In Memoriam
Tom Wheeler, wrote this short overview of his life, entitled “A life Tom Wheeler” in 2011 at the request of Mariena Kotze
Believe it if you will, but I was born high up on Devil’s Peak in Cape Town, where my father, also an old boy, was the government forester.
By the time it came for me to start school, we were living in Stellenbosch and I started Sub A at Rhenish in 1944. It was there that I started to develop a life-long love of classical music at the music appreciation session in the hall of the old school building on The Braak. I was also auditioned for the role of the little boy in the school play, Daddy Long Legs. I could not understand why I heard no more, but obviously I did not pass muster.
I moved to Paul Roos Primary from Standard 3 and continued at the school right through to Matric, being taught in Stds 5 and 6 by Mr Sam Bosman, in class with the likes of Peter van der Merwe, the later Springbok cricket captain. My closest friend was Tony Starke from Muldersvlei, but I lost contact with him when he moved to boarding school in Grahamstown.
Later teachers that come to mind are Oom At Slabber, Jaco van der Merwe (I was the only English boy in my year to take Afrikaans Higher, something that stood me in good stead in my first career as a translator), Messrs Murray (English and Latin) and De Jong in whose class Pete-Jan Pahl had to help me with the mysteries of Maths. My closest friend was Murray Boyes.
I moved straight to Maties after matric and did a BA in English and History, with Afrikaans-Nederlands II, and basic French and German. The head of the English department was the father of one of my classmates at Paul Roos, Keith Hooper.
Oddly I very soon lost complete contact with all my school classmates and met only a few of them again for the first time at the 50th class reunion in 2005.
Perhaps this is because I left Stellenbosch immediately after graduation to take up a government job in Pretoria.
I soon found that translating agricultural publications and articles from Afrikaans into English and vice versa was not the way I wanted to spend the rest of my working life. When a circular came from the Department of External Affairs as it was then still called, inviting applications for the post of cadet, I did not hesitate.
To the indignation of the director of the Language Services Bureau, I was successful and I moved to the Union Buildings in January 1961. So started a 42-year career in DFA, which ended when I retired at 65 in 2003.
During those years I served in Washington DC, arriving shortly before John F Kennedy was assassinated, Blantyre, Malawi ( when the only SAA plane ever to be hijacked landed at Chileka airport), London, Sydney, New York (where I was consul-general), and Washington again (where I was deputy to ambassador Piet Koornhof) until the end of 1989.
My wife, Marie, and I and our three children returned to South Africa as Nelson Mandela was released by FW de Klerk. It was a rapidly changing world and I attended the Codesa negotiations at Kempton Park for a brief period as an adviser to the government delegation.
During a spell as director of personnel management, I drafted what might be called the Department’s first affirmative action policy, to provide for the incorporation of members of the ANC’s International Department, their overseas representatives, into the “new” post-1994 department.
Soon afterwards I was promoted to chief director and moved to the Multilateral branch, attending many international conferences and forums that had previously been closed to South Africa. For instance, I was a member of President Mandela’s delegation that travelled t0 New York in 1994 to resume South Africa’s seat in the UN General Assembly.
It was Mandela who in 1997 appointed me as ambassador to Turkey and five of the former Soviet Central Asian republics.
During my time in Turkey, Marie died of cancer. I subsequently met Donna, an American academic who was teaching at a Turkish university, at the local Anglican church. We were married in June 2000 and we like to boast that we have a marriage certificate in a language we cannot read!
We returned to South Africa in July 2001 to my last position as chief director responsible for Latin America and the Caribbean.
The day after my retirement I started work at the South African Institute of International Affairs in Johannesburg, now commenting on the performance of my erstwhile colleagues. My practical experience of diplomacy and international affairs has made of me a frequent commentator in the electronic and print media. I have written a number of academic articles and also edited several books for SAIIA.
My most recent endeavour has been the co-compiling of the memoirs of over a hundred former South African diplomats who served between 1966 and 1995. These were published in three volumes in March 2011 under the title From Verwoerd to Mandela: South African Diplomats Remember.
I am grateful that I have been able to continue an active working life for a further eight years at the time of writing. I attribute this to my never having played any sport!
21 May 2011
