Dakar conference

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The Dakar conference took place from July 9th to 12th 1987 in Dakar ( Senegal ) and had the goal of exploring possibilities of a peaceful overcoming of apartheid in South Africa . The participants of the conference consisted of 17 representatives of the African National Congress (ANC) in exile and 61 white opposition South Africans on the other . The Dakar conference was not the first, but it was the largest meeting of its kind to date. The political dialogue between black and white South Africans that began in Dakar created mutual trust and reduced fears of the other side. This set in motion a process that ultimately led to the largely peaceful overcoming of apartheid in South Africa.

background

During the 1980s, resistance to apartheid in South Africa continued to grow. There was riot in the townships and violent resistance, for example by the ANC. While there was a growing group of white South Africans who were critical of apartheid, the rift between blacks and whites widened and the danger of civil war grew. The ANC was banned in South Africa, and its leaders were imprisoned, underground or in exile.

In January 1986, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, up until then members of the Progressive Federal Party and members of the South African Parliament , resigned from their party membership and their seat in parliament and founded the Institute for Democratic Alternatives in South Africa (IDASA) to continue in the extra-parliamentary opposition to work towards a peaceful overcoming of apartheid. The institute established contacts between the Afrikaaner -Intelligentsia and the ANC and organized informal smaller meetings outside of South Africa between representatives of these groups. The desire arose to meet and exchange views on a larger scale, which ultimately led to the organization of the conference in Dakar.

The South African secret service National Intelligence Service (NIS) was informed in advance about the project of the Dakar conference, at the time known as Dakar Safari . A nationally known journalist and commentator from among the Afrikaans had brought the relevant information to the vice-chief of the NIS, Mike Louw. Louw was against such talks and feared a negative impact on the government's first cautious approaches to the ANC via Nelson Mandela .

Course of the conference

The conference took place in Dakar from July 9th to 12th, 1987, and was sponsored by Abdou Diouf , President of Senegal, and Danielle Mitterrand , wife of French President François Mitterrand . The conference was financed, among others, by the France Libertés Foundation, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and individuals, institutions, companies and private individuals from Switzerland , the USA , Scandinavia and Western Europe .

In the official part of the conference, the participants discussed in the plenary the topics of drafting a political strategy, national unity in a future post-apartheid South Africa, structure of the future government and administration, and structure of the economy. The informal part of the conference mainly served to get to know each other, to build trust and to discuss topics such as armed resistance, the end of violence, the future of Afrikaans and Afrikaans and the relationship between blacks and whites in the future South Africa.

Although the participants in the conference were by no means unanimous on any of these points, the only unanimous agreement was the joint rejection of apartheid and the current government. Nevertheless, all discussions and disputes were always conducted objectively and constructively with the common will to resolve conflicts through dialogue.

After the conference in Dakar, participants from both delegations traveled on to Burkina Faso and Ghana , where they continued the talks in smaller groups and spoke to local politicians.

Attendees

The Dakar conference included:

On the part of the ANC

On the part of the IDASA delegation

consequences

After their return to South Africa, the participants in the IDASA delegation were attacked in public and in the media, sometimes massively, and referred to as “traitors” and “ terrorists ”, particularly violently by the extreme right-wing South African Boer group, the African resistance movement around Eugène Terre'Blanche . Nevertheless, the Dakar conference had initiated a process of peaceful dialogue that could no longer be stopped. In the months and years that followed, there were numerous other large and small meetings between white South Africans and the ANC, including from October 24th to 27th, 1988 in Leverkusen . This dialogue that began in Dakar and the increasing mutual trust between white and black South Africans were an important building block on the way to a peaceful overcoming of apartheid.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ulrich van der Heyden: The Dakar process. The beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Solivagus Praeteritum, Kiel 2018, ISBN 978-3-947064-01-4 , p. 53-58 .
  2. ↑ a b Ulrich van der Heyden: The Dakar process. The beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa . Solivagus Praeteritum 2018, Kiel 2018, ISBN 978-3-947064-01-4 , foreword by Ian Liebenberg, p. 12-15 .
  3. ↑ Stephan Kaussen: From apartheid to democracy. The political transformation of South Africa. Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2003, ISBN 978-3-531-14112-1 , p. 88-93 .
  4. ^ John D. Battersby, Special to the New York Times: South Africa's Liberals: Divided and Dropping Out . In: The New York Times . February 21, 1988, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 23, 2018]).
  5. ^ Hermann Giliomee : The Last Afrikaner Leaders: A Supreme Test of Power . University of Virginia Press, 2013, ISBN 978-0-8139-3495-2 ( com.au [accessed January 23, 2018]).
  6. ↑ Maritz Spaarwater: A Spook's Progress. From Making War to Making Peace . Zebra Press (Random House Struik), Cape Town 2012, ISBN 978-1-77022-437-7 , p. 173
  7. ↑ a b Michael Savage: Dakar Dialogue. In: http://disa.ukzn.ac.za/ . 1987, accessed January 23, 2018 .
  8. ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden: The Dakar process. The beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Solivagus Praeteritum, Kiel 2018, ISBN 978-3-947064-01-4 , p. 61-62 .
  9. ^ John D. Battersby, Special to the New York Times: South African Delegation Is Met by Protests . In: The New York Times . July 22, 1987, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com [accessed January 23, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Ulrich van der Heyden: The Dakar process. The beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa. Solivagus Praeteritum, Kiel 2018, ISBN 978-3-947064-01-4 , p. 93-107 .