General Magnus Malan
General Magnus Malan, who died on Monday aged 81, led the armed forces of apartheid South Africa and later became the first former minister to be put on trial on charges of committing atrocities during the period of white minority rule.
Abrasive South African Defence Minister who acted ruthlessly against the enemies and critics of apartheid
After a career in the South African Army General Magnus Malan went into politics at the top — on retirement from the South Africa Defence Force (SADF) in 1980 he was appointed Minister of Defence by President P. W. Botha. He became National Party MP for Modderfontein in 1981.
In December 1986 he became a deputy chairman of the party in the Transvaal. He is remembered for his conviction of the need for a total national strategy and “total onslaught” to deal with the forces of “communism” (in which he included most legitimate protest against apartheid).
Malan remained at Defence, despite two heart bypass operations until President F. W. de Klerk removed him in August 1991, by which time his reactionary views were becoming incompatible with the changing temper of the times. He moved to Water Affairs and Forestry, where he remained until he retired from active politics at the end of January 1993.
Magnus André de Merindol Malan was born at Kimberley in 1930 and attended the Afrikaans Boys’ High School and Danie Craven Physical Education Brigade, Kimberley. Joining the army as a cadet officer, he took a BSc in military science at the University of Pretoria.
His first senior appointment was as officer commanding South-West Africa Command 1966-68; there followed spells in command of the South African Military Academy, 1968-72, and of the Western Province, 1972-73, before he became chief of the South African Army in 1973 and of the South African Defence Force from 1976.
With his abrasive style, Malan was not at home in politics, or happy with public participation in public affairs, He believed South Africa was at war and that the end justified the means. He was convinced that for South Africa “one man, one vote, in a unitary state” would be a disaster.
He misunderstood the politics of protest and said of African unrest: “The revolution was basically about getting a roof over your head, having food to eat, education for your children, having a job and medical services. That was the crux of the whole thing.” After the 1986 State of Emergency had been declared he said democracy was not a relevant factor for blacks, among whom, he said, there was only limited interest in political participation.
Malan and P. W. Botha collaborated on the burgeoning security apparatus that fortified the State in the 1980s, part of which was a military assassination squad, chillingly known as the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB), which was used to quell unrest in the black townships. He later claimed to have known nothing of the bureau and its covert operations until November 1989.
In February 1990 there was a snap debate on the CCB. Malan acknowledged its existence but said he had not ordered any killings of opponents of the Government. There was pressure from the ANC for Malan to resign, and in October 1990 Archbishop Desmond Tutu called from the pulpit for his dismissal: “The new South Africa cannot afford yesterday’s men with dubious morals and yesterday’s attitudes.”
Internationally Malan never had any scruples about defending South Africa against “total onslaught”, as he saw it, fearing that the Soviet Union would establish itself in Angola, and use it as a base for forays into the whole continent. He admitted that South Africa was supporting Jonas Savimbi and his Unita movement (as other Western powers had done) which South Africa and the West in general saw as a potent anti-communist force. In Namibia he saw Swapo as communist-inspired.
In 1988 Malan and “Pik” Botha (the South African Foreign Minister) had a narrow escape. They were due to fly to New York, in connection with pre-independence talks for Namibia, and changed flights only hours before they would have caught PanAm Flight 103 (which was brought down over Lockerbie).
Though the military was not represented in the long negotiations with the ANC, Malan interfered in them, for example by saying that there could be no question of a merger between the SADF and Umkhonto we Sizwe (the ANC’s military wing). Though useful to the Government as a safety valve, he could not really get used to the idea of negotiating with the recent enemy, and when in August troops were moved into the townships he attacked left-wing radicals for their onslaught on the SADF.
After Malan’s retirement from active politics in November 1995 he was arrested, with ten other senior police and military officers, charged with having been responsible for the murder by an Inkatha hit squad (set up by order of the State Security Council and known as Caprivi 200) of 13 people at kwaMakhuta, south of Durban, on January 21, 1987, and of conspiring to kill anti-apartheid activists. After a six-month trial he and the other defendants were aquitted on all counts The acquittal led to much criticism of South Africa’s judicial system, and Tutu, as chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Council (TRC), stated that it offered a better way of uncovering the truth about the past. Malan had already said that he would not appear before the TRC, but in April 1997 his position changed and he offered to testify, though he insisted that he had never given orders for unlawful activities. Subpoenaed by the TRC in December 1997 regarding cross-border incursions into Mozambique in support of the Renamo right-wing rebels, in October 1998 he was found accountable, as a member of the State Security Council, for the State’s violations of human rights.
Malan married in 1962 Margrietha van der Walt. She survives him with a daughter and two sons.
General Magnus Malan, soldier and politician, was born on January 30, 1930. He died on July 18, 2011, aged 81
Seaman who was decorated for his heroism in rescuing a fellow sailor from burning oil after his ship was sunk in the siege of Malta
The failure of two convoys to get essential relief supplies through to Malta in June 1942 threw the precarious situation on the island into sharp relief. Only two merchantmen got through. Although besieged, Malta’s harbour and airfields provided bases for ships and submarines of the Royal Navy and RAF aircraft that threatened the sea supply lines of Rommel’s Afrika Korps and the Italian forces in the Western Desert. If Malta fell, the Allies could do little to prevent unrestricted reinforcement and supply of their enemies in North Africa.
Aviation fuel and anti-aircraft ammunition stocks on the island were numbered in days — at action rates — and general supplies down to less than five weeks when Convoy WS21S of 14 freighters with an escort equivalent to a battlefleet, including three aircraft carriers and the battleships HMS Nelson and Rodney, began to converge on Gibraltar in early August. The aim of Operation Pedestal was to fight the convoy through to Malta. On board HMS Ledbury, one of the Hunt class destroyers assigned as close escort to the merchantmen, was Petty Officer C. H. Walker.
WS21S and her escort entered the Mediterranean on August 9 but it was impossible to keep such a concourse of ships secret for long. At 1315 hours on August 11 the carrier HMS Eagle was struck simultaneously by four torpedoes fired by the German U73 and sank in six minutes. From 1420 hours that day, the merchantmen and escorts came under relentless attack from German and Italian bombers, torpedo bombers, E-boats and submarines. The convoy’s position 30 miles SSE of the island of Pantelleria was identified by German reconnaissance aircraft soon after dawn on August 13. A formation of 12 Ju88 bombers appeared at 0800 hours and immediately began to circle in readiness for attack. The merchant ships were steaming in line ahead for Malta — still 150 miles distant — and expecting an escort of RAF Beaufighters to arrive at any moment. But lack of fighter-control ships in the group precluded direct communication with the aircraft, which were still scouring the sea for the convoy. After failing to hit the tanker Ohio, two Ju88s singled out the cargo ship SS Waimarama for attention. The first aircraft released a stick of five bombs, of which a cluster of four struck the merchantman close to the bridge. The vessel had a deck cargo of petrol, which ignited in one sheet of flame; a violent explosion amidships threw up a huge column of smoke and debris as the ship first listed to starboard and then sank in a widening circle of burning oil.
To the crews of the accompanying escorts it seemed certain that all aboard the Waimarama must be lost. But, hearing shouts through the smoke, Lieutenant Roger Hill, RN, brought HMS Ledbury close in to the scene, lowered boats to pick up survivors and, rigging out scrambling nets as he went, plunged his ship into the flaming area of sea to rescue men trapped in pockets of clear water.
Petty Officer Walker, mustered on deck with others to give any assistance needed, saw one of the injured survivors of the Waimarama in difficulties in the water. Well knowing that the Ledbury might have to turn away at any moment to avoid the flames, he dived over the side and held the casualty up in the water, with burning oil all around them, until they could both be hauled aboard the destroyer.
Thirty-three of the Waimarama’s crew of 120 were rescued by the Ledbury. Scarcely was this accomplished than she came upon some of the crew of the Melbourne Star who had leapt overboard believing their own ship to be on fire as she became enveloped in the pall of smoke where the Waimarama had gone down.
Three of the 14 merchant ships of the convoy reached Malta on the evening of August 13; a fourth — the cargo vessel Brisbane Star — limped in on the 14th. Finally, the heavily damaged but vital oil tanker Ohio, with two destroyers lashed alongside to give her forward way and the indefatigable Ledbury acting as her rudder astern, crept into Valetta harbour with her decks awash at 0800 hours on the 15th. Nine merchant ships of the convoy were lost but 55,000 tons of critically important cargo reached besieged Malta.
Charles Henry Walker — who always preferred to be known as “Charles Henry” — received the Albert Medal from King George VI on August 13, 1943 — one year to the day after the act of heroism that had earned him the award. The Albert Medal, named after Queen Victoria’s Prince Consort, was instituted in 1867 specifically for saving life at sea and was regarded as equal — in terms of the degree of gallantry it honoured — to the Victoria Cross.
The George Cross had been introduced by King George VI in 1940, after the onset of German air attacks on British cities, to recognise “acts of the most conspicuous courage in circumstances of extreme danger” by civilians or members of the Armed Forces when not in the immediate presence of the enemy. In a move to rationalise awards for gallantry in such circumstances, a royal warrant of 1971 authorised all surviving holders of the Albert Medal to exchange their awards for the George Cross. Walker received his from the Queen on March 12, 1973.
Charles Henry Walker was born in Portsmouth in 1914 and joined the Royal Navy as a seaman in the early 1930s. He served with the Royal Navy off Palestine during the Arab rebellion of 1938 and shortly after this became a galley cook specialist, attaining the rank of petty officer cook shortly after the outbreak of war. He served with Atlantic convoys, in the Mediterranean and with HMS Ledbury during the Italian campaign.
On leaving the Royal Navy in 1954 he became a postman in Portsmouth, eventually retiring to Cleveland. After receiving the George Cross he donated his Albert Medal to the museum of HMS Victory at Portsmouth.
He is survived by his wife, Brenda, their son and two daughters.
Petty Officer Charles Henry Walker, GC, naval veteran, was born on March 9, 1914. He died on July 17, 2011, aged 97
