Van Rensburg's path to Botswana
Jeff Ramsay | Friday June 23, 2017 06:00
From an early age issues of his own identity in a divided and unjust society surrounded him. He was born in Durban in December 1931. His parents separated when he was young and he was raised by his grandmother, an Afrikaner who had married a Frenchman from Mauritius named Lagesse. She subsequently accepted the Roman Catholic faith of her husband, resulting in young Patrick being brought up as a Catholic and speaking English in the home, while using the Lagesse surname.
It the above context he would maintain that it was only in his later teen years that it dawned upon him that he was an Afrikaner. After his studies he joined the civil service and started to further appreciate the ambiguous historic role of Afrikaner resistance to, and collaboration with, the forces of British imperialism. But, unlike most of his peers his sense of injustice evolved beyond his own tribe.
As a rising diplomat, Van Rensburg was serving as the South African Vice-Consul in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa), in the then Belgian Congo when, in May of 1957, he broke ranks by resigning from the civil service in protest against the Apartheid policies of his government. At the time his Afrikaans surname added to the news value of his stance.
Back home Van Rensburg joined the Liberal Party, then the only significant political organisation, besides the banned Communists, organising white South Africans in non-racial opposition to Apartheid. In September 1958 he became the party’s organizing secretary in Transvaal. Thereafter he was in the forefront with individuals like Patrick Duncan, in driving the organisation into an increasingly militant direction that culminated in its own banning as well as the ultimate participation by some of its members in the emerging armed struggle.
Initially Van Rensburg focused on trying to turn young Afrikaners away from Apartheid. When in 1957 the ANC leader Albert Luthuli was banned for five years under the Suppression of Communism Act, he spearheaded a protest meeting at the steps of Johannesburg Library. Thereafter he frequently joined hands with ANC leaders such as Robert Resha in trying to organise Afrikaner students.
Van Rensburg moved to Britain in mid-1959 and became the 'first director' of the campaign to boycott South African goods in Britain and the Netherlands which preceded the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In this role he wrote to the ANC President Chief Albert Luthuli asking him to send a statement calling 'freshly and clearly' for a boycott.
The Liberal Party had been split on the issue, but in November the Party's National Committee passed a resolution approving the boycott 'both here and overseas, as a legitimate political weapon'. Thus the message carried in Boycott News was signed jointly by the ANC and Indian Congress leaders Lutuli and Dr G. M. Naicker, along with the Liberal Party National Chairman Peter Brown. Together they jointly affirmed that economic boycott was one way in which the world at large could 'bring home to the South African authorities that they must either mend their ways or suffer for them'.
Back in South Africa, there was popular outrage directed at Van Rensburg amongst Afrikaners. The Die Vaderland newspaper labelled him as a 'snake-person'. Members of the Liberal Party itself remained divided as to whether to support Van Rensburg's call for boycott or not.
Returning to South Africa, Van Rensburg’s passport was confiscated and, following the Sharpeville massacre he was forced to flee the country.
On 30 March 1960 he found political asylum in Swaziland. From there he went to Bechuanaland from where the Ghanaian government flew him, in September 1960, to Accra.
Thereafter he stayed briefly in Britain, where he wrote and published his heartfelt indictment of the Apartheid system - “Guilty Land.”
Van Rensburg finally took up permanent residence in the then Bechuanaland Protectorate in 1962, becoming a Botswana citizen in 1973.