The ANC were especially worried by Mandela’s list of people he wanted to consult, including “kingmakers,” which he had given the government. Slovo thought these meetings could be used to divide the ANC, and that Mandela might be “knocked off his pedestal.” Chris Hani too suspected that the government was trying to destroy Mandela, by leaking the talks with him. Tambo remained concerned about the secrecy, but still trusted Mandela: “Let him continue; but his whole handling requires adjustment.”5
Was Mandela selling out? The ANC inside South Africa were apprehensive about his lone diplomacy. “He had not consulted,” said Allan Boesak, “and there was no greater sin in the UDF.” Some leaders, including Govan Mbeki, wanted to visit the people whom Mandela had asked to talk to and tell them not to see him. Mbeki had spent several hours in Mandela’s bungalow, and was distressed: “He seemed either not to have sufficient confidence in me to tell me the full story, or alternatively the other side might have come to some arrangement with him which he felt he couldn’t break.” Mbeki insisted that “no meaningful consultations are possible at Victor Verster.”6 The rumors about Mandela’s ill health and tuberculosis encouraged suspicions that he was being psychologically weakened and manipulated. No one had seen a photograph of him since 1965. “His eyes looked so dead,” said one aide in Lusaka. “We thought he might really have changed.”7
But Tambo had now found a way of breaking through the communications barriers and achieving more direct contact. In 1988 he sent Mac Maharaj, the Indian veteran from Robben Island, back into South Africa together with Siphiwe Nyanda, an experienced MK guerrilla known as Ghebuza, to establish Operation Vula, a top secret military mission which could connect up with internal activists and provide an “insurance policy” if negotiations failed. Maharaj had been to Moscow and Amsterdam, where he had acquired false passports and new teeth and lost his beard. He had also been equipped with a laptop computer and a modem, brought out by a friendly KLM hostess, with which he could send coded messages through telephones. The system, devised by two ANC experts in Britain, Tim Jenkin and Ronnie Press, could secretly make a link between Tambo and Mandela.
By April 1989 Tambo was ready to communicate directly with Mandela in his prison house. Mandela was reluctant to begin underhand activities in the midst of his delicate secret talks; but Maharaj sent a message explaining how he could send memos to Tambo concealed inside book covers, which could reach Lusaka through a coded computer system. Eventually messages from Mandela began miraculously appearing on the screen in Lusaka. “The two were now talking in confidence,” said Tim Jenkin, “for the first time since the early sixties.” The messages helped to reassure Tambo about Mandela’s objectives; but he could not share his top secret source with his colleagues without jeopardizing the system; and he still had great difficulty in persuading his left wing that Mandela was not selling out.8
On April 28 there was another tense meeting of the President’s Committee in Lusaka, with more worries about Mandela’s memorandum. Tambo, summing up, thought that Mandela was incorrect to give the government the names of people he wanted to see, and hoped that he would break the confidentiality of his talks; but “we really have no reason to say he should discontinue,” and he concluded that “we cannot really as a matter of policy say he can’t ask anybody to see him.”9
Tambo encapsulated his own thoughts in his diary:
1. We are not against negotiations in principle but the conditions therefor have not matured.
2. Mandela is not negotiating but is facilitating a meeting of the SAR and ANC—to forestall a bloodbath, as he sees it. He makes that clear.
3. The problem for us is not what he tells the team when they visit him, but that we do not know what they say to one another. This is vital information without which we could not in any case meet the regime, especially because they would be fully briefed about the nature and content of the talks over these many months.
4. Therefore we agree he should continue to maintain the contact but that he must confide in us about the discussions with them.10
The worries and bewilderment in Lusaka were hardly surprising. In the words of Barbara Masekela, who was there at that time: “There’s always a paranoia in exile. You know it’s about to happen, but you’re not in control. You have to take a step forward which may be wrong. There’s guessing and second-guessing. People have sacrificed their whole youth for the struggle, and they’re reluctant to make the leap: some people can pose themselves into the new situation, but some can’t.”11
Their suspicions were well grounded. The government certainly hoped to detach Mandela and split the ANC, and to make a separate deal with Buthelezi. But they had misread Mandela’s ability and toughness. “They’d never dealt with black people of that caliber,” said George Bizos, who was seeing Mandela frequently at his bungalow (he noticed that even the flower bed was bugged). “They thought they could corrupt him, like Matanzima or Mangope. He did not deceive them. It was their misjudgment which led to his release. Once they had started to negotiate they couldn’t go back, because of the ungovernability. At Victor Verster Mandela was already taking charge.”12
Sisulu, who in Pollsmoor had sporadic contact with Mandela, shared that view: “They would have misjudged him. They regarded us as wild people, including Madiba. When they saw a reasonable tone, they misjudged the person. It’s easy to underestimate Madiba when he’s nice—without knowing his stubbornness in approach.… They look at the softness of the soft line: he is not aggressive, he is not wild. Then the possibilities are imagined to be there: to get Mandela. The National Party were prepared to discuss because the leadership would come from them, not from the ANC.”13
Whatever the government’s expectations, they were soon thrown into confusion, for in January 1989 P. W. Botha had a stroke. It incapacitated him for a month, while the die-hard Cabinet Minister Chris Heunis became Acting President, spreading further gloom among foreign diplomats. “With his lugubrious moustache,” said Robin Renwick, “he always reminded me of a dead walrus.”14 After a month Botha stood down from the leadership of the National Party, unwisely assuming he could remain State President.
The party had to elect a new leader, and it chose not the moderate candidate, the liberal Minister of Finance, Barend du Plessis, but the apparently conservative Minister of Education, F. W. de Klerk. He looked unpromising to most foreign leaders, including Thatcher: “She thought he was just another bloody Boer,” as her Private Secretary, Charles Powell, put it.15 De Klerk had resisted many of P. W. Botha’s reforms, and had been shocked when the Foreign Minister, Pik Botha, had said he was prepared to serve under a future black president. De Klerk was not imposing: “a small man with bad skin and worse taste in clothes,” the Financial Times correspondent Patti Waldmeir noted. “He spoke English badly, smoked heavily, and seemed, somehow, shifty.” British diplomats were encouraged that he listened, was accessible and had no “side.” And the ANC were hopeful when he promised the National Party caucus a “great leap forward” and insisted that he had a mandate to talk to everyone.16 But he gave little promise of a bold change of policy.
Mandela and Tambo both looked to the world outside, particularly to Britain, to avert a bloodbath through the pressure of sanctions. But Tambo was becoming exasperated by Mrs. Thatcher’s intransigence, all the more after she branded the ANC as terrorists at the Commonwealth Summit in Vancouver in October 1987. She wanted to visit Mandela in prison, but Tambo was strongly opposed to it, suspecting she would try to separate him from the ANC: “We couldn’t allow it,” he said in December 1988. “She must get him out of jail.” Tambo was baffled by British attitudes, as he explained in London in January 1989: “I don’t know what is going to change diplomatic attitudes in London, they’re so insensitive. I suppose a horrific massacre. It’s very difficult to excuse Mrs. Thatcher for saying that the ANC are terrorists, because we are the victims. She’s totally blind: she can only see the violence of the ANC. It was Britain which landed us with this rac
ism.”
There were further rumors that Britain planned to broker an eventual negotiation in London, where southern African states would press the ANC toward agreement.17 In late March Thatcher toured Africa for a week, ending in Namibia, which was moving toward independence, where she sharply warned Pik Botha against a counterattack on SWAPO. She could not visit South Africa, she said, until Mandela was released. But her line was not encouraging to the ANC. She talked about one man, one vote, but not necessarily under a unitary state.18 She discussed with Buthelezi and other visitors the possibility of alternative federal constitutions, like the Swiss system of cantons. There were growing signs of “divide and rule.”
The ANC were all the more puzzled by Thatcher’s hostility when so many influential Afrikaners were in touch with them and wanted de Klerk to start talks; they included Pieter de Lange of the Broederbond, Johan Heyns, the head of the Dutch Reformed Church, Willie Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch University and Wimpie de Klerk, the future President’s brother. “So why is Mrs. Thatcher moving in a different direction,” Thabo Mbeki asked, “apparently accepting group rights and rejecting talks with the ANC?” Mbeki still hoped that Thatcher could play a peacemaking role: when he met again with leading Afrikaners (including Wimpie de Klerk) at a Gold Fields conference in April, he thought that Mrs. Thatcher might be a mediator between the ANC and the South African government; but she decided that “any attempt to play a direct role from outside would be unwelcome.”19
The ANC achieved a new breakthrough in June 1989, when a conference of lawyers met in Oxfordshire, funded by the Ford Foundation and chaired by the lawyer-philosopher Ronald Dworkin, on the Concept of Law in South Africa. It was attended by senior South African judges and ANC lawyers, and a British Law Lord, Lord Oliver—with Tambo and Thabo Mbeki in the background. But it was shunned by Thatcher. Other British Ministers, including Geoffrey Howe, Chris Patten and Lynda Chalker, wanted to recognize the ANC: “It’s only Mrs. Thatcher who stops them,” said one of her staff. “She really is conservative.”20
Mandela was reluctant to criticize Mrs. Thatcher openly. He had admired the strong woman who could do business with Gorbachev, and realized she could have a unique influence on Pretoria. He was impressed by accounts of her Ambassador, Robin Renwick, and in March 1988 he sent a message through his Cape Town lawyer Hymie Bernadt welcoming Thatcher’s stand against apartheid “notwithstanding his difference of opinion on the sanctions issue.”21 But after the message was misleadingly leaked Mandela wrote to Renwick on April 10, firmly denying that he had written directly to Thatcher: “I would have preferred to do so in the course of a face-to-face discussion with you in person.” He still concluded: “I am happy to request you to pass my very best wishes to the Prime Minister.”22
The ANC were now putting more hope in the new American administration under George Bush. The new man in charge of Africa at the State Department, Herman Cohen, soon committed himself publicly to equal political rights for all South Africans, and described apartheid as “an outrageous human rights catastrophe.” By May Bush was distancing himself from Pretoria by talking to a delegation of black South Africans led by Archbishop Tutu, and by inviting Albertina Sisulu to report on human rights.23
The CIA were becoming more skeptical of the right-wing depiction of the ANC as dangerous communists. In March 1988, when Bush was Vice President, they had produced a secret analysis of the ANC (partly declassified in 1996) which showed a clear respect for Tambo’s leadership. While seventeen out of twenty-seven members of the National Executive were probably communists, said the report, there were “only a handful of committed black members inside South Africa,” and Tambo had “long been subtly curbing and channeling SACP influence.” The ANC’s consensus system, said the CIA, worked remarkably well; the ANC was becoming less patronizing to the UDF and the internal opposition, and was likely to “continue to pursue its two-track policy of maintaining close ties to [Soviet] Bloc countries while expanding contacts in the West.” In sum, the ANC had met the challenges of the last few years “by maintaining its organizational cohesion, retaining its dominant position in the antiapartheid movement, and broadening its contacts with the West.”24 But ten months later, in January 1989, the CIA noted that the “stalemate” in South Africa would not be broken “barring a dramatic shift … such as the unconditional—and highly unlikely—release of jailed ANC leader Nelson Mandela.”25
Both Washington and London seemed to be playing a double game by building up Chief Buthelezi. The ANC saw this as supporting de Klerk’s policy of group rights—which would enable him to release Mandela while dividing the tribes, and thus maintain the government’s control of them. Sisulu reckoned afterward: “Not only Thatcher, I think America and Germany too were working on a definite plan to promote Buthelezi in every possible way, and receiving reports of the reaction of Mandela.”26 Mandela seemed more trusting of Buthelezi: after receiving his greetings on his seventieth birthday he thanked him warmly and hoped his cordial relations with Tambo could be restored, while stressing the crucial need for unity: any act or statement which worsened division, he warned, would be a fatal error.27 But Tambo, having once been betrayed by Buthelezi, feared that the Zulu leader would exploit the friendship with Mandela.
What was de Klerk really up to? In May Tambo tried to assess him, in his careful handwriting in his notebook:
—Typical Nationalist Party politician—conservative.—Differs from PW in that he relies on argument and reason instead of wagging a finger and silencing debate.
—Is therefore capable of being persuaded by reality.
But he also reckoned that de Klerk was “firm on group rights—not negotiable”; and that “majority rule was totally unacceptable” to him. Colleagues had warned Tambo to “be careful, be cautious, do not rush into negotiations … be careful what you give away now, you may wish you had not done so should in future the balance of forces turn in your favour.”28
De Klerk’s links with the British government continued to worry the ANC. In June he toured Europe to reassure foreign leaders, including Mrs. Thatcher, who said afterward that “there is a new climate in South Africa.” But the ANC now worried that she wanted a solution based on “group protection,” backed by Buthelezi, as they explained in a Report on Consultations on June 6. “We don’t see how she can be an honest broker,” said the ANC diplomat Aziz Pahad, “when she is so closely allied to the regime.”29
Back in South Africa de Klerk was now taking control of government. He presided over his party’s federal congress and unveiled a five-year plan of action to prepare for the elections in September 1989. It promised to end discrimination and to introduce a democratic constitution, but put more emphasis on “group rights,” which would effectively divide the nonwhite population. President Botha was being very visibly sidelined, and he reacted bitterly by refusing to attend a gala banquet in his honor.
The internal black rebellion was now showing signs of a strong revival after the devastating crackdowns. Tambo had heralded 1989 as a Year of Mass Action for People’s Power, and his call was followed by a new surge of protest. In January prisoners on Robben Island went on a prolonged hunger strike which eventually persuaded the government to release nine hundred detainees, including key UDF leaders. In February the UDF regrouped, in alliance with the trade unions of COSATU, into a Mass Democratic Movement (MDM) which quickly launched a Defiance Campaign to challenge segregated institutions, beginning with processions of black patients arriving at white hospitals—where doctors and nurses agreed to treat them. The Churches were becoming more militant, with Archbishop Tutu in the van. And the armed struggle was becoming more effective, with attacks on policemen and government buildings, culminating in a successful mortar attack on a radar station in May. It was, wrote Tom Lodge, “a remarkable upswing in the movement’s fortunes”; while the new government, facing growing international criticism and a continuing economic crisis, appeared to lack the resources and resolve for more ruthless military su
ppression.30
P. W. Botha was still State President, even though politically weakened; and it was in this uneasy interim that Mandela received the invitation he had been waiting for for two years. Botha had often (he told me) asked his intelligence chief, Niël Barnard: “When is Mandela coming to see me?” to be told that the time was not ripe. But in mid-1989 Barnard said that Mandela wanted to talk to him, and that the time was ripe. Botha agreed to “a general discussion.”31 On July 4 the gentlemanly General Willemse told Mandela he would be seeing President Botha for a “courtesy call” early the next morning. Mandela, conscious as always of his image, was determined to make the right impression; he asked for a new suit, reread all his notes, and rehearsed what he would say.32 It was the ultimate test of his dignity, to outface the man notorious for his bullying and finger-wagging: the prisoner confronting the President. “He’d always felt that the government had treated blacks as children,” said one of his colleagues. “He was determined to meet the President on a basis of equality.”33
Mandela was driven first to breakfast with General Willemse, then to the garage below the President’s offices in the Tuynhuys, next to Parliament. Entering secretly by lift, he found Kobie Coetsee, Niël Barnard and others waiting nervously for him in the anteroom. Major Marais, the prison commander, carefully retied his shoelaces. “I was tense,” Mandela recalls, “because I was expecting a fight.”34
But Botha was in his most courteous mode. He strode toward the famous prisoner he had never met, smiling, hand outstretched, with disarming friendliness. They sat down at the table with Coetsee and Barnard; while Botha to Mandela’s amazement poured the tea himself. They talked relaxedly for half an hour about South African history and culture: about the Boer War, African Presidents and Matanzima in the Transkei. Mandela suggested that the Afrikaners were really “the first freedom fighters,” and compared his own struggle (as he had often before) with the Afrikaner rebellion against the government in the First World War. He explained how he had come to know the Afrikaners better in prison. Botha said that Mandela could contribute to a peaceful solution; but he must not forget the contribution Afrikaners could make. At the end, Mandela, more tensely, asked for the release of all political prisoners, which Botha politely refused. But they agreed about the need for peace, prepared a minimal statement and parted genially. “It was one of the pleasantest interviews I have had,” Mandela recalled. “He treated me with respect, very correctly. That is the image I have of him.”35 Niël Barnard thought the atmosphere was so convivial that it must be “just a matter of time” before Mandela was released. But there was some tension when Mandela brought up the subject of immediately releasing Sisulu. Botha seemed sympathetic, but Barnard had to explain to Mandela on the way back to prison that it would take time to persuade the bureaucracy, which infuriated Mandela. The meeting was photographed by one of the aides, recording a genial, informal scene. It was also tape-recorded by Botha’s staff, but Barnard afterward had the tape destroyed (to the fury of Botha, who claimed Barnard “stabbed me in the back”).36
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