Kissinger at 100: How his ‘sordid’ diplomacy in Africa fuelled war in Angola and prolonged apartheid

‘Extreme arrogance and naivety’: Henry Kissinger (right) with the prime minister of apartheid South Africa, John Vorster, in West Germany in June 1976. Photograph: AP

The men who sat down for dinner at the Hotel Bodenmais in West Germany on 23 June 1976 were exclusively white, although the issue to be discussed was the path to majority black rule in Rhodesia. At the table was John Vorster, prime minister of apartheid South Africa. With him were ambassadors, diplomats and security officials. Pride of place, however, was reserved for the US secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, who opened the proceedings with a racially tinged joke.

It was a dinner that took place in the midst of a frantic two-year period when the world’s most high-profile diplomat – who had dismissively ignored Africa for much of his time in office in the Nixon and Ford administrations – was taken with a sudden interest in the continent.