Henry Kissinger; Friend or Foe?

[Nat Quinn]

 

Hannes Wessels,

Few Rhodesians will mourn the passing of Henry Kissinger who died recently aged 100. Most see him as a central figure in the destruction of the country so many of us held so dear. This may be partly or even wholly true but I remain of the view Kissinger, while a ruthless pragmatist, was not insensitive to the plight of the Rhodesians.

One must bear in mind that at the time he intervened mid-1976 South African Prime Minister John Vorster was ratcheting up pressure on the country. Helicopters had been withdrawn, and fuel and ammunition supplies were below what was desperately needed as the war escalated. Pik Botha, then at the UN, but very influential on foreign policy, was cozy with the Americans and no fan of Ian Smith’s or Foreign Minister PK van der Byl. The South Africans were making it clear that their continued support for their northern neighbour was far from assured and they were prepared to dispense with the ‘Rhodesia problem’ if there was no political change forthcoming.

It was against this backdrop Kissinger intervened. After meeting the ‘Frontline’ leaders; principally Presidents Nyerere and Kaunda, who apparently accepted his proposed formula for a settlement in Rhodesia, he confronted Ian Smith in Pretoria and made it clear that the offer on the table was one the beleaguered prime minister could not afford to refuse.

There was truth in this; the economy was struggling and skilled personnel, tiring of military commitments, were leaving the country in growing numbers. With Vorster solidly behind Kissinger, Smith knew his options were very limited and with a heavy heart, and serious reservations, he accepted what was tabled. Kissinger later remarked that, “Ian Smith made accepting the deal worse by acting like a gentleman.”

To soften the blow Kissinger promised continued American engagement in the transition process and that included significant financial support. With a heavy heart Ian Smith returned to Salisbury to tell his countrymen and women the die was cast.

He later wrote; “Kissinger, compared to the British was a pleasure to deal with. He seemed very genuine in his desire to reach an understanding that took the interests of all into account. I have nothing but respect for him. If the British had approached our problem in the same spirit, I think our history would have unfolded with a great less tragedy but they were terribly vindictive and they took treachery to a new level.”

We will now never know what might have been now, but subsequent to the Smith/Kissinger accord the Watergate scandal enveloped the Nixon White House, rocking American politics and disrupting American foreign policy initiatives which included Rhodesia. It also impacted on Pretoria, in that US support for the South African military intervention in Angola aimed at preventing the Soviet-backed MPLA from acquiring power, dissipated, and Vorster pulled his military back from the outskirts of Luanda.

With Kissinger on the sidelines, the British government quickly stepped back into the fray and gave a mandate to Sir Ivor Richard to reassert Whitehall’s authority. A hard-left Labourite who loathed the Rhodesians, he responded with alacrity; gone from the arena was the empathy shown by Kissinger, to be replaced by the spiteful vengefulness that Ian Smith and his ministers had come to know so well.

At the Geneva Conference, which followed, hosted by Richard, the Kissinger proposals were put on the backburner, providing Richard with a platform to set about humiliating the Smith delegation while embracing the newly formed Patriotic Front of Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe who he encouraged to be strident in their demands for an immediate and unconditional transfer of power.

The Smith delegation knew they had hit a brick wall and abandoned the talks but not before Foreign Minister PK van der Byl further enraged Sir Ivor with his comments about some of the people at the conference who he had taken so affectionately under his wing.

Speaking to the media before leaving Switzerland, he referred to some members of the Mugabe delegation as “. itinerant, temporarily unemployed terrorists..”,  some of whom disported themselves with “tea cosies on their heads” who thought majority rule was “.. something you find on a menu.” Robert Mugabe responded by calling van der Byl a “foul-mouthed bloody fool”.

Many years later when I met Doctor Kissinger in Washington, he told me the British had been trying to undermine him the moment he became involved in trying to help find a solution.

When I handed him a letter I carried from Ian Smith he was astonished, then read the contents with tears in his eyes.

My lasting impression of the man is he acted in good faith towards Rhodesia and tried to help us find a better way, but he was thwarted by events beyond his control in Washington and Britain’s insatiable desire to mete out the severest possible punishment to the colonial cousins who had scorned them.

 

SOURCE:Henry Kissinger; Friend or Foe? – Africa Unauthorised

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