Balthazar Johannes Vorster

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Balthazar Johannes Vorster

Balthazar Johannes Vorster (born December 13, 1915 in Jamestown , Cape Province (now Eastern Cape ), South Africa ; † September 10, 1983 in Cape Town ) was Prime Minister of the Republic of South Africa from 1966 to 1978 and President 1978/79 .

Life

Youth, studies and legal work

Vorster, 15th child of a sheep farmer, studied law , sociology and psychology at the University of Stellenbosch after attending Sterkstrom High School . After completing his doctorate there , he worked as a lawyer at Port Elizabeth from 1940 to 1944 .

Ossewabrandwag and internment

On September 4, 1939, South Africa declared war on the German Reich. During the Second World War , the member and co-founder of the ultra-right Ossewabrandwag organization sympathized with the Axis powers . This organization favored the establishment of an authoritarian South African state in which only "adaptable whites" would have citizenship and private companies should be abolished. He held the rank of general in the paramilitary section of this organization and opposed South African participation in the war on the side of the United Kingdom. As a result of this political activity, he was arrested on September 23, 1942 on charges of treason. This was followed by internment from September 1942 to February 1944 for 17 months in Koffiefontein . During this internment, he became friends with Hendrik van den Bergh , who would later become a police officer , whom Vorster appointed as Prime Minister in 1968 as his security advisor and who subsequently entrusted him with the management of BOSS .

Political mandates

As early as 1953 Vorster took a seat in parliament for the National Party . From 1958 to 1961 he held the post of Deputy Minister for Education, Science, Art and Social Welfare. From 1961 to 1966 Vorster was Minister of Justice.

When the incumbent Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was assassinated in parliament on September 6, 1966 , the leading members of the National Party agreed within a week on Vorster as his successor; he took office on September 13th. At that time he was, like his predecessor, an undisputed advocate of apartheid politics.

As a commitment to his previous political path, Vorster unveiled a monument to Johannes Frederik Janse Van Rensburg († September 25, 1966), the general commander of Ossewabrandwag.

In 1969 Vorster concentrated the police security structures he had already promoted in the new South African Bureau for State Security (BOSS). The first legislative step in this regard was the Public Service Amendment Act ( No. 86/1969 ). Vorster had previously had a special budget regulation from parliament, in which the Security Services Special Account Act ( No. 81/1969 ) exempted the financing of certain intelligence service structures from the public debate and now exclusively for internal control of the Auditor-General in consultation with the prime minister. Further concretization for BOSS came with the General Law Amendment Act ( No. 101/1969 ) after its passage in parliament, which is commonly referred to as the "BOSS Act".

After the Sharpeville massacre of 1960, South Africa fell into international isolation, which forced the country to intensify efforts to preserve its reputation. However, it was only Vorster's government that initiated a comprehensive dialogue with countries in sub-Saharan Africa willing to cooperate . In October 1969, Foreign Minister Hilgard Muller spoke at the UN General Assembly of a “dialogue with other African states” and thus outlined a change in his country's foreign policy. First, the President of the Ivory Coast , Félix Houphouët-Boigny , took up this offer of dialogue, which he described as a “perspective of peace through neutrality”. His initiative initiated heated discussions among the international community of the OAU in 1971 . Ultimately, the South African advance split the OAU into two camps, but also failed due to insufficient success for its protagonists .

As Prime Minister, Vorster announced on July 26, 1970 that the South Africa Atomic Energy Board had developed a new process of uranium isotope separation . Only three other western states, the United States, Great Britain and France, would have such facilities. South Africa as the third largest uranium producer in the world will now rise to the rank of nuclear power , which includes the possibility of developing nuclear weapons . Vorster, however, underlined the intention of peaceful use.

A few years later, the Vorster government paid great attention to relations with the Ivory Coast. At the invitation of President Houphouët-Boigny, a state visit was made to Ivory Coast between September 22 and 24, 1974. Vorster was accompanied by high-ranking officials, including the State Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bernardus Gerhardus Fourie , the Head of BOSS, General Hendrik J. van den Bergh , the State Secretary of the Ministry of Information, Eschel Rhoodie and the Chief of the Security Police , Brigadier Mike Geldenhuys . The South African visitors resided in the guest house at the President's seat in Yamoussoukro . In October 1975, at the invitation of the Interior and Information Minister Connie Mulder, the Information Minister of the Ivory Coast, Laurent Dona-Fologo , accompanied his wife, made a return visit to South Africa. They stayed in the country for twelve days and held talks with Vorster, other state officials and representatives of the homeland governments.

The contacts between Malawi and South Africa, which despite its apartheid policy established diplomatic relations in 1967, are considered an important example of intensive bilateral politics . Between 1968 and 1970 there were reciprocal state visits by Presidents Hastings Kamuzu Banda and Balthazar Vorster.

In addition, when there were conflicts in neighboring states, the outward-looking policy (a hegemonic foreign policy initiative of South Africa) of the past was held back, which Vorster first spoke of in 1967 as uitwaartse weging and which included “powerful combat units”. Observers of South Africa's foreign policy, such as Agrippah T. Mugomba or O. Geyser, however, believe that Vorster was only continuing his country's previous policy towards all other African states.

Domestically, Vorster's government relaxed various marginal regulations on racial segregation and granted the apartheid- compliant attempts at autonomy in the “ Bantu home countries” or homelands more space.

With the transfer of the Transkei to formal independence in October 1976, Vorster wanted to demonstrate the transfer to the Bantu territories - those affected perceived it only as "sham independence".

After the security forces brutally suppressed the Bantu demonstrations in Soweto and other townships , Vorster's government came under foreign policy pressure from the western states, which demanded that apartheid be lifted. It was under this impression that the government began preparing for Namibia's independence .

Vorster maintained close relations with Israel . This state also cooperated in the field of nuclear weapon development . Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin invited Vorster to a state visit in 1976, although his sympathy for Nazi Germany in the 1940s and his work in the Ossewabrandwag organization was well known. At his reception, Rabin praised his guest as a “force for freedom” and expressed his expectation that mutual relations would be based on “ the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa, the hope for justice and peaceful coexistence” ( the ideals shared by Israel and South Africa: the hopes for justice and peaceful coexistence ). During his stay, Vorster also met Menachem Begin and Moshe Dayan . The state visit opened the way for future comprehensive technological and military-technical cooperation between the two countries, particularly in the area of ​​weapons development and the trade in military goods. The Israeli diplomat Alon Liel and first ambassador in democratic South Africa later commented on the bilateral relationship in such a way that, according to security circles, the cooperation with South Africa had contributed significantly to the existence of his country. Vorster reported on the four-day state visit made with his foreign minister in front of the South African parliament. As a result of the visit, a "Ministerial Working Group" ( Ministerial Joint Committee ) of the two countries was set up to investigate ways and means of comprehensive cooperation, particularly in the areas of economy and trade. Special points of the cooperation agreement were:

  • the promotion of investment,
  • trade development,
  • scientific and industrial cooperation as well
  • the use of South African raw materials and Israeli specialists for joint projects.

It was planned to set up a steering group to manage the exchange of information and ideas.

Muldergate affair and resignation

On September 29, 1978, against the background of the Muldergate corruption scandal , Vorster resigned from the office of prime minister and party chairman for health reasons, but on the same day took over the then rather representative office of president. Vorster's successor as Prime Minister was Pieter Willem Botha . He was probably too "soft" for the hardliners within his party; However, they did not want to completely “chill” the old “comrade”. Some of them founded the Renewed National Party ( Manufactured National Party ) in 1969 . But as early as June 1979 Vorster had to give up his office because he was accused of having set up a secret fund for foreign propaganda during his reign on the advice of his information minister Cornelius Petrus Mulder , which went down in the history of the country as the "Muldergate affair" already mentioned and now evidently evidence was available.

Late political statement and death

In March 1983 Vorster spoke in a lecture at the University of Pretoria about the prospects of a possible power sharing among the various population groups of South Africa, which were discussed at the time in the National Party . He took a negative stance on this and warned against the inclusion of the Indian population and the Coloreds in the discussion about a future new constitution for South Africa and the one man-one vote principle (analogously: one person, one vote) of a possible unitary state . Granting the black population a share in the new constitution would, in his opinion, mean the “death bell” for South Africa. Vorster died a broken man at the age of 67.

Honors

Various objects were named after him in honor of Vorster:

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Balthazar Johannes Vorster. on www.sahistory.org.za
  2. ↑ Albie Sachs , Hilda Bernstein: The laws of apartheid . (German translation, Ed .: Informationsstelle Südliches Afrika, International Defense and Aid Fund for Southern Africa ). Bonn 1976, p. 52
  3. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: The laws of apartheid . Bonn 1976, p. 47
  4. ^ Sachs, Bernstein: The laws of apartheid . Bonn 1976, p. 52
  5. ↑ SAIRR: Survey 1969 . 1970, p. 34
  6. ↑ SAIRR: Survey 1970 . 1971, p. 34
  7. ↑ SAIRR: Survey 1975 . 1976, pp. 290-291
  8. ^ Ronald Meinardus: The Africa policy of the Republic of South Africa. Bonn 1981, pp. 70-74 ISBN 3-921614-50-3 .
  9. ↑ Meinardus: Afrikappolitik , 1981, p. 56
  10. ↑ Meinardus: Afrikappolitik , 1981, p. 54, footnote 2, p. 68
  11. ^ Agrippah T. Mugomba: The emergence and collapse of South Africa's Black African policy . In: Journal of Eastern African research and development, University of Nairobi , Vol. 5 (1975), Issue 1, pp. 19-36, ISSN  0251-0405, cited in Meinardus, Afrikappolitik, 1981, pp. 54-55.
  12. ^ O. Geyser: Détente in Southern Africa . In: African Affairs , London, Vol. 1976, No. 299, pp. 182-207, ISSN  0001-9909 , quoted in Meinardus, Afrikappolitik, 1981, p. 55.
  13. ↑ Article in the Guardian on Israeli-South African cooperation
  14. ↑ Chris McGreal: Brothers in arms - Israel's secret pact with Pretoria . at www.theguardian.com Guardian reporting February 7, 2006
  15. ^ Alon Liel: A force called Mandela . on www.haaretz.com Reporting by Haaretz on July 16, 2004
  16. ^ SAIRR: A Survey of Race relations in South Africa 1976 . Johannesburg 1977, pp. 404-405
  17. ^ SAIRR : Survey of Race relations in South Africa 1983 . Johannesburg 1984, pp. 13-14
  18. ↑ SAHA: Death in Detention ( Memento from January 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). (John Vorster Square). at www.sthp.saha.org.za
  19. ↑ Web entry BJ Vorster Hospital. on www.medpages.co.za

literature

  • John D'Oliveira: Vorster the Man . Ernest Stanton, Denver / Johannesburg 1977, ISBN 0-949997-34-X .
  • Wolfram Jatzlauk: Biographies on World History , Lexicon, VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1989, p. 586

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Vorster, Balthazar Johannes
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vorster, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African politician and president
DATE OF BIRTH December 13, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Jamestown , South Africa
DATE OF DEATH September 10, 1983
Place of death Cape Town , South Africa