Nzo, Alfred 1925–

views updated

Alfred Nzo 1925–

Foreign Minister of South Africa

“Image not available for copyright reasons”

In 1994, new South African president Nelson Mandela named Alfred Nzo as his government’s foreign minister. Of the same dissident political generation as the respected head of state, Nzo had become active in the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization, in the 1940s; its support grew in such numbers that the South African government outlawed it in 1960, and Nzo became a fugitive. This occurred during the era of apartheid, or white minority rule, when South Africa’s indigenous peoples, who comprised three-quarters of the population, were subject to the harshest system of legal oppression in modern history.

The exiled Nzo spent years working outside his homeland, bringing international support and funds to the ANC cause. In 1990, the onset of a new era for South Africa, he returned. As longtime secretary-general of the ANC, Nzo was a key figure within this period of transition. His work helped bring about a remarkable and nonviolent passage from apartheid to democratic majority rule.

One of five children, Nzo was born June 19, 1925, in Benoni, Transvaal, a province of South Africa rich in gold and diamond deposits; his father was a clerk at the Modder B Mine. As a youngster, Nzo was sent away to a Roman Catholic mission school for his education. In 1945, he enrolled in Fort Hare University, hoping to obtain a science degree, but like other future South African leaders, the university setting awakened Nzo to ideas of anti-authoritarianism and political activism.

South Africa had long been a stronghold of white colonial power, with hegemony over the mineral-rich land contested by both the British and descendants of the original Dutch settlers, the Afrikaners. In 1948, a conservative Afrikaner government enacted a sweeping series of apartheid laws, which separated people of color from whites and thus legitimized the legal discrimination of blacks. They could not vote, marry whites, or live in a part of the country not designated “Bantu.”

During this period of repression and international derision toward apartheid, Nzo joined the ANC Youth League, a black political organization founded in 1912. Before completing his degree studies, Nzo went back to the Transvaal region and obtained a position as a health inspector in Alexandra Township in 1951. One hallmark

At a Glance…

Full name, Alfred Baphethuxolo Nzo; born June 19, 1925, in Benoni, Transvaal; son of a mining clerk; married; one son.Education: Attended Fort Hare University, 1945-46, Politics: African National Congress.

Joined Youth League of African National Congress, late 1940s; health inspector, Alexandra Township, Transvaal, 1951-58; elected chair of Alexandra branch of ANC, 1956;elected to the Transvaal provincial executive committee of the ANC, 1957; elected to the national executive committee, 1958; became ANC foreign representative in Cairo, 1964-67, India, 1967-69, and later Zambia and Tanzania; elected secretary-general of the ANC, 1969 (re-elected, 1985); returned from exile, 1990; elected to ANC national executive committee, 1991;named South African Government of National Unity’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, 1994.

Awards: Order of Friendship Among Peoples, Praesidium of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics’Supreme Soviet, 1985.

Member: African National Congress.

Addresses: Office—c/o The Embassy of South Africa, 3051 Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20008.

of apartheid was the restriction of black South Africans to townships that lacked even the most rudimentary of infrastructure. “Daily exposure to the bad living conditions of township residents and their constant frustrations paved the way for his entry into politics,” noted Nzo’s official biography.

Meanwhile, Nzo continued his involvement in ANC politics, having officially joined the group in 1950. During the next decade, the organization carried out a Defiance Campaign in which Nzo was active, and he also helped conduct surveys about what an ideal society of the future might look like. Those findings were integrated into the ANC’s Freedom Charter in 1955. Nzo became increasingly active in the ANC, and, in 1956, became chair of its Alexandra branch.

In 1957, Nzo was elected to the ANC’s provincial executive committee in Transvaal. That same year, Alexandra Township residents protested a hike in bus fare by boycotting the public transit system in an effort spearheaded by Nzo and other local ANC leaders. Residents showed their support of the ANC along with their displeasure with the official regime by walking nearly ten miles to and from work for weeks. A year later, in 1958, Nzo’s ANC colleagues voted him onto the national executive committee.

That same year, Nzo lost his job as a health inspector as a result of increasing crackdowns upon ANC activists. Not having a job meant that one lost residency privileges under the Urban Areas Act, and Nzo was thus forbidden to carry out political activities in Alexandra if he was not a resident. He began working full-time for the ANC, but was frequently arrested and detained by authorities until he was imprisoned for a five-month stretch.

South Africa officially outlawed the ANC in 1960. Ironically, the Modder B Mines, where his father had worked, had been converted to a prison, and it was there that Nzo was incarcerated. After his release, government authorities continued their surveillance of Nzo and other ANC activists. At one point he was sentenced to house arrest from 1962 to 1965. In addition, he was held for seven months for unspecified charges in 1963-another legal mechanism through which South African authorities harassed dissenters. Torture and even murder were not uncommon. Meanwhile, ANC leader Nelson Mandela had begun a jail sentence that would last 26 years.

Nzo left South Africa and became the ANC foreign representative in Cairo, Egypt, from 1964 to 1967, escaping his house arrest term. He held similar posts in India (South Africa has a large immigrant Indian population, who also faced discrimination under apartheid), Zambia, and Tanzania. In 1969, he was elected secretary-general of the ANC, a post to which he was re-elected in 1985.

International support of the ANC had grown significantly and the Afrikaners in power were responsible for turning South Africa into a virtual pariah for its abysmal human-rights record. Nevertheless, the violence used against the country’s black activists-of whom there were many-grew in intensity, while the secret military arm of the ANC, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), carried out attacks on South African police and military targets. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), looking to discredit the ANC and maintain public support of American business investment in white-ruled South Africa, described Nzo as “a self-avowed Communist,” according to a 1986 paper by Thomas G. Karis in Foreign Affairs. Nzo denied membership in South Africa’s also-banned Communist Party, yet Karis claimed that “Nzo’s CIA biography, more than any other, epitomizes the pro-Soviet charge that is levied against the ANC.”

In 1986, Nzo was scheduled to speak at the general synod of the Reformed Church of America, a conservative religious organization headed by televangelist Robert Schuller. But Schuller canceled Nzo’s speech at the famed Crystal Cathedral after asserting that the ANC engaged in terrorist practices. In response, Nzo pointed out in the Los Angeles Times that the organization is “the only sane alternative to the policies of genocide pursued by the apartheid regime.”

That year, Nzo tried to meet with Washington officials but was rebuffed. South Africa’s tremendous internal problems finally yielded the election of a less-conservative white government in 1989, and new President F. W. DeKlerk vowed to dismantle the apartheid laws. The following year, the DeKlerk government rescinded the act that had outlawed the ANC in 1960, and Nzo was finally able to return to his country; 1990 also marked the release of Nzo’s longtime colleague Mandela from prison.

In 1991, Nzo was elected to the national executive committee of the ANC~now a legitimate political party--and the country began readying for the first elections ever to include non-whites as part of the political process. After a transitional constitution was formulated by representatives from South Africa’s most important groups-the ANC, the Inkatha Freedom Party (a Zulu Nation organization), and Asian immigrants-the first free elections were held in April of 1994. The ANC wona 60 percent majority, Mandela was elected president, and a “Government of National Unity” took power.

Because of Nzo’s years of service in working on the ANC’s behalf from abroad, Mandela named him South Africa’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. Speaking before the United Nations only a few months after the elections, Nzo declared that “since our first fully democratic elections at the end of April, a remarkable tranquillity has come to South Africa, and citizens from all walks of life, from all communities, have banded together in a shared effort to make our fledgling democracy the success they all want it to be. “As did many others, Nzo did much to make South Africa’s future successes possible.