This is my present to Dr. Gaositwe Chiepe as she turns 100 this week. In this article, the focus will mainly be on foreign affairs, particularly on apartheid South Africa which seemed to have preoccupied much of her ministerial time more than anywhere else. When Dr. Gaositwe Chiepe , who reached the age of 100 this week became minister for foreign affairs in 1984, the political situation in Southern Africa was already volatile and dangerous. In the northern side of the country, there was the massacre of people in the Matabeleland area of Zimbabwe by Robert Mugabe’s North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade.
The owners called it hukuranhundi. It meant cleaning the area. The other northern side was the internal war in Angola involving the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA. The MPLA was supported by Cuba and the Soviet Union while UNITA had the United States and racist South Africa on their side. In the western side of the country, there was the Namibian liberation war. From the eastern direction, apartheid South Africa was bulling all her neighbours including Botswana. All those wars were impacting negatively on Botswana. Among all the people at his disposal, President Sir Ketumile picked Dr. Chiepe and placed her at a position where she was to team up with the international community to confront the situation and help find solutions. Masire could have picked up anybody when he assembled his team of members of parliament, but he found Dr. Chiepe the best player who would defend the interest of Botswana and articulate its foreign policy.
In sporting language, she was an attacker and a defender. In other words, she attacked when in possession and defended when dispossessed. The impact of the Zimbabwean situation on Botswana was that thousands of refugees from that country flocked into this country for political asylum. Concerning Angola, violation of Botswana’s airspace by flights from South Africa delivering supplies to the war torn Angola was routine. South Africa was resisting efforts by the international community for the implementation of United Nations Security Council Resolution 434 which called for the independence of Namibia then known as South West Africa. South Africa had long applied both political and military pressure on Botswana with a view to force this country to toe the line. Kidnappings and assassinations of individual South African refugees had been recorded way back in the days of a letter bomb that killed Onkgopotse Abram Tiro. The worst came in June 1985 when the apartheid regime in Pretoria raided Gaborone killing 12 people and destroying property.
Dr. Chiepe had just been in her new portfolio for less than a year. In fact she had just been there for eight months. She was either still familiarizing herself with the work of the ministry or had just finished doing so. It was the first experience of a new kind of life for the new minister who had to rush five days after the raid to the United Nations to address the Security Council on what had happened in Gaborone. Ambassador Legwaila Legwaila was there at the United Nations. He had written to the organization’s Secretary General asking for the convening of emergency meeting of the Security Council to debate the South African raid on Botswana. That was the time when Dr. Chiepe delivered perhaps her first ever most powerful speech, telling the Security Council that the attack was carried out on defenseless people in their sleep and that there were children in their houses who had probably never seen a gun in their life time let alone handling it. Dr. Chiepe’s plea to the international community did not fall on deaf ears. The Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 568 in response to Botswana’s plea. The resolution strongly condemned “unprovoked and unwarranted military attack” on Botswana by South Africans. It also demanded full compensation for loss of life and property. It was on June 21 when she addressed the Security Council and in the next three weeks, she was in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia addressing the Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU).
That was before it became the African Union (AU). The council of ministers also took a strong condemnation view of South Africa’s action on Botswana and recommended that to the heads of state of the organization who met a few days later and like the Security Council demanded full compensation of Botswana for the loss of life and property. Even when South African President P.W. Botha declared that the raid on Gaborone was “the first installment”, Botswana remained resolute on her resolve “to remain friends of the African National Congress and to remain the enemy of the South African racist government.” No amount of force could intimidate Botswana. The following year in 1986, South African airborne commandoes raided a residential complex at Mogoditshane killing one person.
Those were the challenging issues which tested Dr. Chiepe’s abilities less than a year since becoming the minister for foreign affairs matters. I was in Addis Ababa with Moreri Gabakgore covering that OAU summit of heads of state and governments. We could see the seriousness with which delegates approached the issue on the raid on Gaborone by South Africa. We could see the sympathy for Botswana and the annoyance expressed by delegates and journalists to any delegate from Botswana whom they met either in the corridors of the plenary hall or in the cafeteria. Botswana had won the hearts of many that day. South Africa had another Botha. His nickname was “Pik”. His real names were Roelof Frederik Botha. He was stocky built, had deep voice, military mustache and heavy diplomatic skill which he displayed with a combination of pride and arrogance and could be rude at times. He was the world longest –serving foreign minister and for him that gave him the temerity to undermine other foreign ministers. He tried that with Dr. Chiepe without success. He found her a different kind of animal. Dr. Chiepe was not a push over.
She took issues raised step-by=step and addressed them politely and adequately. Although “Pik” Botha was a lawyer by profession, he could not outdo Dr. Chiepe when it came to international law governing hot pursuit, a term which South Africa often used to justify its attack on Botswana. He had served in the cabinet of John Voster, P.W. Botha and F.W. de Klerk as foreign Affairs minister. On a number of occasions during meetings with Dr. Chiepe in Pretoria, he tried to intimidate her into acceding to his demands. For instance he tried to force Botswana into upgrading its labour office at Roodepoort into a full diplomatic mission. On each occasion he was met with a big “no” from Dr. Chiepe. He wanted Botswana to stop freedom fighters from entering South Africa by patrolling the whole border line. Dr. Chiepe told him that since the border is a line dividing two countries, they the South Africans should patrol on their side to stop infiltration of freedom fighters into their country.
Botswana/South African border is the longest of South Africa’s international borders. It stands at slightly over 2,000 kilometers across the Madikwe, Limpopo, Molopo and Nossob Rivers. Therefore, Botswana did not have resources to patrol the whole border line. What Dr. Chiepe was conveying to her counterpart was that, Botswana had no problem with her borders but since the South Africans had one, they were the ones to prevent that problem from occurring. She was telling Botha that they should blame themselves and nobody else for letting freedom fighter infiltrate their soil. At one stage after failing to intimidate Dr. Chiepe, “Pik” Botha summoned 35 foreign diplomats to his office to urge them to warn Botswana of the possible consequences of “colluding “ with the ANC to disrupt the whites only elections which were due in April 1987. He had told the diplomats that his government “was keeping all its options open, and will be guided by what it can consider to be in the interests of the country”. Although she was the country’s top diplomat, Dr. Chiepe often travelled alone the plane unaccompanied by a protocol officer. In 1990, she travelled to the OAU Summit meeting in Abuja, Nigeria in the company of Ambassadors Legwaila Legwaila and Edwin Matenge. They were not treated like diplomats on arrival at domestic airport in Lagos where they fell into the hands of thugs.
The thugs demanded money from them as condition for boarding the aircraft to Abuja. She paid them 20 US dollar for her ‘release’ and ended paying another 20 US dollars for Matenge’s “release”. Matenge had travelers’ cheques only in his possession. By the time she was released, the aircraft was already on the runway ready to take-off. She managed to board it but her baggage remained behind for the next two days. On arrival at Abuja Airport, the Botswana delegation detected something unusual at OAU forums. The number of national flags flying at the airport exceeded the number of OAU member states. A closer examination revealed that additional flags were that of South Africa’s Bantustan satellite states of Bophuthatswana, Ciskei and Transkei. It was Dr. Chiepe who alerted me to that anomaly. The following day, the Daily News carried the story to that effect. The headline was something like “Diplomatic embarrassment in Abuja “.
When we returned to the airport on our departure day, the Bantustan flags had been removed. Apparently the Nigerian High Commission in Gaborone alerted the organizers in Abuja after reading the Daily News story and urgent measures were taken to remove them. Besides serious minded issues, Dr. Chiepe has something which can make one laugh and perhaps loudly. When she was appointed ambassador in West Germany, she went to the German leader’s offices apparently to present credentials. She was based in London. On arrival at the offices, the German President told her that he had been expecting a man as he had been told that in Africa women did not go to school but get married. Reading through Patrick Van Ransburg biography, apparently she was the only minister who supported or agreed with his philosophy of education.
