Word: botha
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...proposals, and seemed genuinely stunned by some of his remarks. "I'm prepared to be hanged for what I am," Vorster told the press, "but I'll be damned if I'll be hanged for what I am not." Like Vorster, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha implied that Washington had tried to push too far. "If the U.S. demands from us a political formula that means our own destruction, then we will say no," he declared. "As in the biblical story, if you blind our eyes, then we will pull down the pillars...
Kissinger said in June that he would not meet with Vorster again unless some kind of progress had been made in the meantime. South Africa's U.N. Ambassador Roelofse Botha recently assured him that Pretoria was now prepared to make new concessions. Soon after that, Kissinger dispatched two of his deputies-Assistant Secretary for African Affairs William Schaufele and Undersecretary for Economic Affairs William Rogers-to sound out opinion in Tanzania, Mozambique, Zambia and Zaire. The leaders of those nations presumably approved another Kissinger-Vorster meeting...
Diplomatic Coup. South African Defense Minister Pieter W. Botha insisted that his troops could hold their own against the M.P.L.A.'s powerful Soviet weaponry. Significantly, Botha did not rule out the possibility of "an understanding" with the Luanda government. The South Africans are anxious to avoid a battle around the $300 million Cunene complex, in which they have heavily invested. The project, which is scheduled to begin producing power next year, is the key to industrial and agricultural development of the disputed territory of South West Africa (also known as Namibia). Under the original plan for Cunene, which...
...defeating his own purpose by staying involved. In a New Year's message to his country, Vorster appeared to reject the pleas. In fact, he called for a bigger Western involvement in Angola "not only in the diplomatic but in all other fields." Defense Minister Piet W. Botha hinted, however, that South Africa might pull out of Angola in return for a guarantee against incursions by the South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO), whose Angola-based guerrillas have killed a score of South African soldiers...
...Pretoria government's first reaction was to recall U.N. Ambassador Roelofse F. ("Pik") Botha home for "urgent consultation." Foreign Minister Hilgard Muller announced that South Africa-a charter member of the U.N. and one of the few African nations that pays its dues-will freeze its annual $1.1 million contribution to the U.N. budget. The possibility of withdrawing from the U.N. was being debated in Pretoria last week, but the consensus seemed to be that such a move would be self-defeating. As one Johannesburg newspaper put it, as long as South Africa's enemies can shout...