Jon Snow, ITN
Prime Minister, last night, after you came back from your two days away as a group, four of the most senior members of the Commonwealth—Australia, India, Zambia and Zimbabwe—staged a news conference, their four leaders representing I suppose collectively nearly a billion people, and used the occasion to make fairly savage verbal attacks against the role you have played on resisting sanctions.
Is this an edifying thing for the Commonwealth and does it really do the Commonwealth or Britain or the South African issue any good?
Prime Minister
Look! They are free to say what they like, to call a press conference when they like, and to use it in whatsoever purpose they choose.
What they do not like is my message and the arguments behind it. My message is that I do not think that violence or comprehensive sanctions will bring dismantlement of apartheid any nearer. It will cause increased resistance and it will cause apartheid to be continued longer because you will not get the [end p1] process of steady unwinding in a much better atmosphere going on. That is the message they do not like. But you know, there are many many people who have been fighting apartheid in South Africa for years, saying the same thing as I am; “Look! If you want it to go faster, for Heaven's sake do not put on sanctions! For Heaven's sake do not stop the very companies that are breaking apartheid down! For Heaven's sake do not so irritate people there by telling them what to do, they in fact will get more resistant to doing it!”
Now, they are entitled not to like that message. They are entitled to say what they wish, but I believe my message is the right one.
Jon Snow, ITN
Yet if there is any sense of unity in the Commonwealth about anything, it is amongst the other forty-eight states that sanctions do work and Australia's Prime Minister Hawke quoted yesterday the words of the Finance Minister of South Africa who, addressing his National Party conference in Natal only on the 15th—two days ago—said; “Do not underestimate the negative effects of sanctions!” That is the South Africans themselves endorsing the view within the Commonwealth that sanctions work.
Prime Minister
I think that there are two things when you come to finance: we do not have government loans. What really has happened is the ordinary people of the world saying: “We will not invest our [end p2] money in South Africa because of the political instability. We do not believe the present regime can last. Therefore, change will have to come about and we would not risk extra investment there in South Africa!” and that has undoubtedly brought down the investment. It is not so much government-to-government. We do not have any government-to-government loans. This is the ordinary judgement of ordinary people and frankly, that is a much better way.
What it does mean is then you have more unemployment, because the work cannot keep pace with the increasing population, but if you are calling for that kind of thing you should not then criticise the fact that there is more unemployment. But I believe it is that kind of individual and private institutional judgement that has far more effect than governments trying to influence things inside South Africa by government sanctions.
Jon Snow, ITN
Why, if you are so opposed to sanctions, have you already once agreed to sanctions and yet now, two years on, are unprepared to take the logical next step, which is to monitor them and to monitor who is breaking them and to impose further sanctions?
Prime Minister
There are two sorts of sanctions.
One is a sanction not to supply armaments to a government which is using armaments for oppression. That is a wholly separate thing and there are very good reasons why we do not supply arms [end p3] to South Africa and it is a mandatory United Nations sanction which we fully supported. That is one kind and there are very good reasons for it.
Secondly, the Commonwealth did want initially to send what they call “signals” to South Africa that they disapproved of the regime. They wanted it more than words and so we selected a number of signals.
Now if you are going on to more things which some of them want to do, I think the more things will be counter-productive; they will cause tremendous unemployment among black South Africans; deprivation; starvation. I do not think that is the right way to go about it. They do, but I do not.
What they cannot get away from is that South Africa, in spite of all its problems, is the most thriving economy in Africa and that one million people from black, independent African states choose to go to work in South Africa because they get better jobs and then they can use the money they get to remit home to keep their families. That is people voting with their feet.
Do not think I support apartheid. I do not. It has to go. It is steadily going. I would like it to go more quickly, but what they will do would make it go more slowly and add deprivation and starvation among black South Africans to all the problems it has already got. [end p4]
Jon Snow, ITN
Mr. Mugabe says that the motivation behind your stance is really the protection of British jobs and the protection of British investment in South Africa.
It is fair to say that we are the greatest trading partner of South Africa.
Is that your motivation?
Prime Minister
My motivation is the one I indicated. To go the way they want to go would slow down dismantling apartheid. I do not want to slow down dismantling apartheid—I want to work with people within South Africa who are peacefully working to get rid of apartheid, and the people who are doing it most successfully are business and industry and therefore you need to work with them.
Yes, it would cause a lot of unemployment in Great Britain because we would lose a lot of trade and that also is a factor which does influence me. I should be a very unusual person if it did not, but the main reason is sanctions would be damaging to the cause which they seek to further.
Jon Snow, ITN
Why are we not prepared at least to participate in a more comprehensive process of monitoring who is breaking sanctions? [end p5]
Prime Minister
You get that from the trade figures. You get published trade figures by international organisations as to what the trade is.
Jon Snow, ITN
But a lot is round the back; it is people filling in gaps.
Prime Minister
You will not be able to get round the back. Of course it is known full well that one country might say: “We do not supply South Africa!” Yes, I know what happens and so do a lot of other people. They will sell it to an intermediate country which then may well supply South Africa.
Jon Snow, ITN
Is it not a good idea to police though?
Prime Minister
And how in the world can you?
Jon Snow, ITN
Well, they want to set up a monitoring group.
Prime Minister
Yes, but how in the world can you say that those things … [end p6]
Jon Snow, ITN
Presumably by naming names and identifying.
Prime Minister
They have got all of the published figures.
No, I do not believe in setting up yet another monitoring group, yet another group of foreign ministers. All the figures are there. They can come and use them and brief them and we can come and discuss them here at any time.
Jon Snow, ITN
What it seems that the Commonwealth leaders here wanted most at the end of this was to have a group of representative foreign ministers who would meet together and, even if there were things that we disagreed about, would work collectively on what more could be done to pressure apartheid. We have refused to go along with that.
Prime Minister
They have had a group following Bahamas, the group that operated there. They have met, about four or five of them. They wanted to have a larger group. I just do not.
We had a good deal of debate. We got ten pages of communique cascading out on everyone else. They are not going to do a single thing. [end p7]
We are going to do a great deal helping with the security of the front-line states and we also help with education of black Africans. We do the positive work and they, to do them credit, want to do some positive work, but merely, at the end of all that, to set up another committee—no, it is quite absurd! Absolutely absurd! Another two years with another committee.
Jon Snow, ITN
A last question, Prime Minister.
We have now had two Commonwealth Conferences in which there have been really very unpleasant and bitter rows about South Africa.
How much more of this can the Commonwealth and Britain's vital relationships with what is a quarter of the world's population sustain?
Prime Minister
They were all very nice to me this morning. They were all very nice to me at the dinner last night after the press conference. They did not mention a word of what they said at the press conference!
It is an awful pity, you know, if you cannot disagree without disliking one another. Of course you disagree, but you disagree because you have genuinely different beliefs, and you know if the [end p8] Commonwealth cannot sustain genuine arguments … but it can. As I said, I did not have a word of criticism with me at the dinner last night, which took place after that conference.
They do not like the message, but they do not shoot the messenger!