A diplomat with Africa in his veins

PAUL Boateng wears the sandstone splendour of his country's gabled Pretoria mission as comfortably as the designer suits that led The Times of London to label him one of Westminster's best-dressed men.

PAUL Boateng wears the sandstone splendour of his country's gabled Pretoria mission as comfortably as the designer suits that led The Times of London to label him one of Westminster's best-dressed men.

The building reeks of a colonial history that could never have envisioned a black man as the queen's representative in South Africa - not even one who is a member of the National Opera Board.

Nor is it likely that that was what then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had in mind when he told South Africa's Parliament in 1960 "the wind of change is blowing through this [African] continent".

But Boateng, 54, is probably the most appropriate envoy ever appointed by Britain to foster its relationship with the former colony that still bears the scars of its influence.

He arrived knowing much of what his predecessors had to learn. He has roots in the anti-apartheid struggle going back more than 30 years.

It also helps that he is friendly with many in the South African government and has had a personal association with President Thabo Mbeki that goes back to the ANC's exile presence in London.

Also, as a Methodist lay preacher and left-wing church activist, Boateng has known and worked with Mbeki's top aide, Frank Chikane, a prominent anti-apartheid cleric, over many years.

He is also one of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's favourites, having worked closely with him and Chancellor Gordon Brown - widely expected to succeed Blair - on the African recovery programme worked out by Blair's Commission for Africa.

"I'm British. I'm black. I have Scottish and African roots, which is a source of great joy and pride to me. I celebrate both sides of my family - African and British," he said in an interview this week, just hours after his return from the G8 summit in Scotland.

He insisted over a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit that his African links give him no special influence in Pretoria: "There are very many first-rate diplomats in the British foreign service who have an empathy [with] and an understanding [for] and a commitment to Africa, who don't happen to have African origins."

But he added: "I am privileged to have those origins, to have a connection with this continent that is both deeply personal and political."

Boateng was born in London's Hackney borough on June 14 1951, to a Ghanaian barrister and a Scottish Quaker teacher. He spent what he calls his formative years, between the ages of two and 15, in Ghana, where his father was an adviser to Kwame Nkrumah and then a minister in his government.

His father was jailed without trial for four years after Nkrumah was deposed. Boateng returned to Britain with his mother, where he finished school and then studied law at Bristol University.

"My father was a freedom fighter for Ghanaian independence. He is of the generation of men and women - now in their late 70s and early 80s - who worked and fought for the independence of this continent.

"That gives me a personal link and a connection across the continent with my father's contemporaries, who were frequent visitors to our home," he said.

Those early influences included neighbours Oliver and Adelaide Tambo and set him up to become an ardent African liberation activist from the age of 15, when he joined the British Labour Party.

He campaigned for the key left-wing causes of the time, from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and black civil rights in Britain to the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

At his election to the Brent South constituency of Britain's Parliament in 1987, with Adelaide Tambo in the crowd to celebrate his victory, he underlined his agenda: "We can never be free in Brent until South Africa is free, too. Today Brent South, tomorrow Soweto."

Over the next 18 years, he moderated his outspoken hard-left politics and became one of Blair's rising stars, serving eight years as a junior minister and for the last three as a full Cabinet minister.

"There is a wonderful arrogance about him," journalist and former Black Panther Darcus Howe once wrote. "He doesn't feel inferior to anybody; you see this huge smile and behind it you know the guy is deadly. He has a backbone of steel that other people don't have."

Howe has since become a critic, charging in a more recent article that Boateng has been "put out to pasture" after failing to make his mark as MP for Brent South.

Boateng's own assessment of his tenure was more congratulatory. "I stuck up for my constituents without fail," he said in a farewell letter. "I'm proud of what we have achieved for Brent and for Britain in the last eight years and I am privileged to have had a personal part in that success."

Boateng's appointment is part of Blair's effort to place Africa near the top of the world agenda, and to keep it there in the medium to long term, until the continent breaks the cycle of poverty and deprivation and takes its place among the community of successful nations.

Boateng has also been closely involved in the crafting of the programme for Africa which the G8 leaders partly accepted at their July 6-8 summit. At the heart of that programme is a new determination to map the way forward in consultation with Africa and its leaders.

"I hope that we have learned the lessons of the past - that prescriptions cooked up in London, Berlin or New York simply don't wash. You've got to listen, you've got to be respectful, you've got to recognise the context in which development occurs," he said.

"Africa is a deeply complex and diverse place. It's important for outsiders and onlookers to recognise the complexity of Africa. That is part of its richness and wonder, but don't look for simple solutions, for easy answers. There aren't any."

Boateng said he had discussed South Africa's policy on Zimbabwe privately with Mbeki after handing over his credentials in June, but he declined to give any detail of their discussion.

"I don't think it helps pointing a finger at this leader or that leader. The leader who really needs to understand that things have got to change and that he needs to be part of the solution is President Mugabe.

"This is a crisis that can be resolved only in Africa - ultimately by Africans in general and Zimbabweans in particular," he said.

Choosing his words carefully, Boateng avoided any criticism of Mbeki's low-key approach towards Zimbabwe, opting instead to praise his efforts in Ivory Coast, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Eritrea.

"I am grateful and respectful of what South Africa is doing all over Africa. No country has devoted more of its energy and resources to peacekeeping than South Africa.

"Zimbabwe is an outstanding problem," he added.

Boateng and his wife, Janet, have two sons and four daughters.