Glenn Babb

Glenn Robin Ware Babb (4 June 1943 - 25 June 2024) was a former politician and diplomat for the former apartheid government in South Africa. More recently he was a businessman and entrepreneur. From 1985 to 1987 he had a high-profile posting in Canada where he was his government's ambassador to Ottawa and made frequent public statements against the anti-apartheid movement and in defence of his government and in opposition to the movement for economic sanctions on and disinvestment from South Africa that the Canadian government was leading internationally.

Babb was educated at Stellenbosch University and at Oxford having been awarded the Joerg Gosteli bursary. While at Oxford, he rowed with the Lincoln College VIII and was part of the first crew to attempt to beat the Guards' record of fifteen and half hours for rowing from Oxford to London. Thereafter he joined South Africa's Department of Foreign Affairs.

During this time he was made Chairman of the Young Diplomats Association of Paris. He returned to Pretoria in 1972 and was Training Officer with the Department. He authored the book "Training for the Diplomatic Service".

In 1975, he returned to Paris where he was the embassy's counsellor and then in 1978, he moved to the South African embassy in Rome. and claimed that sanctions would harm South African blacks more than the white minority. He also said of sanctions, "Whether you shoot the zebra in the white stripe or the black stripe," he said, "you are going to kill the zebra." He claimed that the disruption of mineral production in South Africa was in the interests of the Soviet Union and that South Africa was the only force standing in the way of an expansion of Soviet intervention in the African continent.

He was interviewed by the famous Jack Webster in Vancouver who told him: "You're doing very well, laddie". Elizabeth Grey of CBC spent a day with him and submitted her report for the broadcasting prize of 1985. His first interview after arrival in Ottawa was on "Crossfire" which immediately launched public interest in his frank and direct approach to what he regarded as the Canadian misapprehensions about South Africa's future. Southam News' E Kaye Fulton followed his activities through Canada for a week and wrote a thought-provoking article which caught the nuances of the South African diplomacy in transition.

In an article in Fortune, Babb compared South Africa's treatment of its black population with Canada's treatment of Native peoples. "The media reaction was phenomenal, and some Indian leaders said I was on the right track," said Babb retrospectively. Accepting an invitation by Chief Louis Stevenson, Babb made a high-profile visit to a First Nations reserve, the Peguis Band in Manitoba, with media in tow, in order to press his point. Thereafter, delegations from the Indian representative body, the Assembly of First Nations, visited South Africa and gave credence to the view that there was indeed a comparative advantage for South African blacks.

In 1987 he addressed the Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario on the "Strategic Value of South Africa".

Return to South Africa In 1987, Babb was recalled to South Africa to take over as head of the Africa division and deputy director-general of the Department of Foreign Affairs. As such, he initiated, after a meeting with President Sassou Nguesso of the Republic of the Congo, the Brazzaville talks for the withdrawal of South African troops from Angola and ending the country's involvement in the South African Border War. He was the first ever National Party candidate to share an election platform with a black person. President F.W. de Klerk made a point of visiting his constituency during polling day. He was eventually defeated by Wynand Malan, co-leader of the liberal Democratic Party. His was the only constituency which recorded an increase in voters for the NP which lost 31 seats in Parliament in the election. He was nevertheless appointed to a seat in the South African parliament by F.W. de Klerk who, as State President, had the constitutional right to fill four seats in the House of Assembly, the whites-only chamber of the tricameral Parliament, through direct appointment. While in Parliament, he formed the Felix Trust. Founded to promote peaceful race relations in South Africa, its first Trustees were Wendy Ackerman, Aggrey Klaaste, Peter Bedborough, Danie le Roux and Thijs Nel (and later Pieter Toerien): it donated a fountain "Peace in Africa" to the University of Pretoria, built ceramic housing with an innovative heating process and nominated Thuli Madonsela, Public Protector, for the Civil Courage Prize in New York where for the second time ever the Train Trust awarded an Honorable Mention to her.

Babb subsequently left parliament after two years, in 1991, and returned to the Department of Foreign Affairs, serving as South Africa's ambassador to Italy During that time, South Africa established diplomatic relations with Albania, Malta and San Marino, to which he was accredited as ambassador. He was appointed the first South African Permanent Representative to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation since 1963.

Between 1991 and 1992, he participated in the Mozambican peace negotiations in Rome between RENAMO and FRELIMO under the aegis of the Rome Sant' Egidio community. His role is mentioned positively in Sant' Egidio's report on the success of the Peace Protocol. During his ambassadorship in Rome, he was nominated to be South Africa's Commissioner at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and 1995. South Africa participated for the first time in three decades again in 1993 with an impressive exhibition of several artists' work called "Incroce del Sud" which received good reviews. He was also appointed in 1991 by the Board of the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Testaccio as the administrator of the cemetery and presided over the 200th anniversary of Shelley's birth - both Shelley and Keats are buried in the cemetery.

He also served as Commissioner of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Italy. In 1995, Babb left government service. From 1995 to 2002 he was a trustee of the Arthur Childe Army Award Trust.

In 1997 he was appointed Director of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra. A year later, he was appointed consultant to the government of the Western Cape and he continued in that role till 2002. In the same year, he was appointed Honorary Consul General of the Republic of Turkey with jurisdiction for the Western, Northern and Eastern Cape Provinces.

In 1999 he arranged Profumo d'Italia Flavour of Italy with the backing of the Italian Ambassador and the Italian-South African Chamber of Commerce and Industry at the V&A Waterfront, a wide-ranging promotion of Italian goods which included a masked ball, two nights of opera, a gondola on the harbour, stands for Maserati and Alfa Romeo, two Italian film stars, Franco Nero and Claudia Pandolfi, who opened the Italian film evenings, Italian music in the Amphitheatre and Italian cooking and cheese-making lessons. Two million people visited the event.

In 2005, his firm Babrius was appointed by the Secretariat of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries [ACP] aligned to the EU to write a report, "Study on the Future of the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries" which was published in French and English by the ACP in Brussels on 13 February 2006

Babb was chairman of the Owl Club, from 2006 to 2007, a gentlemen's club, in Cape Town. He has also been active with various business pursuits such as long-lasting milk [PARMALAT], oil lubricants, manufacturing, a tourism service, manufacturing wine vats and owning an office support and internet service.

In December 2012 he published an article in the African Yearbook of Rhetoric on rhetorical action in diplomacy with specific reference to the relative fortunes of Indians in Canada and indigenous peoples in South Africa. This led to an interview on CBC Radio.

In July 2014 Babb was appointed chairman of the Ethics Committee of Southern Wind Shipyard and non-executive director of the company.

In September 2015 Babb organised the international Sol d'Oro Southern Hemisphere Olive Oil competition in Cape Town which ended with a gala prize-award evening at the residence of the first Italian ambassador to South Africa, Casa Labia. It was attended by the Premier of the Western Cape, Helen Zille, and the Minister of Agriculture, Alan Winde.

He was elected Chairman of the Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society in December 2016. In October 2018 he was elected Trustee of the Fish Hoek Valley Museum.

In 2022 he published his diplomatic memoirs under the title "In One Era and out of the Other" (Footprint Press) In 2023 he published a book on Johannesburg and his family's history in the city under the title "My Joburg Family" Publications Babb has published short stories and poetry, articles on legal subjects, and numerous other reports and articles, including: Prison Administration in South Africa. Department of Foreign Affairs, 1968. Training for the Diplomatic Service. SA Institute for International Affairs, 1975. South Africa: Where we stand. C-FAR Canadian Issue Series, 1986. Il Capo: una delle prime citta d'acqua del Nuovo Mondo. Aquapolis Quarterly, International Centre Cities on Water, 2000, Vol 3–4. The Future of the African Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries. ACP/28/012/06 Brussels, 13 Feb 2006. Abubakr Effendi: Among the Young Turks in Afrikaans. Quarterly Bulletin of the National Library of South Africa, 2010, Vol 64, No 1. International rhetoric and diplomatic discourse "African Yearbook of Rhetoric" Vol 3, No 3 2012 Cape Town's Devious Designs Cape Times 1 April 2014 Kanada Trap Steeds Klei Rapport 31 January 2016 SA, Pik Botha, die Pleidooie en Sir Percy Rapport 20 August 2016 Die Kaap en die k-woord (The Battle of Muizenberg 222 years later) Rapport 6 August 2017 Muizenberg's Famous Station False Bay Echo 27 September 2018 Ons taal se begin in die Bo-Kaap Rapport 5 January 2020 The Hollowness of the National Party's Foreign Policy and the Hollow Man who Pursued it - Pik Botha: an Assessment https://politicsweb.co.za/opinion/the-hollowness-of-pik-botha Revolution and White Privilege https://politicsweb.co.za/opinion/on-revolutions-and-white-privilege African despair https://www.politicsweb.co.za/opinion/african-despair Nee vir Turkye se boelie Islamis Rapport 17 January 2021 Glenn Babb: "Ek het nie uitgesluit gevoel op US" Rapport 28 March 2021 "Le Canada ne peut pas donner des lecons aux chinois" fr.sputnik.news.com>radio 17 June 2021 Siedaar: Kanada se eie apartheid Rapport 5 September 2021 Is Westerse Breinselle met 'n Siekte Besmet? Rapport 26 June 2022 In One Era and out of the Other - copyright Glenn Babb 2022 Published by Footprint Press, South Africa pages 506 www.footprintpress.co.za My Joburg Family copyright Glenn Babb 2023 Published by Footprint Press, South Africa pages 183 www.footprintpress.co.za