No Asylum from Her Majesty: The British FCO and Complicity with Apartheid

ABSTRACT Jeanette and Katryn Schoon were assassinated on 28 June 1984, the victims of a parcel bomb sent to Angola by the apartheid state's security services. To understand the state's decision to assassinate the Schoons, it is necessary to look back to the Schoons' time in Botswana, where they were members of the African National Congress (ANC)'s exile structures for six years, from 1977 to 1983. I argue that the Schoons’ forced departure from Botswana in 1983 was profoundly influenced by the British government, working in support of the apartheid state. Furthermore, I argue that the UK’s complicity in this instance placed the Schoons in an unnecessarily precarious position. Without recourse to asylum in the UK, the Schoons were forced to seek refuge in a nation locked in an extended armed conflict with South Africa, and they were therefore within striking range of the apartheid state’s security forces. It seems the notion that the Schoons might end up somewhere even less safe than Botswana did not enter the equation for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). Their only real concern was to get the Schoons away from the precious citizens of the United Kingdom.