The Process of Decision-Making in Contemporary South Africa

( ---- A publication of ihe African Studies Program of The Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies No. 22 • December 28, 1983 The Process of Decision-Making in Contemporary South Africa by Robert I. Rotberg Before 1980, especially during the 12-year prime min In Vorster's day, some of the departments (not the istership of Balthazar Johannes Vorster, the South cabinet as a collectivity) were given (or demanded) African government's decision-making process was command of the grand overarching policy initiatives less than methodical. Although rigid in personality of the state. The Bantu Administration Department and an unquestioned, authoritarian leader, Vorster (which later became Plural Relations and Develop believed in a decentralized style of management. ment, and then Cooperation and Development) was Cabinet ministers conformed to the overall policies charged with devising and overseeing the transforma that were set by Vorster and a small oligarchy. But tion of the Bantustans into quasi-autonomous home ,--- •Jithin that conformity to an overall plan, the min lands. The Information Department had its various t,_ .dters were encouraged to run their departments with forms of outreach and propaganda peddling, some little interference from the prime minister. Such clandestine and. some not, and was almost immune autonomy stimulated political competition among de from interference by Foreign Affairs. Finance operated partments. Often ministries were kept ignorant of largely on its own. So did Sport and other ministries, what others were doing or planning. Collective re except when fundamental decisions had to be sponsibility was difficult to impose. In practice, there reached. At that point, either Vorster alone or Vorster were no instruments, other than personal appeals to and several cabinet and/ or nongovernmental col the prime minister, to limit this competition or to leagues arrived at decisions on the basis of informa coordinate the different, sometimes crosscutting, tion provided (depending on the issue) by single or governmental activities. competing departments, or by the state's security Vorster, like Hendrik F. Verwoerd before him, may apparatus. have welcomed such rivalries. But .it is more likely General Hendrik van den Bergh was Vorster's that the absence of coordination and the untidy ad closest confidant and a devoted adviser from the days ministrative style were carried over from earlier times, of their internment at Koffiefontein in World War II. when the meshing of the initiatives of one or more de Van den Bergh, a security policeman, fashioned the partments may have been less critical to the function secret Republican Intelligence group out of the Securi ing of the state. ty Police, which he headed, when Vorster was minis For Vorster and his predecessors, informal methods ter of justice under Prime Minister Verwoerd in the by and large produced sufficient results. Furthermore, early 1960s. Republican Intelligence was created at a a decentralized state mechanism accentuated the per time when the African National Congress, the Pan sonal power of the prime minister, backed as he Africanist Congress, and the Communist Party had all would have been by personal alliances, party preroga been driven underground and were challenging the tives, and largely unchallenged control over the dis state with violence. There was an external threat, too, tribution of patronage and preferment. In a regiment for the outside world was becoming more and more ed society with common political goals, represented hostile. Thus, van den Bergh organized the Repub by an unadventuresome party caucus and held togeth lican Intelligence to gather information at home and er by the imposition of discipline from the Broeder- abroad, to engage where necessary in espionage, and ( - '-lond and an allied church, the government functioned to strengthen the hand of those, like Vorster, who .;aturally as an assemblage of personalized and well were determined to outwit local and foreign rivals . demarcated satrapies. In 1969, the still clandestine Republican Intelligence Editor : Helen Kitchen, Director of African Studies • Production/Circulation: Shei lah Mclean • CSIS Africa Notes, Suite 400, 1800 K Street, N.W. Washington, DC 20006 • Telephone (202) 887-0219 • ISSN 0736-9506 2 became the nucleus of the new Bureau of State better and more comprehe'nsive information to aid the Security (BOSS), a department of state. BOSS at making of rational choices, provide a means of orga tempted with some success to usurp the prime func nizing that information, and offer a framework for tions of the security police and military intelligence. deciding which among the many questions should be As security adviser to Vorster, van den Bergh had given priority attention. If these various elements were great organizational strengths to add to those which effectively meshed, then the coordination of the im derived from their long friendship. He made much of plementation of the ultimate decisions would, it was these advantages, but he won few friends among the thought, be made both more systematic and more police or the military (especially the latter, whose logical than before. minister throughout this period was Pieter Willem Both a) . Total Onslaught and Total Strategy . BOSS doubled in size during its first 10 years and An alternative apparatus already existed. Following a van den Bergh exercised more informal power than set of recommendations made by Justice Potgieter in most South Africans realized. Along with Cornelius .. 1972, the Security, Intelligence, and State Security (Connie) Mulder, wh'o served at various time~ as Cou~cil Act was passed in the same year. But the minister of information, of interior, ,_ and of plural rela State Security Council (SSC) provided for in the act tions, he helped plan and irriplemEmt a policy of · remained .only one of 20 cabinet committees until reaching out to Africans, of trading with them, of 1979. Vorster paid these committees little attention, bribing.. or compromising foreigners of all kinds, of their meetings were irregular and infrequent, their working effectively with Israel, and (paradoxically) of agendas were uncirculated, and no minutes were kept. reforming South Africa's overseas image while simul Nor were minutes kept of cabinet meetings. taneously countering dissent at home. Van den Bergh When P.W. Botha became prime minister in 1978, opposed the military on the efficacy of what would he needed (not least for political reasons) to assert now be called dest<ibilization, and particularly over control over BOSS, over what remained of Mulder's the invasion of Angola in 1975. empire, and over what he correctly regarded as an Van den Bergh's decisive influence is now widely upper- and middle-level bureaucracy that might well known. What is less fully appreciated, however, is the be loyal to Vorster. The military had scores to settle, extent to which BOSS, under van den Bergh's direc too. Since the invasion of Angola in 1975, if not tion, provided what limited machinery of coordination before, its analysis of how best to deal with South existed during the Vorster era. As rudimentary as was Africa's enemies had been at variance with cabinet that structure, it was in many respects much more policy. Its leaders, and Botha, had wanted to take the significant, even powerful, than the formal apparatus war to the enemy. Influenced by Israeli strategic doc that now exists. Van den Bergh was the crisis man trine, and smarting from their enforced humiliation in ager. With Vorster's blessing, and presumably at his Angola, they were anxious to take charge. Moreover, behest, he dealt with emergencies and coordinated Botha and his military advisers had since 1966 been responses. As those crises became more and more running the defense ministry in an orderly manner. charged and frequent, van den Bergh and BOSS Given his sense of managerial pride, his instincts as a moved more and more toward the center of decision party technocrat, and a degree of militaristic scorn for making. How smoothly crises were managed is the slough into which the country had stumbled, it another question. Van den Bergh was an autocrat and was predictable that the new prime minister would the building of a consensus was neither his talent nor undertake to centralize, streamline, and reorient the his immediate responsibility. But he did compel the decision-making machinery of the state. diverse tentacles of the state to come to grips with Botha was the first prime minister to recognize problems that overwhelmed individual departments publicly that revolution was a real possibility in South and, at times, threatened to overwhelm the govern Africa. In order to implement an effective counter ment as a whole. revolutionary strategy, the state needed to function as Informal techniques, unclear accounting, and ad a disciplined unit (to use a consciously military ministrative obscurantism have their uses, especially metaphor). "Total onslaught" quickly became the when a modern nation attempts to gain what its code name used by Botha, General Magnus Malan, leaders regard as just ends by questionable means, or and others from the military establishment to by means that the public would question if it only characterize the behavior of the Soviets, anti knew. In the case of South Africa under Vorster, the apartheid activists, and anyone else willing to support lack of a centralized, formal mechanism of decision the African National Congress or other guerrilla making facilitated the hodgepodge of covert activities movements perceived to be threatening to South that eventually brought Vorster (and van den Bergh Africa. Malan and the others described this assault on and Mulder) into disrepute and ended their control of the nation as being not merely militaristic, but also the government. The great affairs of state, it trans political, diplomatic, religious, psychological, cultural, pired, had been decided by cronies huddling together and social. Only a "total strategy" could meet the and writing directives on the backs of envelopes.

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