Pik Botha and Company Die in Pan Am 103

[MerryPrankster]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103

Pik Botha and a delegation from South Africa were supposed to take Pan Am Flight 103 to New York to sign a treaty granting independence to Namibia, but managed to take an earlier flight and avoided being killed when the Libyan bomb blew the plane up.

What if they'd been on the plane and died?

I would expect South Africa to be very upset with Libya. What are their options for retaliation?

Given the issues the late apartheid regime was having and the distance, overt military intervention is going to be improbable. However, I'm imagining a big pile of kruegerrands for Gadhafi's head.

 

[Color-Copycat]

South Africa still has their nuclear program going on at the time, right?

Well, maybe they can send Libya some of that highly fissionable material that Gaddafi wanted so badly with a tag that reads "Be careful what you wish for."

 

[MerryPrankster]

South Africa still has their nuclear program going on at the time, right?

Well, maybe they can send Libya some of that highly fissionable material that Gaddafi wanted so badly with a tag that reads "Be careful what you wish for."

Yikes. South Africa had six nuclear bombs the ANC government dismantled soon after its ascension. Not sure when the bombs were actually built.

Sending one of them to Tripoli via a cargo ship would have been rather disproportionate, but that sounds like something the apartheidniks would at least consider.

If the South Africans actually nuke Tripoli, I can imagine a massive international outcry. If they target a Libyan military facility, people might be less upset, but it's still the first use of a nuclear weapon since WWII.

 

[Thande]

The South Africans aren't nuts. (Well, not that nuts). They will most probably retaliate tit for tat by having Gaddafi assassinated, probably with help from their mates in Israel.

 

[TheMann]

South Africa and Libya were already quite hostile (Gaddafi supported pretty much every resistance movement in Africa and many in Europe, including the ANC), but I don't see any nuclear attack in the cards. I can see them and the Israelis looking to kill the people responsible.

Botha was quite moderate compared to most of the 1988 South African Government, and having died on his way to help end South Africa's involvement in Namibia, I can see Pretoria trying to make him out as a martyr and tie the ANC to Gaddafi. That might have impacts later on.

 

[Dan1988]

Botha was quite moderate compared to most of the 1988 South African Government, and having died on his way to help end South Africa's involvement in Namibia, I can see Pretoria trying to make him out as a martyr and tie the ANC to Gaddafi. That might have impacts later on.

Yeah, that seems somewhat typical for the course. So, I guess no negiotiations with the ANC, then?

 

[TheMann]

Yeah, that seems somewhat typical for the course. So, I guess no negiotiations with the ANC, then?

I'm not sure it would go that far - the negotiators would demand the ANC break off any connection with Gaddafi, which knowing the backlash against Libya for Pan Am 103, they'd probably do anyways. It would hold up the exit of Namibia from South African rule, but I doubt it would stop ANC negotiations. P.W. Botha was already talking to Nelson Mandela quite regularly by December 1988.

P.S. Sorry I haven't responded to your PMs. To be fair, I've been thinking about the questions you asked and looking for answers. I'll fire one back to you soon.

 

[Dan1988]

P.S. Sorry I haven't responded to your PMs. To be fair, I've been thinking about the questions you asked and looking for answers. I'll fire one back to you soon.

That's okay - I can wait. In the meantime, if I have any new ideas, I'll start PMíng you like crazy.

 

[ivanotter]

Somehow, I don't think it would have mattered at all.

Namibia's road to liberation was not going to be held up, the negotiations were starting.

Remember, Pik, btw, joined ANC later.

PW Botha had his stroke and got replaced by FW de Klerk, who probably speeded it up.

So, tragic, but no changes on that.

Ivan

 

[bsmart111]

I wonder if the blame and accusations would have gone in an entirely different direction. Would there be a search for disgruntled folks who had done it to stop the Namibian Independence process? I don't know who would have 'benefited' from stopping the process (or thought they could stop the process) but it would be a resonable direction to focus the investigation (or accusations) on. After all when people start asking why this particular flight I would think that connection would jump to the front.

 

[MerryPrankster]

I wonder if the blame and accusations would have gone in an entirely different direction. Would there be a search for disgruntled folks who had done it to stop the Namibian Independence process? I don't know who would have 'benefited' from stopping the process (or thought they could stop the process) but it would be a resonable direction to focus the investigation (or accusations) on. After all when people start asking why this particular flight I would think that connection would jump to the front.

That's a good point.

Did the Afrikaner Resistance Movement exist at this point in time?

 

[Marius]

That's a good point.

Did the Afrikaner Resistance Movement exist at this point in time?

Yes, they were established in the early 1970s.

I don't think the AWB would have been suspected, Namibian independence was really not a big thing for them.

 

[bsmart111]

Yes, they were established in the early 1970s.

I don't think the AWB would have been suspected, Namibian independence was really not a big thing for them.

I'll admit to not being up on Southern African Politics but I would expect investigators to look at any organization who would have seen Botha and company as 'appeasers' or 'turncoats' to 'the cause' (whatever the cause is). The perpetrators don't have to be trying to stop the particular mission of that trip but to stop the person or team they see as 'selling them out'

Just some thoughts (and if you believe in conspiracies who is to say that it wasn't bombed because they THOUGHT he was going to be on it and didn't get the word of the change?)

 

[Marius]

I'll admit to not being up on Southern African Politics but I would expect investigators to look at any organization who would have seen Botha and company as 'appeasers' or 'turncoats' to 'the cause' (whatever the cause is). The perpetrators don't have to be trying to stop the particular mission of that trip but to stop the person or team they see as 'selling them out'

Just some thoughts (and if you believe in conspiracies who is to say that it wasn't bombed because they THOUGHT he was going to be on it and didn't get the word of the change?)

That is really not the AWB's style, I really don't see them doing something like that.

And in 1988 it was definitely not a done deal that apartheid would end.

But if high-up NP politicians had to be taken out, it would much more likely have been through an assasination or a car bomb, or something like that.

And it just seems to make so much extra work, blowing up a plane in Europe to get two NP politicians?

I really don't think the AWB would have been suspected.

 

[TheMann]

I don't think the AWB is that competent. Pulling off a bombing where the bomb was planted in either London or Frankfurt is a tall order, and I doubt the AWB would do something that crazy. If they had tried and got caught trying to blow up an airliner, then it makes for big problems for hardliners of the NP government, just as how their case got hurt rather badly when a Conservative Party (the SA one, that is) MP gave the gun to the man that killed Chris Hani.

 

[ivanotter]

AWB would not have the capacity to plan and implement something like this. And why go to Europe to kill the PanAm flight?

It would be rather easy to do it in SA: car accident, shooting, etc.

The apartheid ministers, btw, did not have a lot of body guards and secret service people around.

FW de Klerk was also a bit of an "hawk". as minister of education, he was not interested in having black students at universities. FW was also a member of the Security Council, where Roelf Meyer was the chair as deputy minister of Law and Order (yes, there was a ministry called "Law and Order")

I have heard that Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB: Craig Williamson) decided who to kill and Barnard went out doing it. Eugene de Kock took care of a lot of other things, among those (as he said) was shooting prisoners in their cells, which he was not OK with, though.

AWB got exposed as a massive fraud at the incursion into Bophutaswana (Bop for short). The little 'coup' was counting on Constand Viljoen and his merry men. however, as AWB started to drive through the townships shooting at people and behaving like absolute lunatics with no discipline wahtsoever, Viljoen walked out on it.

It didn't help that the AWB leader, Terre'Blanche macho style liked riding around on a black horse. unfortunately he fell off one day and looked rather ridicolous.

That said, I have personally had to walk past one of the AWB 'recruitment stalls' and I did not feel good about it. It was intimidating.

so, AWB was a force at one time, but did get exposed as frauds.

Ivan

 

[ivanotter]

A more interesting development could be if Pik Botha, FW de Klerk, Mandela and Oliver Tambo were on PanAm 103 for the signing in New York.

Who would have been there to take up the mantle?

Ivan

 

[MerryPrankster]

I don't think the AWB is that competent. Pulling off a bombing where the bomb was planted in either London or Frankfurt is a tall order, and I doubt the AWB would do something that crazy. If they had tried and got caught trying to blow up an airliner, then it makes for big problems for hardliners of the NP government, just as how their case got hurt rather badly when a Conservative Party (the SA one, that is) MP gave the gun to the man that killed Chris Hani.

I wasn't suggesting the AWB actually do it--it's still being done by an agent of Gadhafi per OTL, with the POD being that Botha and company are on the plane.

I was suggesting they be blamed if a moderate South African leader and his entourage be killed, or at least be investigated.

 

[Marius]

I wasn't suggesting the AWB actually do it--it's still being done by an agent of Gadhafi per OTL, with the POD being that Botha and company are on the plane.

I was suggesting they be blamed if a moderate South African leader and his entourage be killed, or at least be investigated.

I doubt they would have been anyway close to being the Number One suspects.

There may have been a cursory investigation, but nothing serious.

Car bombs and assassination plots in South Africa sure, but anyone with a passing knowledge of the AWB would know that they would not have the capability to pull something like that off.