Africa & the Commonwealth 1971
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AFRICA & THE COMMONWEALTH 1971 - 1995 BY ANTHONY GOODENOUGH (2020) 1 AFRICA & THE COMMONWEALTH 1971-1995 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Introduction 3 Part 1: Appointments Chapter 1 Private Secretary (Africa) 1971 - 1974 4 Chapter 2 High Commissioner to Ghana 1989 - 1992 7 Chapter 3 Ambassador to Togo 1989 - 1992 29 Chapter 4 Assistant Under Secretary of State (AUSS), Africa, in London 1992 - 1995 33 Chapter 5 AUSS: The Commonwealth 1992 - 1995 51 Part 2: Country Tours (Private Secretary & Assistant Under Secretary of State (AUSS) 57 Chapter 6 Anglophone West Africa 58 Chapter 7 Francophone Africa 79 Chapter 8 The Horn of Africa 94 Chapter 9 East Africa 105 Chapter 10 Central and Southern Africa 124 Chapter 11 South Africa, Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland 147 Chapter 12 The Indian Ocean 160 2 Introduction This memoir covers my time in the Diplomatic Service dealing with Africa, either part or full time, and with Commonwealth affairs. It begins with the two and a half years I served as Private Secretary to the Minister for Africa from 1971 - 1974. I was also dealing with the other subjects, European and economic, for which the Minister was responsible. These are recorded separately. My next involvement with Africa was as High Commissioner to Ghana from 1989 - 1992, when I was also accredited as HM Ambassador to Togo. From Ghana I returned to London as Assistant Under Secretary of State (AUSS) for Africa and the Commonwealth from 1992 - 1995. The memoir is divided into two parts as follows: Part 1 covers my main responsibilities as Private Secretary, High Commissioner to Ghana, Ambassador to Togo and AUSS. It includes chapters on my general responsibilities as AUSS not only for Africa but also for Commonwealth affairs and, more specifically, the 1993 and 1995 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meetings (CHOGMs) in Cyprus and New Zealand. Part 2 combines, under individual country headings, the visits I made to them both as Private Secretary and later as AUSS. Short passages in italics provide information about events in each country before, between and after my visits. In all I spent nearly 9 years dealing with Africa out of my total of 36 years in the Diplomatic Service: a quarter of my career. 3 Part 1: APPOINTMENTS CHAPTER 1 PRIVATE SECRETARY 1971-1974 AFRICA Introduction Towards the end of my first overseas posting in the Embassy in Athens, I was introduced to Anthony Royle on a visit he and his wife paid when he was a Junior FCO Minister. I remember attending a dinner given for the Royles by Derek Dobson, the political counsellor in the Embassy, and being questioned by Tony Royle on my circle of Greek friends and contacts. I was entrusted with seeing him and his wife off at the airport. I later learned that he had asked for me as his Private Secretary. By ill luck, I could not be released from Athens when he needed me. But the Office found me another Private Secretary job when I came home some months later. This was as Lord Lothian’s Private Secretary. Peter Lothian was a Scottish landowner and friend of Alec Douglas Home, Foreign Secretary in Edward Heath’s 1970 Government. He served as Parliamentary Under Secretary (i.e.the lowest rank of junior Minister) from 1970 to 1972. In 1972 Lord Lothian was replaced by Lady Tweedsmuir as Minister of State. Priscilla Tweedsmuir was a well known Tory backbencher, having been M.P. for Aberdeen South for twenty years from 1946 to 1966 and then given a peerage in 1970. I became her Private Secretary when Lord Lothian left. Both Ministers were responsible for Britain’s relations with Africa as well as for certain other subjects. This memoir covers my African Private Secretary duties only. In 1971, only fourteen years had elapsed since Ghana had achieved its independence in 1957, the first of Britain’s African colonies to do so. Some of our other African colonies had been given independence much more recently: e.g. Swaziland in 1968. The Seychelles were not to become independent until 1976. Memories of the colonial past were therefore fresh. But it is probably true to say that, since granting independence, British Governments had to some extent turned their backs on black Africa. It was certainly accused of having done so by many of its critics, both domestic and international, at the time. A large part of the reason was that two of the most important of our former dependencies, Rhodesia and South Africa, were in the hands of Governments that did not represent the interests of the majority of their populations and were indeed regarded by many as illegitimate, including in Rhodesia’s case by the British Government. They therefore represented unfinished business from Britain’s colonial past and stood in the way of developing our relations with Africa in a way that would have served both British and African other interests. During my time as a Private Secretary, therefore, Rhodesia and South Africa dominated Britain’s relations with black Africa. Ian Smith’s illegal declaration of independence (IDI) in December 1965 had given the white minority control of the Government of Southern Rhodesia. Successive British Governments were to find the search for a way of transferring power to the majority as a whole both difficult and politically damaging to Britain’s relations with the rest of black Africa. The problem exercised the Labour Government of Harold Wilson and the Conservative Governments of first Edward 4 Heath and later of Margaret Thatcher who was eventually to find a solution. Because of its importance, the subject was dealt with mainly by the Foreign Secretary rather than at junior ministerial level. Lord Lothian and Lady Tweedsmuir were involved indirectly and in the House of Lords where they were responsible for presenting and defending the Government’s policies on this as on other foreign policy issues. I remember sitting in the officials’ box in the House of Lords while my Minister took part in major debates on Rhodesia, most dramatically when the Government accepted the findings of the Commission under Lord Pearce that the settlement worked out by Lord Goodman with Smith’s regime was unacceptable to majority opinion in Rhodesia. The main issue on South Africa was sanctions. The Heath Government had resumed the sale of defence equipment, in particular Wasp helicopters, to apartheid South Africa provided it could not be used for internal security purposes. This policy had outraged many parts of black Africa and HMG’s domestic opponents, who objected that arms for external use could be easily diverted for internal repression. Two other African issues preoccupied Ministers at the time. First was the relationship between our former colonies and the European Economic Community. Negotiations in Brussels on the terms of Britain’s entry to the EEC took place during my time as a Private Secretary. These were to lead to Britain joining the EEC on 1 January 1973. The implications for Africa featured in Brussels, in ministerial discussions with African Governments and in debates in Parliament. Secondly, Idi Amin’s expulsion of the Asian community from Uganda in 1972 became a major headache for Heath’s Government. I believe that, eventually, as many as 30,000 Asians were given refuge in Britain. It fell largely to Lady Tweedsmuir to speak for the Government on this issue in the House of Lords; and, unsurprisingly, she was sometimes given a rough ride by their lordships. Significantly, one subject which received much less attention then, in the 1970s, than it was to attract in the 1990s during my time as Under Secretary for Africa, was the quality of African governments and the extent to which they might or might not conform to Western ideals of democracy. This was not surprising given Britain’s inability at the time to implant democracy in South Africa and Rhodesia. If Britain couldn’t give democracy to its Empire, how could we credibly insist on democracy in our former colonies? Another difference between then and the 1990s was the lack of interest which Britain took then in the economic policies of African Governments. The days when we were to lecture them on the advantages of market-based economies had not yet come. The most interesting part of my African duties were during my Ministers’ visits to Africa. These were intended to familiarise them with the continent and to keep in touch with the Governments concerned. At the time, when our relations were bedevilled by the problems of Rhodesia and South Africa, it was considered important to keep a foot in the door. Essentially Britain was marking time until, majority rule having been achieved in both countries, we could cultivate stronger relations with the rest of the continent. The Minister therefore called wherever possible on African Heads of Government, senior Ministers, other senior figures and the press; met the local British community (mainly businessmen and farmers) and the staff of British diplomatic missions; and visited the countryside to get some understanding of agriculture, mining, development issues, vocational training, education etc. Our programmes happily sometimes included visits to game parks. The longest of these individual country visits lasted for as much as ten days, far longer than any of mine as an Under Secretary in the 1990s when I aimed at covering up to four or even five countries in a fortnight at a time. 5 My own Private Secretary duties were not usually onerous. Besides ensuring that the Minister had all the briefing that he and she needed available at the right moment, I used to make a record of the main meetings with senior Government figures, scribbling away during the meeting and then dictating a record to a High Commission or Embassy secretary immediately afterwards.