The End of Apartheid

by Robin Renwick

  Pik Botha argued that the Population Registration Act, the 1950 law that first elaborated the apartheid system of race classification, would automatically disappear with the passage of a new constitution. I said that it would be far better to repeal it beforehand. We had impressed on the ANC that there must be no further postponement of talks with the government and that they would not succeed in their demand for the setting-up of a constituent assembly prior to deciding the new constitution.

  Van Heerden told me that the government had evidence that elements of the ANC did not believe in the negotiating process. I said that the ANC were saying exactly the same to me about elements of the security forces.

  19 April 1990

  De Klerk made a speech to parliament in which he accepted for the first time the possibility of universal suffrage based on a common voters’ roll and set out a timetable for the repeal of the remaining apartheid legislation (the Separate Amenities Act, the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act). De Klerk continued to reject the notion of ‘black majority rule’ on the grounds that no community should be pre-eminent over the others.

  The Prime Minister told Gerrit Viljoen, in London, that De Klerk’s speech the previous day had been another major step forward. She was disappointed that Mandela continued to defer to his ANC colleagues, rather than leading from the front. Viljoen said he was thinking of possible entrenched representation for the minorities in an upper house.

  I reported on the tensions between Thabo Mbeki and MK leader Chris Hani, who felt that the ANC were simply being led into a trap. Desmond Tutu and Kenneth Kaunda both by now were calling for suspension of the armed struggle, and the ANC were having difficulty controlling their own supporters. The overthrow of the intensely unpopular homeland government in Ciskei on 4 March, a coup in which twenty-seven people were killed, had been followed by looting and arson.

  As these scenes unfolded, I telephoned Terror Lekota at the ANC headquarters in Johannesburg and asked him and his colleagues to do something about this, given that we were trying to persuade De Klerk to lift the state of emergency. To his credit, Lekota did rush to the Ciskei and some semblance of order was restored.

  Barend du Plessis assured me that the government were not going to be pushed off course by the violence. There would be progress with Mandela on the release of prisoners. I said that I hoped the government would stop denouncing ‘simplistic majority rule’. They would do better to insist on the need for constitutional guarantees and a genuine multiparty system. Du Plessis replied that what the government were concerned to avoid was ‘democracy African style’.

  2 May 1990

  In the run-up to the first meeting between the South African government and the ANC, held at the historic Groote Schuur (‘great barn’) residence of Cecil Rhodes in Cape Town, the government tried to resist the inclusion of white South Africa’s bête noire, Joe Slovo, in the ANC delegation, only for Mandela to insist that he be included. (As described later, Joe Slovo at times was to prove a moderating influence on his colleagues in the ANC.) In personal terms, the two sides got on better than they had expected, each proving to the other that, as Mbeki said, ‘they did not have horns’.27

  In the meeting, Mandela said that he was not sure that De Klerk would be able to carry the National Party and its supporters along with him on the course he had chosen. However, at the conclusion of the talks, De Klerk said that he looked to the future with confidence. Mandela said that the meeting was ‘the realisation of a dream’, given all the ANC’s efforts through its history to engage with the government. The ANC would look into the whole question of the armed struggle. Sanctions should not be lifted, but it should not be necessary to ask for them to be intensified.

  Mandela, however, was sticking to the ANC demands for the establishment of an interim government and a constituent assembly. I told him again that we would support him over the emergency laws and release of prisoners, but not over these demands, which had no chance of being accepted.

  Pik Botha told us that an indemnity from prosecution had been agreed, which would be applied across the board, and would cover both ANC and security force miscreants. The state of emergency would be re-examined in the context of a commitment to reduce violence. Mandela had effectively said that continued references to the ‘armed struggle’ were largely rhetoric. They had agreed to a ‘common commitment … to a peaceful process of negotiations’. Crucially, the talks had been held in a cordial atmosphere, and members of the government had got on well with their ANC counterparts.

  May 1990

  De Klerk made a successful eighteen-day visit to Europe, during which he held talks with the Prime Minister, Chancellor Kohl, French president François Mitterrand and other European leaders. There was still as yet no formal relaxation of sanctions by the European Community, but the member states had lost interest in enforcing them. De Klerk received a warm reception from the Prime Minister at Chequers. In his words, ‘Once she had decided that she could trust me, and that I would do what I said I was going to do, she did everything that she could to support me.’28

  On his return, De Klerk felt that the sanctions tide had turned. I told Van Heerden that this would depend on what the government did about the release of prisoners and the state of emergency.

  4 June 1990

  Further meeting with Mandela. He had told an astonished crowd of his supporters in Soweto to learn Afrikaans, which he had done while in prison, better to understand the minds of their antagonists and to start disarming them by addressing them in their own language. I recalled, to laughter from Mandela, that the last political leader to require this of the Sowetans had been Dr Treurnicht, whose attempt to introduce Afrikaans in the schools had led to the 1976 Soweto uprising.

  On the future constitution, I said that we were committed to one person, one vote, and majority government, but did not regard these as incompatible with the sort of protection for minority rights that existed in other democratic constitutions. Nor did Mandela, he said, though not on the basis of ‘group rights’. Ways would have to be found to address this.

  I said that, since he was asking us to use our influence with the South African government, in particular to lift the state of emergency, we knew what they would accept and what they would not. The ANC still were placing great emphasis on the demand for the election of a constituent assembly, which had no chance of being agreed and which we did not support ourselves, as that would entail majority rule before the constitution was written. Mandela said that there was strong pressure from within the movement for this, but he understood the point I was making.

  Mandela, in a revealing aside, said that, if he had achieved a prominent position, it was because of the organisation. No political leader was of any value unless he could take his constituency with him. If he lost the support of his party, it would remain only for him to write his memoirs. Black South Africans had suffered terrible things for forty years under leaders such as Verwoerd, Vorster and Botha. Three million people had been forcibly removed. Thousands had been killed by the police. Police shootings – though not the fault of De Klerk – were continuing even now. All this had left an enormous residue of bitterness and militancy. He would want to explain this to the Prime Minister, but also to assure her of his strong commitment to a negotiated solution.

  June 1990

  I suggested to Mandela that, to celebrate his release, next time we should meet for lunch at the best restaurant in Johannesburg, Linger Longer, then in Braamfontein. It is hard to imagine today the commotion this caused at the time – the intake of breath as we revealed to the proprietor, at the last minute, the identity of our guest and the reactions of the other diners, most of whom had voted to keep him for three decades in jail, as he shook hands with every one of them, as if they were his natural supporters. It was a bravura performance, often to be repeated, and calculated quite deliberately to win over his former opponents. At the end of the meal, characteristically, he dived into the kitchen to thank tho
se who had prepared it.

  7 June 1990

  De Klerk announced the lifting of the state of emergency in all parts of the country except Natal. He also released a number of ANC prisoners convicted of political crimes and announced an indemnity for the returning exiles.

  Pik Botha told me that agreement in principle had been reached with the ANC intelligence chief, Jacob Zuma, on the eventual release of all ‘political’ prisoners. But he was alarmed at the unexpectedly strong showing by the Conservative Party in a by-election in Umlazi. The result had been a severe shock to the National Party. If an election were held the next day, he contended, they could not be sure of getting a majority from the white electorate.

  15 June 1990

  De Klerk wrote to thank the Prime Minister for their meeting at Chequers. He went through all the steps he had taken since becoming President to achieve a ‘totally changed South Africa’. He was concerned that the ANC had not yet abandoned the armed struggle and at their continued insistence on nationalisation.

  In each of his meetings with me, I had found Mandela practising his classic strategy of seeking to co-opt me, just as he had his warder in jail and the justice minister. The journalist John Carlin, who has written more perceptively than anyone about Mandela, in Playing the Enemy and Knowing Mandela, describes exactly the same tactics being used on him.29 I was his advisor, Mandela kept insisting to me and others. I soon found that his next target for co-option was more ambitious. It was in fact the Prime Minister.

  Mandela was planning to visit the United States, which would be followed by a visit to London to meet Mrs Thatcher. He called to ask me to meet him at a private clinic in Johannesburg. He had been admitted, suffering from exhaustion. I said that we were extremely worried about his schedule in the US, where he was due to visit seven cities in ten days. To give him some rest before going there, we planned to arrange for him to spend a quiet weekend in the English countryside with his great friend and colleague Oliver Tambo. Mandela was delighted at this gesture.

  What he wanted to talk about, however, was how to tackle Margaret Thatcher. I said that I hoped that Mandela would bear in mind that no foreign leader had worked harder for his release and for the unbanning of the ANC. Following De Klerk’s speech on 2 February, shots had been fired at the embassy in Pretoria by right-wing extremists, because they considered that the Prime Minister had influenced De Klerk to take these steps. Governments that were unconditional supporters of the ANC had no influence with the South African government. Mandela told me again, as he had said publicly, that, given the influence she could exert, he was determined to get her on his side. He wanted her as an ally and not as an enemy.30

  I suggested that we should have a rehearsal for the meeting. ‘You can be Mandela,’ I said, ‘and I’ll be Mrs Thatcher.’ He thought this was an excellent idea. There followed an exchange punctuated by much laughter on both sides. Mandela described the efforts he, Tambo and the ANC had made to engage with the government before he was convicted of treason and that all they were demanding now was a fully democratic constitution. ‘You will find us firm allies on all that,’ I told him, ‘but you must stop all this nonsense about nationalising the banks and the mines!’

  I congratulated him on not having used the word ‘nationalisation’ once in recent weeks. ‘But it was your idea,’ he said, referring to the influence of the London School of Economics on budding African politicians in the 1950s. ‘It was fashionable then,’ he added with a smile. It was not fashionable now, I replied, and he should not try this line of argument in Downing Street. I added that, personally, I did not believe that the ANC would end up nationalising anything. We had just been through all this with Swapo. Nationalisation had failed everywhere it had been tried in Africa. Mandela thanked me warmly for these ‘tips’ for his meeting with the Prime Minister.

  During his stay with Tambo, Mandela telephoned Margaret Thatcher. She proceeded, he said, to give him ‘a stern but well-meaning lecture’. His schedule was too heavy. He must cut it in half. ‘Even a man half your age would have trouble meeting the demands that are being made on you. If you keep this up, you will not come out of America alive!’31

  Mandela said that the Prime Minister had played a great part in securing his release and that of his colleagues and ensuring that the South African government would sit down and talk to them. Margaret Thatcher said that she hoped that the ANC would now suspend the armed struggle. Mandela replied that the problem was that the South African government seemed unable to restrain the police. But he was totally committed to negotiations, for which he had been struggling for over a decade. If De Klerk removed further obstacles to negotiations, the ANC would announce an end to hostilities. The Prime Minister said that there was no question of lifting the major UN sanctions, but the country needed investment and De Klerk deserved encouragement. The Prime Minister felt ‘a bit disappointed’ about Mandela’s position on the armed struggle.

  I responded that, in his meeting with her, Mandela above all was anxious to establish some kind of personal rapport, ‘which should not be difficult, given the character of the man’.

  Notes

  26 The Guardian, 16 April 1990.

  27 Welsh, op. cit., p. 389.

  28 De Klerk, op. cit., p. 184.

  29 John Carlin, Knowing Mandela, Atlantic Books, 2013, pp. 21, 80 and 115.

  30 See also Anthony Sampson, Mandela, HarperCollins, 1999, p. 415. Mandela added these words to the text.

  31 Mandela, op. cit., p. 574.

  CHAPTER XII

  ‘Free Nelson Mandela!’

  4 July 1990

  I saw Margaret Thatcher in 10 Downing Street before Mandela arrived. I asked her to remember that he had waited twenty-seven years to tell her his story. This earned me a glare from the clear blue eyes. ‘You mean I mustn’t interrupt?’ she said. Not for the first half-hour, I suggested. Asked if Mandela was anything like Mugabe, I was able to assure her that I had never met two human beings, let alone political leaders, less like each other than Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe.

  Mandela arrived in the rain with, as we had feared, a mild case of pneumonia. The Prime Minister attempted to revive him with a small glass of port. ‘She chided me like a schoolmarm for not taking her advice and cutting down on my schedule’, he observed.32 She then proceeded to listen for almost an hour as Mandela explained to her the history of the ANC and the difficulties he was facing in negotiations. He expressed his gratitude for the pressure she had exerted to help secure his release. She found him, as she wrote in her memoirs, ‘supremely courteous, with a genuine nobility of bearing and – most remarkable after all that he had suffered – without any bitterness. I warmed to him.’

  She told Mandela that he would get support from the British government in the negotiations for a new constitution. She urged him to suspend the armed struggle – whatever the justification for this, it had now been overtaken – and to meet Buthelezi. Also, she declared, he must stop talking about nationalising the banks and the mines, thereby frightening away all new investment.

  As, to her, he still seemed to be stuck in ‘some kind of socialist time-warp’, over lunch she launched into some home truths about basic economics, with Thabo Mbeki clearly agreeing with her. She concluded that ‘South Africa was lucky to have a man of Mr Mandela’s stature at such a time. Indeed, I hoped that he would assert himself more at the expense of some of his ANC colleagues.’33

  Charles Powell’s comments on the meeting were that it had taken place in an excellent atmosphere. The Prime Minister already was aware of Mandela’s natural dignity. She had been impressed by his courtliness and obvious sincerity. His initial comments had lasted, uninterrupted, for over fifty minutes, ‘possibly a record!’ He had implied that the armed struggle could be given up quite soon, and believed in De Klerk’s integrity. The international community should leave the timing of the lifting of sanctions to the ANC. He recognised that there could not be a constituent assembly before a new constitution
was drafted. There were huge economic imbalances which had to be addressed, but the ANC had not decided on nationalisation. They wanted to work with the business community. Margaret Thatcher had concluded the meeting by saying that South Africa was very fortunate to have De Klerk and Mandela at this juncture.

  The meeting had gone on for three hours, causing the press assembled outside in Downing Street to start chanting ‘Free Nelson Mandela!’ Mandela felt that it had gone very well, though he did not, as he observed, make the slightest headway in arguing, very half-heartedly, for more sanctions. He went on to see Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, who asked how he had got on with the Iron Lady. ‘She was warm and motherly,’ Mandela replied. ‘You must have met some other lady,’ Kinnock protested.

  At his press conference that afternoon, choosing his words with heavy emphasis, Mandela declared: ‘She is an enemy of apartheid.’ Their differences lay in regard to the methods of inducing the government to dismantle the system. The meeting had been productive and he had come away from it ‘full of strength and hope’.34 His reaction, as he said slyly to me and others, was that the Prime Minister was ‘a woman he could do business with!’

  July 1990

  The South African police uncovered Operation Vula, a secret ANC operation authorised by Tambo in 1986 to prepare the infrastructure for a ‘people’s war’. The leading operative, Mac Maharaj, was arrested along with other mainly SACP members of the clandestine unit – Pravin Gordhan, Siphiwe Nyanda and Billy Nair. Mandela was taken aback, as he knew nothing of the operation. Joe Slovo told him that it was moribund. In reality, it was regarded by those involved as an insurance policy in case negotiations failed.