared to have committed crimes against humanity because it was a founding member of the UN and had a veto on the UN Security Council.
The ANC’s armed struggle was not particularly successful, despite the significant support and training from the Soviet Union. Its training in propaganda was much more successful, culminating in South Africa’s becoming a worldwide pariah.
South Africa’s relative sophistication and geography made it a very important target for the two superpowers.
The Soviet Union supported liberation movements and countries to serve as proxies during the Cold War to spread Soviet influence across the world. It understood that the brutal oppression of a black majority by a white minority would be a perfect cause, notwithstanding that the Soviet Union’s support largely came from countries which themselves committed crimes against humanity.
Apartheid had great value in galvanising solidarity in the West.
In this milieu, the Soviet Union and Guinea became the architects of the resolution.
Shortly after obtaining independence from France, Guinea, as a one-party state, aligned itself with the Soviet Union. Its president, Sekou Touré, remained in power from 1958 until his death in 1984.
In 1970, Portuguese forces and exiled Guinean opposition forces staged a raid from neighbouring Guinea Bissau with the objective of killing or capturing Touré due to his support for the PAIGC, an independent rebel group that attacked Portuguese Guinea from bases in Guinea.
Twenty countries ratify Resolution
The Portuguese-backed forces were repelled, and retreated without ousting Touré. In subsequent years, massive purges were carried out by the Touré government and at least 50 000 people (1% of Guinea’s entire population) were killed. Countless others were imprisoned and/or tortured, and foreigners were forced to leave the country, sometimes after having their Guinean spouses arrested and their children placed into state custody.
The Resolution on apartheid came into force in 1973 after the following 20 countries had ratified it: Benin, Bulgaria, Belarus, Chad, Czechoslovakia, Ecuador, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany), Guinea, Hungary, Iraq, Mongolia, Poland, Qatar, Somalia, Syria, Ukraine, the USSR, the United Arab Emirates, Tanzania and Yugoslavia.
Until the Rome Treaty in 2002, no other resolution declaring a system to be a crime against humanity was passed in the UN. However, in 1975, the Soviet Union initiated and was successful in passing Resolution 3379, declaring Zionism to be a form of racism and racial discrimination. In the body of the text it stated: ‘Recalling also that, in its resolution 3151 G (XXVIII) of 14 December 1973, the General Assembly condemned, inter alia, the unholy alliance between South African racism and zionism.’
The UN was considering a resolution against discrimination and racism, and the West proposed including anti-Semitism in the definition of discrimination.
Had this happened, the Soviet Union would have been declared an anti-Semitic state. So, to avoid that, the Soviet Union acted first to ensure that Zionism would be declared as racism and would always be linked falsely to Apartheid.
And Indonesia?
The Uganda of Idi Amin was a signatory to the ‘Zionism’ Resolution, notwithstanding that Amin massacred an estimated 300 000 civilians and expelled every Indian and Pakistani citizen.
And Indonesia? Sukarno was the first post-independent president of Indonesia from 1945 to 1967. He was a nationalist autocrat, but during his rule the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) became a significant force. So, during the 1960s, Sukarno moved leftwards and courted the support of the PKI.
In October 1965, the ‘30 September Movement’ of the Indonesian National Armed Forces assassinated six army generals in an abortive coup. Suharto, who led the armed forces, took control and once the movement was put down, blamed the PKI for the six murders.
Over the next year, Indonesian government forces murdered between 500 000 and 1 million PKI supporters, and tortured many others.
Suharto ruled for 31 years until he resigned in 1998.
Under Sukarno, Indonesia avoided official relations with South Africa. However, in 1968, Indonesia opened secret military and intelligence relations with South Africa through Portugal and Israel. It was widely known that from 1968-69 onwards, Indonesia shared intelligence with South Africa and Israel through Portugal, Iran, and Turkey.
Donation does the trick
Formal diplomatic relations were established in August 1994. In 1995, Indonesia donated $10 million to the ANC and, in 1997, former President Nelson Mandela awarded Suharto the Order of Good Hope: the highest award that can be bestowed on a foreigner. The award was intended as thanks for Indonesia’s support of the ANC during apartheid.
Suharto didn’t have to apologise for massacring his countrymen. He also didn’t have to apologise for sanctions-busting or intelligence-sharing, presumably against the ANC. All it took was a $10 million donation to the ANC.
The response to De Klerk’s and the FW de Klerk Foundation’s apologies was as expected; ‘the apologies weren’t sincere’. There’s no winning.
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