Historian Professor Samuel Huntington, author of books like The Clash of Civilizations and Political Order in Changing Societies.
I was frankly shocked to read the untrue and unethical opinion piece, “When PW Botha listened to the Harvard people”, written by Sazi Bongwe about the late Professor Samuel Huntington and published in the magazine. Mail & Guardians on March 3. Branding the writer Huntington as an “apartheid criminal”, the equivalent of the colonial architect Cecil John Rhodes, is so malicious and defamatory that it apologizes to Huntington’s world-renowned legacy as a political scientist.
Bongwe appears to be using Huntington’s article as the main source of his conclusion that the latter advised Botha, asserting that “during the 1980s, a decade of state-sanctioned violence, Huntington was an unofficial adviser to the Botha government”. This is a downright and malicious lie. I know Huntington and can assure you that he was never an adviser to Botha or his government.
In 1985, I was a visiting fellow at the Center for International Affairs in Cambridge, headed by Huntington, and became friends with him and his wife Nancy. In 1981, in my capacity as president of the South African Political Science Association, Huntington accepted my invitation to deliver the keynote address at the association’s conference in Johannesburg on the topic of “Reform and stability in South Africa”. The paper was later published in politics (SA Journal of Political Science) and American Journal of Political Science International Security in 1982.
In the following years, Huntington visited South Africa on various occasions, inter alia, to receive an honorary doctorate at the University of Johannesburg. During these visits, he never had professional contact with ministers or officials, and most importantly, never with PW Botha, especially not as an adviser. Huntington said of himself: “It is obviously beyond the skill of social scientists, especially non-South Africans, to advise on issues, tactics, resources and appeals that can be used…”
In his article, Huntington scientifically and convincingly proved that the policy of apartheid was bound to fail. Indeed, if Botha had followed his advice, as he wrongly stated, he would have reversed the policy. What Huntington did, in a good scientific and non-prescriptive way, was to explain the problem, identifying the options and shibboleths that reformers had to take to move from apartheid to democracy, based on the basic idea that apartheid was not sustainable.
In order to find evidence to smear Huntington as “the criminal of apartheid”, the article cherry-picks quotes without understanding the scientific motivation and scientific reasons, which is generally a cross-country comparative empirical analysis of the strategies and tactics of reform from Niccolò Machiavelli and Mustafa Atatürk until now.
Bongwe emphasized that Huntington was a proponent of consociational democracy in South Africa. This is wrong. In his article, Huntington observes that “what the theorists label ‘consociational democracy’, in short, there is no such thing; it is more appropriately defined as ‘consociational oligarchy'”. He concluded: “The days of minority-dominated vertical multi-ethnic societies are numbered.”
Of course, Botha’s adviser must have read Huntington’s article, but clearly did not follow his advice as Bongwe asserted. I have personal experience of government resistance to outside suggestions to introduce an inclusive multi-ethnic democracy since the 1960s.
Another academic friend, the late Harvard professor Roger Fisher – White House adviser on negotiations and co-author of a best-seller. Press Yes – offers free services to help South African government negotiate. In my meeting about the offer with Pik Botha, Gerrit Viljoen and Fanie van der Merwe, Fisher’s offer was rejected. “We will do our own thing,” said Van der Merwe, the chief government negotiator.
For the same reason, the advice of professor Arend Lijphart – the main theoretical supporter of consociational democracy and visited South Africa on various occasions in the 1980s and 1990s – was ignored by the government. In a meeting I had with former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev when I was ambassador to Russia, he suggested to me that South Africa should join the backing of the United Nations in the process of transformation from apartheid to democracy, with the support of Russia. Pretoria did not respond to this offer.
It is understandable that the government is under great pressure to find a negotiated settlement with the black majority. Proverbially which is between a rock and a hard place, it has no choice because it is absolutely clear that the black majority will not settle for anything less than majoritarianism. The Westminster majoritarian democratic system, based on a good constitution and under the wise leadership of Nelson Mandela, was chosen. But after Mandela passed the baton, things went wrong – mainly due to incompetent government and corrupt leadership.
With his knowledge of political theory and historical case studies, the mess Mandela made was predictable. From the start, the NP government’s amateur negotiator was notoriously defeated by the ANC. Guided by the expertise and wisdom of intellectuals, everything can be better. As Huntington commented, “the political process in which South Africa can move from the existing repressive political system to another, including other systems has not received comparable treatment”.
In a 1982 article, Huntington argued that knowing exactly where one is going may be less important than knowing exactly how one is going to get there.
In a sense, the fundamental change in South Africa seems to be waiting for Vladimir Lenin (without approving Lenin) – for a strong attention to the strategy and tactics of reform comparable to what Lenin did to the strategy and tactics of the revolution.
In conclusion, to brand Huntington as an “apartheid criminal” is mean, false and defamatory.
Gerrit Olivier is professor emeritus of the University of Pretoria and South Africa’s first ambassador to Russia and Kazakhstan.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect official policy or position Mail & Guardians.