The man who tried to persuade, bully and embarrass Canada into accepting South African apartheid has a new excuse: He was only doing his job.
Glen Babb, the apartheid regime's envoy to Canada during the height of antiapartheid efforts, is a businessman in Cape Town with interests ranging from manufacturing wine vats to an Internet café. In a rare interview, he tried to explain his aggressive, often reviled approach to Canadian relations.
Eighteen years after arriving in Ottawa as a 40-year-old, he said he relishes life.
Still, he misses the contentious years spent defending white rule, attacking Ottawa for its "shoddy" treatment of "first people" and being pelted by eggs.
"Life goes in cycles. I enjoyed the challenges of Canada, though they were draining, and I'm enjoying new ones now. Without challenge, we wither and die."
Since exiting government in 1995, he has dabbled in many businesses -- including long-life milk, oil lubricants, manufacturing and an airport shuttle service.
Mr. Babb, writing his memoirs, is on page 35, and despite his vigorous defence of South Africa's white regime, he does not miss apartheid. "South Africa is a remarkable achievement, one of few successful multiethnic societies in the world.
"Ask anybody if they'd like to go back, and 0.01 per cent would say yes. The extreme right and left have all but disappeared -- we now quarrel over how best to achieve the same ends," Mr. Babb said.
Whites do not hanker for the bad old days, having been dragged past their fears to taste the benefits of normal society, he said. Much in the way one finds many more French who claim they fought the Nazis than joined the resistance, it is hard to find apartheid supporters in South Africa.
Mr. Babb was deployed in apartheid's dying years because he was described as an articulate, "progressive" English-speaker -- quite unlike the image of the surly, conservative Afrikaner -- able to argue that Africa's white tribe was in the process of mending its throwback ways.
In 1985, when Mr. Babb arrived in Ottawa, South Africa was in crisis. Mass uprisings paralyzed the state and the economy, and the pillars of apartheid were crumbling. It was impossible to arrest all black people.
At the United Nations, then prime minister Brian Mulroney threatened to withdraw diplomatic recognition of South Africa. Although "constructive engagement" continued -- and, embarrassingly, trade with South Africa grew -- Canada was at the forefront of the near-global push for sanctions.
Mr. Babb -- who had studied at Oxford and South Africa's Stellenbosch University, later headed an Africa section of Foreign Affairs in his government and worked in Rome and Paris -- was told to persuade Mr. Mulroney otherwise.
It was an impossible task. The day he presented his credentials, South African President P. W. Botha -- nicknamed the groot krokodil (big crocodile) for his iron grip on power -- presented his much-vaunted Rubicon speech. It was supposed to announce big change, but it did not.
"My heart was in my boots. I'd thought I'd be able to say P. W. had taken a step forward," Mr. Babb recalled. "[Then external affairs minister]Joe Clark later told me that had the speech been delivered before my credentials, they would not have been accepted. It was a huge hiccup and meant sanctions and isolation were guaranteed. My credibility was on the line."
Worse was to come. The more that reformist Afrikaners urged Mr. Botha to change, "the more stubborn he became." The extreme right broke from the ruling National Party, "distracting attention from the real issue -- the black majority -- and pitting brother against brother."
The antiapartheid Eminent Person's Group was created and visited South Africa to formulate an international response. Mr. Babb called on one of its members, Canadian Anglican Archbishop Ted Scott, to brief him on what to expect. During the EPG visit, Mr. Botha sent security forces into Botswana to attack Mr. Mandela's African National Congress, and a bloodbath ensued.
"It was frustrating. I was trying to persuade Canada that we were not just a bunch of bigots wanting to rule over black people; that we wanted a way out, as well," Mr. Babb said.
"But I never received a single instruction from head office. The emphasis was on the U.S., where we were lobbying all sorts of groups -- some really weird people -- to keep [then U.S. president Ronald]Reagan away from sanctions. I didn't feel I had any say over what was happening, except to let government know what the results of its actions were."
Mr. Babb failed in his mission, of course, but not for lack of trying.
During his 2½-year posting, he appeared on television 132 times and more on radio. He took out pro-South Africa ads in Canadian newspapers and lobbied politicians, intellectuals, business leaders, civil-society groups and even schools, trying to persuade people that constructive engagement would be more effective than isolation.
"I wasn't afraid to speak out and tried to be as open as I could. I knew what the government was doing was wrong but thought sanctions were the worst way to go. Archbishop Desmond Tutu agreed at first and said so in a radio interview but soon changed his view."
Mr. Babb found Canadians "friendly, intelligent and moral. They couldn't accept that the process in which I was engaged would lead to a solution. I was different from other South African ambassadors, but they thought I was just a freak."
As South Africa's official representative, Mr. Babb was detested -- and very often this was reflected publicly.
In late 1985, teacher Lennox Farrell was charged with assault after interrupting a debate at the University of Toronto with an impassioned speech and throwing a ceremonial mace at Mr. Babb before breaking into tears. Archbishop Tutu's sister-in-law headed Mr. Farrell's defence committee.
Through 1986, a wave of protests greeted Mr. Babb's attempts to air the "white" view, including at the CBC and the Universities of Toronto and Regina. In Montreal, members of the private Mount Stephen club where he gave a speech were pelted with eggs and snowballs by protesters who called him "racist scum."
Most controversially, in an article for Fortune magazine, Mr. Babb drew parallels between the political plights of South African blacks and native Canadians, who were denied rights and resources, he said. "The media reaction was phenomenal, but some Indian leaders said I was on the right track." Chief Louis Stevenson invited Mr. Babb to visit a reserve, and after his return to South Africa he organized a visit to South Africa for the chief. He said he is still in touch with Mr. Stevenson.
"He had a great sense of humour -- he asked if I wanted a 21-arrow salute. He was using me to attract attention to the Indian cause, but I was also making a point," Mr. Babb said.
It worked. With a posse of journalists he headed to a reserve. For the reporters, "the reserve was an eye opener -- thin caravans [mobile homes]against the Canadian winter, dreadful schools, no road and huge social problems.
"The best cartoon was in The Calgary Sun. It showed Stevenson with the words 'You get my vote' and me saying, 'In South Africa, you wouldn't have the vote!' "
Mr. Mulroney was not amused. He would not dignify the episode with a response but soon after absolved the debts of Zimbabwe and Zambia -- prompting the chiefs to ask for equal money for their people. When that was refused, "They asked the South African government for aid -- another gimmick."
The issue did not fade away after Mr. Babb left Canada. In 1990, Archbishop Tutu compared the plight of Indians and South African blacks, while the far-left Azanian People's Organization slammed Canada for setting up an ethnic constitutional model that it said South Africa had copied.
Mr. Babb does not agree with this interpretation. Rather, Canada dealt with land issues "the way colonial societies did over the centuries," he said. "I was a willing instrument to Stevenson and an impediment to the state, but I wasn't trying to put a finger in Canada's eye -- it just turned out that way."
Mr. Babb's four-year posting ended in 1987, when he was called back to South Africa to head the Africa division of Foreign Affairs.
Special to The Globe and Mail