Mandela saw Botha crossing the Rubicon he had shirked three years before. And his relationship with the “Crocodile” proved oddly enduring. The official statement blandly described the meeting as an “informal courtesy visit” in which the two men “availed themselves of the opportunity to confirm their support for peaceful developments in Southern Africa.” Mandela endorsed it, while explaining that it showed “no deviation from the position I have taken over the past twenty-eight years”: that only a dialogue with the ANC could bring peace to the country.37 But the promise to support peaceful developments was not hollow: Mandela and Botha would trust each other more than either trusted de Klerk; and many of Botha’s colleagues, including Barnard, would insist that Botha did much more to achieve reconciliation than de Klerk.38
Most journalists and politicians assumed that President Botha’s talk with Mandela was intended to upstage de Klerk. If so, it was to no avail. Six weeks later Botha resigned in a furious televised speech, complaining that “I am being ignored by ministers serving in my cabinet,” and was succeeded, much against his will, by de Klerk.
The new President still showed no desire for a fundamental change of direction: he was concerned (said his brother Wimpie) about the impracticability of apartheid, not its immorality.39 But he was a clear-sighted pragmatist and he was very aware of the economic crisis. He soon realized how circumscribed were his choices: all roads led to Mandela.
In his prison bungalow Mandela was becoming more accessible to family and friends. In July he celebrated his seventy-first birthday, spending four hours with Winnie and fifteen other members of his family, including children and grandchildren. His four colleagues from Pollsmoor were also brought to see him—for the first time since December. Kathrada was allowed a brand-new suit for the occasion: “It does a great deal to boost one’s individuality,” he wrote. “More important is the ability to choose something.… It gives one a nice feeling even to be able to specify the color of a tie, or a pattern of a jersey.” The arrival of suits had encouraged rumors of release, though Kathrada remained skeptical as always. “There is absolutely nothing to indicate that anything will happen in the foreseeable future,” he insisted to Eddie Daniels.40 There was a special expectation that Sisulu would be released. Since March 15 he had been in Mandela’s old cells in Pollsmoor, separated from the other three. “Beware the Ides of March,” Kathrada joked with him. But the government was still worried about releasing Sisulu before the forthcoming elections: the team asked Mandela several times to warn Sisulu not to make trouble.41 But they did not let him out.
The government dithered. On August 19 Mandela again met with the team, led as before by Coetsee and Barnard, who produced their own document or “non-paper” in reply to his memorandum to Botha. It recognized that the two sides had points of contact about a “pre-negotiating stage,” while rejecting many of Mandela’s arguments; but it proposed further discussions after the elections in September.42
Up in Lusaka, Tambo was now under more stress, trying to hold the ANC and its allies together. He remained totally loyal to Mandela: he still insisted on calling himself Acting President, keeping the presidency vacant for his friend. “He willed that Mandela should be a giant,” said Barbara Masekela. “If he had wanted to be President he would have taken better care of himself.”43 He was now visibly exhausted as he flew constantly among Zambia, Europe and America, battling for recognition and support. His doctors were repeatedly warning him to rest. He was the same age as Mandela, but the strains outside jail were greater, as Mandela had foreseen. And Tambo faced his hardest task in rallying the ANC behind the commitment to talks, which Mandela had begun.
To open the way to negotiation, Tambo had to bring the ANC together with the frontline states with a definitive statement. On August 21 the Organization of African Unity met in Zimbabwe and endorsed a document Tambo had carefully prepared and which Mandela had been shown in draft. The Harare Declaration was strikingly conciliatory in both tone and content: while it still backed the armed struggle, it emphasized that hostilities could be suspended after the release of political prisoners, the unbanning of the ANC and the removal of troops from the townships. It clearly distanced itself from the revolutionary wing that believed in the “seizure of power.” African leaders, it said, “have repeatedly expressed our preference for a solution arrived at by peaceful means.” In fact the armed struggle was ineffective; the guerrillas of MK were infiltrating across the borders into South Africa only to be ambushed, captured and tortured as the South African army tightened its intelligence through informers and interrogation.44 The ANC were looking to sanctions, rather than war, to press Pretoria to negotiate.
Mandela saw the Harare Declaration as a crucial breakthrough, putting the onus on Pretoria to provide the conditions for talks, while foreseeing a peaceful context for his own release.45 And the world welcomed it. “It establishes both climate and framework,” as the Financial Times commented, “for negotiations in which he is expected to play a key role.”46 It was a personal triumph for Tambo, but it nearly killed him. A few days before the meeting he collapsed with a serious stroke and was flown to the London Clinic, where “Mr. Reginald” began his long therapy and convalescence, gradually relearning to speak and to walk. Mandela was deprived of his most trusted link with the outside world.
De Klerk was now moving more quickly. In the general elections on September 6 the National Party achieved an uncertain victory, with only 48 percent of the popular vote, while both the right-wing Conservative Party and the more liberal Democratic Party made gains. But de Klerk saw the result as a mandate for change. He was being pressed from all sides to release Mandela—by the central bank, by Western governments, and by Afrikaner intellectuals who included his own brother Wimpie, who had been meeting the ANC in Britain. Wimpie was on tenterhooks, watching de Klerk’s conversion step by step: “I couldn’t believe my ears at some of the things he told me in confidence.”47 De Klerk was soon showing himself much more realistic and rational than Botha. “I’ve learnt the lesson of Rhodesia,” he told Robin Renwick. “Don’t leave it too late to negotiate with the real leaders.”48 And in the meantime the Afrikaners were becoming more isolated than ever, as the world’s scapegoats: in a blockbuster movie of 1989, Lethal Weapon 2, the villains had Afrikaner accents.
The talks between the ANC and government officials had been continuing under their own momentum, masterminded by Barnard, without de Klerk being fully informed. The contacts reached a new intimacy a week after the elections in a dramatic meeting in Switzerland. Barnard’s deputy head of intelligence, Mike Louw, together with his spymaster, Maritz Spaarwater, met secretly in a room at the Palace Hotel in Lucerne with Thabo Mbeki and his ANC colleague Jacob Zuma. “Well here we are, bloody terrorists—and for all you know fucking communists as well,” Mbeki joked as they met. He and Louw talked through the night, clearly indicating that they were prepared to negotiate, and Louw passed a message personally to de Klerk at the Tuynhuys. De Klerk was at first shocked to hear about the breakthrough: who had given Louw permission to negotiate? But when Louw produced his authorization—to investigate, not to negotiate—de Klerk listened eagerly and (Louw noted) “took the ball and ran with it.”49
De Klerk knew he must release the ANC leaders, but Mandela was now calling most of the shots, as the secret correspondence shows. A week after the elections Mandela again met Coetsee, and told him that de Klerk should highlight the release of ten political prisoners—including Sisulu and Kathrada—whose political behavior would be “low key”; while he urged the prisoners not to stir up the crowds as Govan Mbeki and Harry Gwala had done.50
The ANC both outside and inside South Africa were concerned about the low-key approach, for they wanted to generate “heightened activity.” On October 9 the leadership in Lusaka put out their own plan of action, which stressed that the released leaders should reaffirm their commitment and mobilize support for the Harare Declaration. When the working committee discussed it, Thabo Mbe
ki thought the released leaders must “take their place at the head of the struggle.” Chris Hani insisted that the comrades “can’t afford to diffuse the spirit of the people,” and Jacob Zuma warned that the government had deliberately counterposed Mandela and Harry Gwala. Joe Slovo maintained that Mandela would be released only as a result of “heightened activity.”51
But while the ANC were talking, the government announced on October 10 that it would soon release eight prisoners, including Sisulu and Kathrada, without conditions. Kathrada refused to believe it until he saw it announced on television.52 But they were released, into an atmosphere which was far from low key. Supporters marched through the cities; the banned flags of the ANC and the Communist Party were unfurled. Sisulu promised that the country’s political future would be “determined by the leadership of the movement,” and called for an intensification of economic sanctions.53 The ANC remained very wary of the government’s motives for the releases. “They represent a coldly-executed political manoeuvre,” said the New Nation, “a desperate effort to take the initiative away from the people.” But if this was so, the maneuver showed no signs of succeeding; and none of the eight released prisoners showed any weakening of their resolve. “If it is necessary for me to go back to prison, I’ll go tomorrow,” said Andrew Mlangeni.54
They had some difficulty in adjusting to normal life after a quarter of a century in jail: Sisulu could never again sleep in the dark after getting accustomed to the lightbulb in his cell. Kathrada could never face driving on the motorways which now crisscrossed Johannesburg.55 But they were also surprised by the lack of changes. Sisulu returned to the same small house he had always lived in with his wife, Albertina, picking up where he had left off.* “Much of Soweto has not changed since I first came to live here in the thirties,” said Sisulu. “With few exceptions the matchbox houses are very much the same. A government who is not addressing the basic issue of decent housing is not seriously committed towards political change.”56
Their freedom opened up new contacts with the West: President Bush even wrote to Sisulu to congratulate him. Mandela had wanted Sisulu and his colleagues to fly to London to see Mrs. Thatcher, but they resisted, still suspicious of her agenda, with some reason.57 Thatcher had remained totally opposed to sanctions: at the Commonwealth Summit in Kuala Lumpur in October she issued her own separate statement which left her new Foreign Secretary, John Major, (according to his officials) “gobsmacked” and “flabbergasted.”58 And just before Sisulu’s release Thatcher had again pointedly welcomed Buthelezi, as her ally against sanctions.
Though still largely confined to KwaZulu-Natal, Buthelezi’s Inkatha Party was becoming more threatening as the ANC came closer to recognition. On November 19 a rally of 70,000 Zulus in Durban celebrated their King’s twenty-year reign. The King, the nephew of Buthelezi, called for talks with the ANC, but the lethal attacks on ANC supporters continued. Mrs. Thatcher continued to depict Inkatha as a force independent of Pretoria, but American intelligence was already aware of its links with the government and the development of a “third force.” Mrs. Thatcher was openly supporting Buthelezi while he was known to be secretly conniving with Pretoria to destabilize the country. A CIA Africa Review in January 1990 reported:
We believe South African security forces have trained and armed Inkatha paramilitary groups. Reporting from a variety of sources suggests that, at a minimum, government security forces aided Inkatha by selectively allowing the violence to continue.59
Mandela was now the only major opposition leader left in prison. It reinforced his unique authority and leadership. It was harder for anyone to accuse him of betraying his own people, as he had spent longer in jail than anyone. And he was still pressing for talks. Many hardliners or bitter enders within the ANC wanted to intensify the armed struggle to achieve the “seizure of power,” and saw the continuing violence as the beginning of the “rolling revolution.” But Mandela warned all his visitors about the dangers of civil war: “In any country, even if there is war, there is time for negotiations,” he told Albertina Sisulu.60
Mandela was watching President de Klerk like a hawk. He was impressed by his concessions. De Klerk had allowed a big protest march in Cape Town on September 13, led by Tutu and Boesak, to take place without police interference. In the next months he dismantled many restrictions of “petty apartheid,” including segregated beaches, parks, lavatories and restaurants, and dissolved the semimilitary network, the National Security Management System, which secretly controlled the townships. In his inaugural speech on September 20 de Klerk had promised to talk to any group committed to peace, and Mandela immediately asked for a meeting, writing to de Klerk restating that the time was ripe “to negotiate an effective political settlement,” while emphasizing that he could not consult with the ANC, and refusing to break the ANC links with the Communist Party.61 “No self-respecting freedom fighter will take orders from the government … on who his allies in the freedom struggle should be.”62 In the meantime Mandela continued to talk to the government team, now augmented by de Klerk’s Minister for Constitutional Affairs, Gerrit Viljoen, while he waited for the President to respond and extended his own contacts.
Mandela could now welcome friends to his prison-house in much more comfortable style. Fatima Meer, who was revising her biography of him, was amazed by the peaceful setting: she and Ismail were met at the main gate by Gregory in plain clothes, driven past rows of staff cottages, along an avenue of conifers and an orange grove, past cows and ducks to the bungalow, where they were embraced by Mandela. He appeared much fitter than when she had last seen him, looking sallow, on Robben Island seventeen years earlier. “Tall, debonair and without a trace of fat on his lean frame. His hair is flecked with grey; his face remains unwrinkled; he smiles readily and often, his eyes crinkling at the corners; his laughter is deep-throated and spontaneous.” In his house “every appointment bore the mark of decorative comfort.”
“What was this all about?” Meer asked herself. “It dawned on me that it was not only South Africa’s disenfranchised who saw their hopes reflected in him but that the government too was hoping to resolve its problems through him.” Mandela was worried, he told her, that people would expect too much after his release; but “if all these super-expectations can be overcome, I can work nicely.”63
He could remeet friends from every stage of his life. One was his first employer in 1941, the lawyer Lazar Sidelsky. Mandela introduced him to his warder as “the only white man who’s my boss,” and Sidelsky noted that Mandela was giving orders to a white warder. He recalled to Mandela how he had warned him fifty years earlier that if he went into politics he would find himself in jail: “Look where you ended up!”64
Mandela’s new friend Mamphela Ramphele brought her two sons (at his insistence), with whom he chatted about tennis and TV. She and Mandela agreed on most subjects, but she argued against the ANC’s policy of reviving the old chiefs through the Congress of Traditional Leaders, which she thought was both antidemocratic and sexist. Mandela was upset, and defended the policy on her next visit, explaining how the ANC needed to bring the chiefs into the fold of liberation politics.65
He was visited by Eddie Daniels, his old friend from Robben Island, who was now a teacher and married to a Scotswoman; Daniels’s whole school gathered to give him messages to Mandela before his visit. “I went there to cheer him up, to take his mind off his huge responsibilities,” said Daniels. He recited the poem “Invictus” (“I am the master of my fate”); they hugged each other and sang “Mary of Argyle.” Daniels found Mandela’s face tighter with the anxiety of his lonely decisions, under tremendous strain and tension. But “he was still the same Nelson.”66
Mandela had some apprehensions about not recognizing the South Africa he had left three decades ago. “I sometimes fear that by the time I return, the world itself will have disappeared,” he wrote to the owners of Kapitans restaurant, his old haunt in the fifties. He had heard that Kapitans was being closed down: �
��There are many palates and tummies inside and outside the country which will justifiably be outraged by the disastrous news.” (The restaurant survived, and his letter is now framed on the wall.)67
De Klerk now knew that he must release Mandela and recognize the ANC, but he had to bring his Cabinet with him. In early December he assembled them for two days in a game lodge near Botswana for a bosberaad, or bush conference. Some ministers argued fiercely against the plan, particularly Magnus Malan, the hawkish Minister of Defence, who opposed legalizing the Communist Party which he had so long been fighting. But the Red Menace was not what it was: the previous month the Berlin Wall had come down, which gave de Klerk a new impetus to act. “It was as if God had taken a hand—a new turn in world history,” he told his brother Wimpie soon afterward. “We had to seize the opportunity. The risk that the ANC was being used as a Trojan horse by a superpower had drastically diminished.”68
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