Newly revealed documents show Margaret Thatcher’s support for apartheid South Africa
“South Africa was the best economy in Africa and every help should be given towards its development.”
Margaret Thatcher branded the European commission’s plans for a single currency as a “rush of blood to the head”, according to 30-year-old documents released from the Irish government archives. Thatcher also showed her support for apartheid South Africa.
During the discussion with her Irish counterpart Charles Haughey Mrs Thatcher also said anti-apartheid sanctions on South Africa were “irrelevant” as all the countries which purported to apply them ignored them.
The official note paraphrased: “South Africa was the best economy in Africa and every help should be given towards its development.”
Thatcher’s attitude to South Africa has been discussed over many years. Margaret Thatcher believed South Africa should be a “whites-only state”, it was claimed a number of years ago.
White mini-state
The former head of the Diplomatic Service, Sir Patrick Wright, made a number of explosive claims in his account of the former Prime Minister’s time in office.
Extracts from his diaries included claims that Ms Thatcher expressed a desire for a “pre-1910” South Africa.
In the diary entry, Sir Patrick writes the conversation took place over a lunch he was invited to with Ms Thatcher. “She opened the conversation by thrusting a newspaper cutting about Oliver Tambo [ANC president] in front of us, saying that it proved that we should not be talking to him… She continued to express her views about a return to pre-1910 South Africa, with a white mini-state partitioned from their neighbouring black states.”
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