OBITUARY
Life of diplomatic intrigue amid radical changes
Leo ‘Rusty’ Evans was Pik Botha's right-hand man in an era of covert diplomacy and intrigue
Leo "Rusty" Evans, the director-general of SA’s foreign affairs department during the transition, has died of pancreatic cancer at his Pretoria home. Evans, one of few bureaucrats who served in a senior position in both pre-and post-apartheid SA, was 74 years old. He was long-serving foreign minister Pik Botha’s right-hand man, but was kept on after the 1994 general election, serving under Nelson Mandela’s foreign minister, Alfred Nzo. He was an unlikely English speaker in a predominantly Afrikaans administration. In an interview a month before he died, he told me of his interview for the job at foreign affairs by GP Jooste, an admirer of Hendrik Verwoerd and a dyed-in-the-wool nationalist. "I was told: ‘If you don’t speak Afrikaans, there’s no place for you in foreign affairs." He was turned down for the job. "But a month later, I got a telegraph," and soon he was working for the state. He worked his way up the public service and was training young diplomats when Pik Botha was appo...
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