His old-world courtesy and unfailing charm served to mask a steely determination not to compromise any of the principles for which he and others had sacrificed their liberty or lives. He was, he kept emphasising, the servant of his party, the African National Congress, and not its master. It was, he insisted to me, not a party, but a movement intended to embody the aspirations of all South Africans. He had difficulty accepting that the ANC could be wrong, and even in understanding that others might not want to join it. Yet he showed a much greater commitment than others to genuine political tolerance and acceptance that South Africa must be a society with which all sections of the population could identify, including his former oppressors.
I explained to Mandela the efforts the Prime Minister personally had made with De Klerk, Pik Botha and their colleagues to help secure his release and a commitment to negotiations. Having urged them to take this major step, we had to respond, and were doing so by rescinding the voluntary embargoes on tourism and new investment. The other embargoes would continue, but it made no sense to discourage academic and scientific contacts with the liberal English-speaking universities, where we were supporting a number of black students.
Mandela said that he understood the role the Prime Minister had played and the efforts I had made to help secure his release and that of Walter Sisulu and others, as well as the unbanning of the ANC. But the process of political change had only just begun and international pressure must be maintained. I said that we agreed with this, but we were doing so in a way different from other countries, through much more direct engagement with the South African government. Mandela himself had stressed the importance of De Klerk’s being able to take the National Party with him, and there were obvious difficulties with the security forces. We would be pressing the government to lift the state of emergency. Over political prisoners, I had talked to Gerrit Viljoen, the Minister for Constitutional Development, and there would be progress towards an amnesty.
I said that we could not agree with other ANC demands. Ideas that an interim government should be established, or elections to a constituent assembly held, before any agreement on the future constitution had been reached were non-starters; they amounted to a demand that majority rule should be established before negotiations had taken place.
Mandela indicated that he believed that only two conditions – lifting the state of emergency and an amnesty for political prisoners – needed to be met before negotiations could be engaged. I asked if, on that basis, the ANC would commit themselves formally to a suspension of violence, and Mandela said that he thought they should. I raised the issue of the violence in Natal. Mandela said that he had been able to maintain good personal relations with Buthelezi and he hoped that these could be used to stop the killings.
Mandela added that he had a high personal regard for the Prime Minister and wanted to ‘get her on my side’. But he hoped that Margaret Thatcher would not visit South Africa until matters were much further advanced. He was under instructions from the ANC in Lusaka not to meet the Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, during his visit to South Africa en route to Namibia; the ANC remained opposed to ministerial visits at this time.
I pointed out that the ANC’s position was illogical. Mandela himself had been urging us to use our influence with the South African government to promote further change. How could we be expected to do that without seeing them at a senior level? Mandela talked about meeting Douglas Hurd in Namibia, but the ANC would agree only if there were no prior visit by him to South Africa.
Mandela said that he would be visiting London to attend the concert at Wembley Stadium celebrating his release, on 16 April. He wanted to meet the Prime Minister, but would have to get the agreement of the ANC. He had said publicly that he wanted to talk to her about sanctions. I said that it would be a mistake not to meet the Prime Minister in London and Mandela clearly thought so too.
As the oil giant Mobil recently had disinvested, leaving us being asked to bail out projects they had been supporting in Soweto, I asked Mandela not to call for further disinvestment, explaining why. Mandela said that he could not change the ANC line on disinvestment. I said that he did not need to; all I was asking was that he should not call for it himself (and, as a matter of fact, he never did).
The Prime Minister, not surprisingly, found Mandela’s deference to his ANC colleagues disappointing. Mandela told me subsequently that he was annoyed with them for opposing a meeting with her during the Wembley visit and had made clear that he would be doing so on the next occasion (the US embassy were told that he was ‘furious’ with Zwelakhe Sisulu for leading the opposition to such a meeting24).
Meanwhile, he needed some practical help from us. Not wanting to rely for his security only on the South African police, he asked us to provide training for his personal bodyguards, which we arranged for the SAS to do. Later on, when he moved to his wife’s much larger house, he asked for our help in providing better privacy and security there.
25 February 1990
The violence continued in Natal. I had urged Mandela to hold a meeting as soon as possible with Chief Buthelezi, reminding him that Buthelezi had refused to negotiate with the government until he was released. Mandela told me that he had telephoned Buthelezi after his release and wanted to meet him. But, as he records in Long Walk to Freedom, when he visited the ANC leadership in Lusaka, the idea of such a meeting was rejected.25
Mandela, addressing a huge crowd in Durban, urged them to ‘Take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea! … End this war now!’ But, because of the opposition of the ANC leaders in Natal, led by Harry Gwala, a planned meeting with Buthelezi was cancelled. Mandela told me that, when he mentioned the possibility of a meeting with Buthelezi in Pietermaritzburg, he found the crowd muttering against it. He and Sisulu made a failed attempt instead to meet the Zulu monarch, King Goodwill Zwelithini.
The decision to cancel the joint meeting with Buthelezi was a serious mistake. On his return from exile, I discovered that the leading Zulu in the ANC politburo, Jacob Zuma, strongly agreed with me about this. It was, in his view, a fatal error not to have arranged from the outset a meeting with Buthelezi and a joint call for peace, instead of giving in to the opposition of the ANC in Natal. The better part of a year was to elapse before such a meeting took place, leaving Buthelezi aggrieved and the violence worse than ever. Jacob Zuma later was to make great efforts himself to reduce the clashes with Inkatha.
March 1990
Following police shootings in Sebokeng in which eleven people were killed, Mandela threatened to postpone indefinitely talks with the government. The police action was indefensible and was criticised by De Klerk, but over four hundred people had been killed in unrest since the unbanning of the ANC and much of the mayhem had been caused by the teenage ‘comrades’.
Mangosuthu Buthelezi saw the Prime Minister in London. She expressed disappointment at Mandela’s refusal to suspend the armed struggle and at the continued references to nationalisation. Buthelezi said that, nevertheless, Mandela was a ‘bigger man than the others’ and this would eventually show.
I reported that the unbanning of the ANC inevitably had triggered a wave of unrest in the townships. When I saw De Klerk, I found him reacting calmly to this, but he said he could not remove the remaining emergency regulations until there was a period of calm.
Walter Sisulu told me that the ANC were in no hurry to start negotiations. They wanted the release of all political prisoners, including those convicted of violent crimes. The government were acknowledging privately the case for a general amnesty in due course, particularly given the equally violent record of members of the security forces.
Peter Mokaba, on his release from detention, proceeded to distinguish himself by making inflammatory speeches about ‘one Boer, one bullet’. I telephoned Mandela to say that, having asked me to help get him released, now he needed to tell Mokaba to shut up. Mandela, with disingenuous charm, declared that ‘the young man must have be
en misquoted’, but we heard no more from Mokaba, a highly dubious individual, about one Boer, one bullet.
19 March 1990
When Douglas Hurd and I saw De Klerk, he did not rule out an amnesty. He was concerned at what he regarded as delaying tactics by the ANC. The talks with the government, when they were engaged, would focus on the release of prisoners and return of exiles. De Klerk was determined not to be thrown off track by temporary setbacks.
In the future constitution, he considered the key to be the protection of minority rights. He had no blueprint for this, but there had to be recognition of the pluralism of South African society. He wanted to move away from the definition of groups, which was unacceptable, and favoured a bill of rights. But the protection of individual rights would not of itself protect minorities. He talked of some form of power-sharing, and was, he said, in a hurry in his search for a solution. The ship he had launched would never be turned around, but he was not about to commit suicide. Mandela’s continuing references to nationalisation reflected the long-standing policy of the ANC. Douglas Hurd observed that all Mandela’s pronouncements currently were accorded a mystical reverence, whether they made sense or not.
De Klerk and Pik Botha told Douglas Hurd that, for South Africa to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they needed our help in getting the neighbouring countries to do so as well, even though, obviously, the effect would be purely symbolic. Hurd concluded that De Klerk, bent on dismantling apartheid and the South African military nuclear programme, was ‘an amazingly brave and wise man’.
20 March 1990
Gerrit Viljoen said that the upsurge in violence was partly attributable to continued ANC emphasis on the armed struggle. Mandela understood the need to meet white concerns in the new constitution, but these would not be allayed if simple majority voting in a unitary state were accepted from the outset. Otherwise, they could be managed. I said that the issue of greatest concern to Mandela was the release of prisoners. Viljoen said there could not be early release for those convicted of ‘gross’ crimes. There would need to be an amnesty in stages.
There followed a meeting at the embassy with the two recently released Delmas treason trialists, Popo Molefe (secretary-general of the UDF) and Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota. The meeting was opposed by some of their colleagues, but they had not forgotten the support we had showed for them by visiting the courtroom when they were on trial for their lives. They were trying to calm things down in the townships. They did not distrust De Klerk’s motives, but had no reason to trust the security forces. They wanted us to maintain sanctions. But they knew that we had argued hard for their release and wanted us to continue to use our influence with the South African government.
On a visit we arranged to some of the projects we were supporting in the Cape townships, Douglas Hurd was surprised to find himself being escorted around Crossroads by an honour guard of young black South Africans carrying wooden rifles and chanting ‘Viva Tambo!’, but took this in his stride.
* * *
On the following day, Douglas Hurd and I flew in to Windhoek for the Namibia independence celebrations. It was not without some dramas that this goal finally had been reached.
Martti Ahtisaari and Prem Chand had continued to experience difficulties with the South African government, requiring frequent interventions by us, over the return of Swapo leaders and refugees. When the Swapo leaders did return to Windhoek, I invited Hage Geingob (who became prime minister on Namibia’s independence), Theo-Ben Gurirab (foreign minister) and Hidipo Hamutenya (later Minister of Trade and Industry) to lunch at the Kalahari Sands Hotel. We had kept in touch with them throughout their years of exile. I explained that I did not expect them to feel any particular affinity with a Conservative government in Britain, or vice versa. We did not agree with their quasi-Marxist economic views and hoped that they would change them. But we were determined to see that they were given a fair chance in free elections and I expected them to win. If they did, we would help the new government to get established. The response was positive. The Swapo leaders made clear that they were determined to preserve the Namibian economy. I encouraged them to visit the Rössing uranium mine, which they did shortly afterwards and were as impressed as I had been by what they found there.
Not long afterwards, the leading white member of Swapo, lawyer Anton Lubowski, was assassinated. I had got to know him quite well and had no doubt that this exploit was the work of the criminals in the CCB. It was a black day when I attended his funeral in the township, where Theo-Ben Gurirab made an emotional appeal for calm.
October 1990
As the Namibian elections, due in November, drew closer I also had no doubt that we would witness a final attempt by South African military intelligence to disrupt them. What could not be predicted was the form this would take.
One day in Pretoria I suddenly was summoned, with the other Western ambassadors, to an urgent meeting with Pik Botha and General Jannie Geldenhuys, the Chief of the SADF. Pik Botha read out intercepted radio messages which purported to show that another massive Swapo incursion was planned, with the connivance of the Kenyan battalion of Untag, the UN force. As British military personnel controlled the UN’s communications in Namibia, it took me about three hours to discover, and not much longer to warn Van Heerden, that these messages were false. A furious Pik Botha had been misled by his own intelligence services. As usual, no action appeared to be taken against those responsible for this deception.
21 March 1990
The crisis passed, with Swapo winning the elections by a large margin. Douglas Hurd and I attended the celebrations in Windhoek to mark Namibia’s independence. It was a chaotic evening, with Pérez de Cuéllar and various heads of state barely able to get into the stadium and PLO leader Yasser Arafat attempting to accost James Baker, who was by no means anxious to meet him. But there also was no doubting the sense of joy, and also of relief, among the immense crowd gathered there at the attainment of self-rule and the end of a long and bitter conflict.
Notes
23 Waldmeir, op. cit., p. 157.
24 US embassy Pretoria cable, 30 April 1990, available from wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/
90PRETORIA7087_a.html; accessed 14 August 2014.
25 Mandela, op. cit., p. 565.
CHAPTER XI
‘You can be Mandela and I’ll be Mrs Thatcher’
March 1990
On his return to London, Douglas Hurd reported to the Prime Minister that the government and the ANC were edging their way towards ‘talks about talks’. De Klerk had appeared unruffled. The emergency powers would be relaxed as soon as the violence abated. But there were in the townships large groups of radicalised, uneducated teenagers engaged in violence.
Hurd saw Mandela briefly at the independence dinner in Windhoek. Mandela was friendly, apologised for the fact that a meeting had not taken place and offered one for the next day, by which time Hurd had to leave.
On my return to Cape Town, Van Heerden told me that, in his meeting with De Klerk, Mandela had attacked the conduct of the police, not only at Sebokeng, but in the townships generally. But the wave of violence across the country over the past eight weeks had not been triggered by the police, and the ANC needed to discipline their own supporters. De Klerk wanted to lift the emergency restrictions as soon as he could. A lot of prisoners had already been released and more would follow. De Klerk could not consider an immediate amnesty for those responsible for ‘necklace’ killings and bombings. There would be progress in removing obstacles to the return of the exiles.
12 April 1990
The Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, commented favourably to Douglas Hurd on his own meeting with De Klerk, also in Windhoek. The Russians, he said, should use their influence with the ANC and we should use ours with the South African government.
For the ANC, the obstacles to negotiations were the state of emergency and the delay in the release of prisoners; for the government, it was the mayhem in the townships.
I asked Viljoen’s deputy, Roelf Meyer, if the state of emergency could be restricted to Natal. Beyond that, it would have a positive effect to establish a programme for the repeal of the remaining apartheid laws. The government would be wasting its time unless it was prepared to deal directly with the issue of one person, one vote. Meyer said that, personally, he agreed, provided they could entrench an independent judiciary and a justiciable bill of rights. Ways would have to be found to assure the whites and other minorities that their interests could not be overridden by the majority. No one had yet come up with a viable solution to this problem.
16 April 1990
Mandela arrived in London for the Wembley concert to celebrate his release. A crowd of seventy-two thousand packed Wembley Stadium for the star-studded concert, which was broadcast live to more than sixty countries. Mandela received an eight-minute standing ovation when he took the stage.
The Prime Minister, however, reacted with incredulity to a statement by him criticising her planned meeting with De Klerk, whom she had helped to persuade to release him. Nor did she consider that such a meeting required the permission of the ANC. But Mandela also said publicly that he would be returning soon to London to meet her and, as he had told me, that she was ‘a very powerful lady – one I would rather have as an ally than an enemy’.26
The End of Apartheid Page 11
