- 17 January 2025
- News & Politics
- 9 min to read
- article 2 of 14
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Piet CroucampContributing editor
RSG, the SABC's Afrikaans radio station, called me this week asking whether I had anything to say about Niël Barnard. The former head of the apartheid state's National Intelligence (NI) died on 13 January at the relatively ripe age of 75.
Before Monitor's presenter, Udo Carelse, got to me, he interviewed the Barnard family's spokesperson, Jan-Jan Joubert. I have a lot of respect for Joubert and understand that as the spokesperson for the deceased's family, he is committed to a specific version of Barnard's political legacy. Still, I find the “revisionism", to the point of cleansing Barnard's ghost, disturbing. Feel free to have mercy on him, but don't exonerate his career.
Already in his first book, Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss (2015) Barnard treated his life with significant sanitation, all the while stroking his ego and rewriting history by referring to himself as "a great reformer". Now, with his passing, this is the narrative the media is buying into without hesitation or scrutiny. If you've read his books, and had the dubious privilege of meeting him even on a single occasion, you might, like me, remember him as a stiff bureaucrat with a huge self-image who overestimated his intellectual abilities, which he held in unhealthy esteem.
A new start
Lucas Daniël Barnard was born on June 14, 1949, in Otjiwarongo, South West Africa (now Namibia), and was therefore only 31 years old when he left his position as an academic at the University of the Free State in 1980 to enter PW Botha and the National Party's inner chambers to work with its secret information. The legend goes that the NI's predecessor, BOSS (Bureau of State Security), was plagued by a “valley of a thousand hills" of scandals and mistakes, and Barnard had to make a new start.
BOSS's disgraceful past included the Information Scandal, also known as “Infogate" or “Muldergate". Under the leadership of then information minister, Connie Mulder, and with the help of BOSS, large sums of money were used to manipulate media organisations in South Africa and abroad. Newspapers such as The Citizen were established with the sole purpose of spreading misinformation and promoting the apartheid regime's interests.
Now, in retrospect, and given the dishonourable expectations one has come to have of the National Party, it is astonishing that the Nat leadership was unable to sweep it all under the rug. Yet these events led to the political fall and resignation of a key cabinet minister, Mulder, and in Afrikaner ranks caused great damage to the government's credibility. John Vorster was the prime minister at the time and after PW Botha's takeover held the ceremonial position of state president.
The head of BOSS during the Muldergate/Infogate scandal was a professional monster, Gen (Lang) Hendrik van den Bergh, a former member of the right-wing extremist Ossewabrandwag and a Vorster stalwart. Apparently, he would on occasion declare: “I have enough men who would murder if I ordered it. I don't care who the prey is, that's the type of men I have." And he was right. This was typical of the authoritarian and ruthless nature of South Africa's security services at the time.
BOSS was known to target or intimidate anti-apartheid activists. Van den Bergh's henchmen were involved in the monitoring, arresting and torturing of political activists, including members of the ANC and PAC, and activists that would later form the UDF. Several incidents and covert operations targeted leaders of the liberation movements abroad to eliminate them. Assassinations and sabotage were not out of the question.
BOSS placed spies at media outlets to monitor reporters. Journalists who criticised apartheid were intimidated or arrested. Donald Woods - editor of the Daily Dispatch in East London, an outspoken critic of apartheid and an ally of the anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko - was on the receiving end of BOSS's vexation. (The movie Cry Freedom, starring Denzil Washington, Kevin Kline, Josette Simon and John Matshikiza, is based on the experiences and friendship of Woods and Biko.)
Shy academic and the total onslaught
Compared to Van den Bergh, Barnard was a choir boy with a doctorate in “Power as a variable in international relations". The young Barnard's soul and will were malleable, and politically and ideologically he was connected to PW by an umbilical cord. Botha was an unintellectual giant who only understood power – or political power. Barnard was a sly, naive academic with a bureaucratic understanding of God, his commandments and politics. Like Botha, Barnard saw the pursuit of and reasons for power as the most basic frame of reference for almost all political relations.
Barnard's understanding of international politics, the South African conflict and his own function and role within it is fully described by himself in his testimony before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: “In the first place there was an intense struggle on the one hand to retain political power and on the other to acquire it, which was total in scope, planning and with the potential for large-scale conflict.” Barnard's nomenclature was riddled with PW's loaded concepts such as “total onslaught", “cross-border hot pursuit" and “terrorism".
At the TRC, Barnard justified the atrocities of apartheid by arguing: “The previous government used all possible methods, which should be seen against the background of this total onslaught to gain all the power." Now, in retrospect, it is strange how PW, the NP and Barnard could conceive of the conflict in South Africa as nothing more than a struggle for political power, rather than a human rights struggle for preservation and survival. As in the case of BOSS's Van den Bergh, the question of any moral equivalence between apartheid and Nelson Mandela's pursuit of political liberation completely eluded him.
PW man until the bitter end
Barnard was a PW man until the bitter end. Botha was only prepared to negotiate with Mandela once he renounced violence. In response to Botha's offer of conditional release upon renouncing violence, Mandela said as late as 1985: “What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people is still prohibited? Only free people can negotiate. A prisoner cannot conclude contracts." Botha and Barnard kept Mandela imprisoned until De Klerk released him.
In 1988, after being treated for tuberculosis, Mandela was transferred to a private house on the grounds of Pollsmoor Prison. The move offered Mandela a greater degree of comfort and privacy and it was easier for Barnard and government officials to hold in-depth discussions with him. But contrary to what Barnard's memoirs and Joubert suggest, the initial discussions between Barnard and Mandela in 1988 - still during the presidency of Botha - were certainly not, as he testified before the TRC, an attempt to prepare the ANC for the necessary negotiations on universal suffrage.
At that stage, it was a well-known strategy of the NP government to try to drive a political wedge between those ANC leaders who were detained on Robben Island and the so-called leaders abroad (exiles). Mandela, but also the ANC, were very aware of this strategy of Barnard and Botha. All indications are that Barnard only changed strategy after De Klerk took over the NP leadership from Botha on 2 February 1989. This confirms the similarities between him and Botha, as much as it distinguishes him from De Klerk who, at least towards the end of his political life, was plagued by the unacceptability of the moral justifications for apartheid.
Barnard's version of the purpose and function of the state security council largely corresponds with the testimony of ministers Pik Botha, Roelf Meyer and Adriaan Vlok who justified their actions as all within the scope of the law. The fact that the law was designed to monopolise “political power" and ensure immoral outcomes clearly escaped them.
Removal from society
I became acquainted with Craig Williamson, the notorious South African spy and intelligence agent during the apartheid era, whom I had met on several occasions. He initially worked for BOSS, but was later attached to the South African Police's security branch. Williamson was known for his infiltration of anti-apartheid organisations and his involvement in international operations to protect the apartheid government. He worked in Europe, but also in various other parts of the world to promote state interests and denounce its enemies. His most infamous operation was the bomb that killed Ruth First, an anti-apartheid activist and academic, in 1982.
To this day, there are stalwarts in the liberation movement who have a deep-rooted awe and fear of Williamson. As operators who create the impression that under normal circumstances they would not want to apologise for the misdeeds of the apartheid state, Wouter Basson and Williamson are astonishingly honest about the past. Unlike Barnard's rigid understanding of competing moralities as power politics, both have an understanding of complexity that compels you to hear them out.
The word “eliminate" was one of the apartheid state's primary concepts, referring to the “removal from society" of a political enemy. As Williamson would testify before the TRC, there was often a vagueness or deliberate attempt to confuse within the police, army or intelligence services' description of specific objectives, but no operator doubted the meaning of “eliminate". However, Barnard, Pik Botha, De Klerk and Vlok denied that “eliminate" was an order to commit murder.
In the SABC's Special Report about the TRC's work, Max du Preez quotes from minutes of the State Security Council that gave the following instruction: “Identify and eliminate the revolutionary leaders, especially those with charisma." And in the next paragraph: “Physical destruction of revolutionary organisations (people, facilities and funds) ..." Another state security council document refers in detail to attempts to kill Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
For me, this is Barnard's legacy and contradicts his opinion of himself as a reformer. Unlike Williamson, he denies that the state security council of which he was a member gave orders that some of the apartheid state's enemies in the UDF and the ANC should be murdered. He knew as well as anyone else that his denial was a lie to escape accountability.
As PW Botha's personal envoy, he knew that neither he nor Botha wanted to negotiate with the ANC before they renounced violence. He knew that his initial discussions with Mandela were aimed at separating him from the ANC, especially the “exiles" under Oliver Tambo. The fact that Mandela would eventually thank him for his role in the talks between the ANC and the apartheid government, does not explain the details, and he knew it.
♦ VWB ♦
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