12-05-2025
Niël Barnard obituary: Afrikaner who helped to end apartheid
In the early 1980s South Africa's apartheid system appeared granite-firm, but its foundations were shaking. The country's white supremacist establishment faced a stark choice: full-scale military assault on the black liberation movement or a negotiated peace that would inevitably lead to black-majority rule.
Niël Barnard, the director of South Africa's National Intelligence Service (NIS), was a key figure in convincing the apartheid regime to plump for the second option. He urged South Africa's president, his close friend PW Botha, to face reality: international sanctions were biting hard, while South Africa was increasingly isolated as popular support for the anti-apartheid movement increased globally. Unrest in the townships was moving towards civil war and as the decade progressed it became clear that the Cold War was ending
