South African diplomacy in the Apartheid years and after: A valuable source-book, not a history

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Notes

1. Wheeler T (ed.), History of the Department of the South African Department of Foreign Affairs, 1927–1993. Johannesburg; South African Institute of International Affairs, 2005. (The second date in the title is incorrectly given as 1933 in the list of books in the volumes under review.)

2. Wolvaardt P, A Diplomat's Story, Apartheid and Beyond, 1969–1998. (Johannesburg: Galago Books, 2005. Extracts from this are included in this collection.

3. For example, concerning the visit by Breyten Breytenbach to Parliament in 1991: vol. 3, pp. 124–25.

4. Roland Darroll became embroiled with British intelligence, and Steve McQueen with the FBI when he was at the Washington embassy in the 1980s (vol. 3, pp. 293–94 and 299–300), but South African intelligence at its embassies is rarely discussed.

5. Brand Fourie gave 144 dinners in his three years in Washington, and during that time returned to South Africa eighteen times: vol. 3, p. 167.

6. Sole D, ‘This above all. Reminiscences of a South African diplomat’, unpublished memoirs, 1990, available in the South African National Library, Rhodes University Library, the SAIIA Library and elsewhere.

7. Evans has begun to write newspaper articles: e.g. Evans R, ‘Monsieur Ollivier, Pik Botha and prisoner-exchange intrigue’, Sunday Times, 14 November 2010.

8. Willers may have heard recently that Luanda is ‘still in ruins’ (vol. 1, p. 36) but this should surely not have appeared in print. In another example, the well-written but unnecessarily long-winded account of a journey to hand over medical supplies in Katanga in 1961 (vol. 1, pp. 70–75) seems excessive.

9. To give just one small example: Don Sole wrote that when UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld visited Umtata in January 1961 he was so incensed with the rudeness of Hans Abraham ‘that he walked out on him’ (vol. 2, p. 23). Hammarskjöld was incensed, but did not walk out: Saunders C, ‘Hammarskjöld's visit to South Africa’, African Journal on Conflict Resolution, 11 (1), July 2011, pp. 15–34 There are many dubious assertions in these pages, such as that the UN General Assembly acted ‘quite illegally’ in revoking the League of Nations Mandate over South West Africa (vol. 1, p. 18).

10. Material in the National Archives relating to the 1961 visit by UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld to South Africa had, in 2011 when I looked for it, gone missing. A volume of what others, including say members of the ANC in exile, thought of South African diplomats and what they got up to would, of course, present a very different picture. For some of the ‘other side’ of the story see the South African Democracy Education Trust, The Road to Democracy in South Africa, volume 4 (Pretoria: Unisa Press, 2009), on international solidarity against apartheid.

11. E.g. Pfister R, Apartheid South Africa and African States: From Pariah to Middle Power 1961–1994 (London and New York: Taurus Academic Studies, 2005); Polakow-Suransky S, The Unspoken Alliance — Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (Cape Town: Jacana, 2010). Chris Landsberg's The Diplomacy of Transformation. South Africa's Foreign Policy and Statecraft (Johannesburg: Macmillan, 2010) and his earlier monograph on The Quiet Diplomacy of Liberation: International Politics and South Africa's Transition (Johannesburg: Jacana, 2004) are important studies, if not based on research in the DFA archives. There is an annexure of books by or about South African diplomats in all three volumes, but this does not list such academic works on South African diplomacy.