Mbabane - Diplomatic cables from 1978 that have been declassified by the US government report Swaziland’s attempt to convince the US and UK not to support UN sanctions against South Africa’s apartheid regime.
“For Swaziland to vote for sanctions would be suicidal,” Prime Minister Maphevu Dlamini, brother to the country’s ruler King Sobhuza, told US officials on November 2, 1978.
Oil sanctions imposed on South Africa would be “disastrous” for Swaziland, and any type of economic sanctions against the apartheid government “would be the indirect killing of black people in Southern Africa”, the Swazi premier told American embassy officials at his office in Mbabane.
“The prime minister asked rhetorically which black leaders in South Africa itself would support sanctions.
He hoped that Western policymakers were not taking advice from blacks who left South Africa 10 to 20 years ago and who are now living comfortably in Europe and America,” according to the envoy’s report to Washington.
The cable was officially declassified last year, but buried among thousands of other declassified US State Department documents, its contents have only been widely circulated this week.
Arguing against any economic sanctions to weaken the apartheid regime, the Swazi premier “downplayed any hard-line advice that might be given by front-line leaders, who continue their own economic dealings with South Africa (as Swaziland does).
He cited the Zambian railroad move as one recent example,” the cable reported.
Swaziland’s royal government has long contended that Swaziland was at the forefront of the freedom struggle to liberate South Africans from apartheid.
Ebrahim Ebrahim, who was in charge of the ANC’s political operations from Swaziland in the 1980s, told Independent Media this week: “The Frontline states did support economic sanctions against South Africa, especially Zambia, Angola, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.”
“It is interesting that the Swazi government (in 1978) took that position (against sanctions) because Mangosuthu Buthelezi from the IFP took that same position,” Ebrahim recalls.
In terms of operations, “the old King (Sobhuza) told us ‘you can pass through Swaziland as long as I don’t see you’.
To the best of my knowledge, Swaziland did support our position politically,” he said.
Sobhuza’s death in 1982 ended any security ANC operatives felt in Swaziland.
Ebrahim had to move to various safe houses every six months.
“Not all of them, but some of the Swazi police worked in close co-operation with the South African police. They would arrest our comrades and take them to a secure place, and that very night the South African police would come and take them away.”
The Swazi prime minister, who was appointed by King Sobhuza and spoke on his behalf, was given a sympathetic hearing by the US and UK envoys, who related to Washington: “We support the Swazi view that BLS (Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland) states and South African blacks are likely to suffer more than white South Africans if oil sanctions are imposed.”
From 1948, the US blocked sanctions against the apartheid regime to retain South Africa as an anti-communist ally.
“However, the end of the Cold War rendered this argument obsolete,” according to a US State Department account of US dealings with South Africa.
Pretoria News