Queen of the World: Elizabeth II: Sovereign and Stateswoman

by Robert Hardman

  The Queen was not flattering herself. She was channelling her inner Bagehot. As the great Victorian constitutionalist had observed, the ‘efficient’ part of the state might get things done, but it is the ‘dignified’ elements that actually excite people. The new South African President had already seen a few foreign politicians and plenty of business leaders beating a path to his door. President Mitterrand and John Major were among the early visitors, though the French President’s advance team had reportedly irritated their hosts by wanting Mandela to be at the airport an hour before their man was due to arrive. The idea was that Mandela would be filmed anxiously awaiting his French visitor. The idea was rejected, as were French requests for Mandela to appear at Mitterrand’s side throughout his stay. Mandela’s team were not going to let their man appear subordinate to the Frenchman. Though Mitterrand would make a lot of noise about France’s revolutionary tradition and its opposition to apartheid, it had escaped no one that France had cheerfully sold fighter jets, helicopters and submarines to the apartheid regime. Furthermore, even a statesman of the stature of François Mitterrand simply could not generate the same razzmatazz as a state visit by the Queen. However, she had already foreseen a problem, as Woodard recalls: ‘Her Majesty turned to me and said: “Sadly, we can’t take the Yacht”.’

  According to Royal Household staff of that time, the Queen was concerned that there might be further media hostilities if it was announced that Britannia was sailing all the way to South Africa for a single state visit. Years later, that might seem an unlikely concern, particularly given the importance of the visit, but this was late 1994, with royal marital rifts and royal finances dominating the headlines as never before. The Queen felt battered and was in no mood to invite a further battering.

  However, Woodard knew that there could be nothing quite as magnificent or as historically symbolic as the Queen arriving in Cape Town by sea, just as she had done in 1947. He also knew that any criticism could be offset if Britannia was seen to be earning its keep with commercial ‘sea days’ for British trade and industry. ‘I said: “Ma’am, would you reconsider if I can get commercial stuff which would cover it?” She said: “Yes, you’ve got twenty-four hours”. And in twenty-four hours, with the Master of the Household and his team, we sorted out five days of trade activity.’

  The next issue was where to get the Queen on board. There was no question of her spending weeks at sea sailing to the Cape of Good Hope, as she had done in 1947. She would need to fly to the region, embark and then make her grand entrance. One thing was off-limits. As Woodard explains, she told the Rear Admiral that she had no wish to sail round the Cape itself. ‘She said: “I’m not going round the Cape.” I said: “Ma’am?” She said: “When I was twenty-one, I was there and I shared a cabin with Princess Margaret and we opened the scuttle [porthole] and we immediately got a wave in.” She was a very good sailor but, like all sensible human beings, she hated being flung all over the place.’ So, a plan was drawn up whereby the Queen would make a discreet night-time flight into Cape Town, fly by helicopter to the naval base at Simonstown and then join the Royal Yacht. It would be a short voyage of a few hours from there to Cape Town. It was only afterwards that Woodard would dare to point out that the journey from Simonstown did, in fact, involve going round the Cape of Good Hope after all.

  Brilliant sunshine and a smattering of cloud around Table Mountain, along with a flotilla of horn-honking ships and small craft, greeted the Royal Yacht on the morning of 20th March 1995. It sailed in past Robben Island, the first prison where Mandela spent so many years, and came smartly alongside the quay. There stood not just the sober-suited symbol of free South Africa but the inspiration for an entire continent alongside his niece, Rochelle Mtirara. Following Mandela’s recent split with his wife, Winnie, various members of his family would share the role of consort. Dressed in a sky-blue linen coat, one hand protecting her sky-blue hat from a breeze known as the ‘Cape Doctor’, even the Queen – veteran of so many grand entrances – must have felt the proverbial hand of history as, for the first time in nearly fifty years, she stepped ashore at Cape Town. ‘Oh, Your Majesty, welcome to South Africa,’ proclaimed the President. Unlike the 1947 arrival, when guns had been ruled out for fear of scaring the horses, there was not only a twenty-one-gun salute, but a flypast of six fighters trailing red, white and blue smoke. After working her way through a modest greeting line, including an ecstatic Archbishop Tutu, the Queen embarked on her first walkabout. Here, amid a predominantly white crowd, there was a vaguely surreal encounter. Having come halfway around the world to salute the new South Africa, one of the first groups whom the Queen met were the members of the West Cape Welsh Corgi Club. They had arrived at first light with their dogs, to grab the best spot.

  At the President’s residence, Tuynhuis, the Queen had a rare honour for Mandela. She would dispense with the usual state-visit ritual of giving her host the GCB (Knight or Dame Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath). For Mandela, she had reserved the same decoration that she had bestowed on Mother Teresa in India in 1983 – the Order of Merit. There were no footling protocol issues, as there had been in India. He, in turn, gave her the Order of Good Hope and a brooch in the colour of the new South African flag. The Queen had arrived with the twenty-first-birthday present she had received from the people of South Africa in 1947 – twenty-one exceptional diamonds. She made a point of wearing them later at the state banquet in Cape Town. Soon after walking into the room, to her great amusement, she twigged that some older South Africans were quite clearly counting them. Their reactions were not very subtle, either. ‘They couldn’t get it right,’ she told a member of the Royal Household afterwards. ‘That’s because there are only seventeen of them around my neck.’ Whereupon she lifted her wrist and shook it, explaining: ‘The others are in a bracelet!’

  Parliament was packed to hear the Queen deliver a speech that seemed to move her as much as her audience. ‘Forty-eight years ago I watched my father opening parliament here,’ she said, her voice betraying the odd crack of emotion. ‘Of course, I come in very different circumstances.’ Quoting George VI’s reference to a ‘peace which must be based on freedom and justice’, she went on: ‘Your struggle has shown that the only way to true peace is through those principles of which so many throughout this country have been doughty champions.’

  Mandela’s fondness for his visitor was clear from the official programme. Normal state-visit rules dictate that the host welcomes the visitor, lays on a spot of ceremony and a banquet and then leaves the guest to get on with it – as Mandela had done with the French President some months earlier. For the Queen, however, it was very different. Mandela kept popping up throughout her stay. It was much appreciated, as were the continuous references by Mandela and his team to the importance of the Commonwealth. He had been so keen to get everything spot-on that the public-works department had even spent £20,000 on new tablecloths and napkins for the Tuynhuis presidential residence, ahead of the visit. For President Mitterrand, they had used the old ones.

  Two recurring features of the visit would be the size of the crowds and the absence of the hostility that members of the British party had feared. Douglas Hurd has admitted that he expected some residual resentment, as a result of Mrs Thatcher’s long-standing opposition to sanctions. It never materialised, however, as the tour progressed from the poor districts of Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. In the shanty town of Missionvale, the Queen met an Irish nun called Sister Ethel, whose work would so impress her that she included her in that year’s Christmas broadcast. On the next day of the tour, the Queen visited the most famous township of all. Soweto had long been synonymous with violence as well as injustice. The Foreign Office was particularly nervous about the royal engagements here. Once again the Queen had indicated that she had no such qualms, joking to one member of her team: ‘As long as I don’t have to sail round the Cape of Good Hope, I will do a walkabout in Soweto.’

  There, in the much-troubled but defiant Joha
nnesburg township, the Queen inspected a British-backed scheme to get more young people playing cricket (a pet project started by her cricket-mad Prime Minister, John Major, the previous year). With Mandela at her side, she unveiled a memorial to 607 members of the South African Native Labour Corps who had died aboard the troopship, SS Mendi, in February 1917. Bound for the Western Front, it went down after a collision in a foggy English Channel, with many tales of heroism among its black South African passengers. The joint attraction of the Queen and Nelson Mandela had brought much of Soweto on to the streets. ‘They are all here for her not me,’ the President told reporters, generously adding that the occasion had been ‘one of the most unforgettable moments in our history’. There was another important factor, too. Whereas the British government had been in contact – often close contact – with its South African counterpart all through the years of apartheid, the Royal Family had not had any dealings with the country at all. As the Queen would find on her travels through the former Soviet Bloc during the same period, there were many nations with the same message for her: ‘Thank you for not coming.’

  The visit concluded in KwaZulu-Natal. Even when continuing unseasonal rain washed out a day at the races at Greyville, thousands braved the elements just to watch the Queen arrive for tea at the racecourse. By now she had been given the honorary title of ‘Motlalepula’ – ‘Rain Queen’. In Durban she was welcomed by King Goodwill of the Zulus, who presented her with a stuffed lioness. Too large for the royal flight, it would return to Britain in the Royal Yacht. Even Britannia could not accommodate another parting gift from South Africa, presented to her at a farewell ceremony in front of Durban City Hall. A very large bull – very much alive, too – was promptly donated to a Zululand agricultural research college. Before leaving, the Queen made her speech about ‘one of the outstanding experiences of my life’. In bidding her farewell, Nelson Mandela remarked: ‘It is one of the most extraordinary experiences of my life too.’

  By now, the Queen had already invited Mandela to make a reciprocal state visit to the UK. ‘You are well-versed in making history,’ she had told him, ‘but I hope that even for you that will be an important milestone.’ He agreed instantly. Just a year later, the new South African flag would be draped the full length of the Mall.

  ‘DEAR ELIZABETH’

  Those who have worked closely with the Queen say that this was not merely a cordial friendship between two heads of state. It was more a meeting of minds between two people used to well-meaning but unhelpful flattery; both well aware of the pitfalls of being a ‘national treasure’. ‘It’s very hard to say what creates personal chemistry but they both had an enormous weight of responsibility, a great weight of expectation,’ says a senior member of the Royal Household of that era. ‘They were both extremely emotionally intelligent people and those similarities sort of made them a natural fit. It’s that ability to carry your authority with real lightness of touch.’ Both had a keen sense of the importance of the past. Radical lawyer he might have been, but the true Mandela was shaped by his own royal lineage – he was descended from the princely rulers of the Thembu tribe – along with his traditional mission-schooling and early love of British history. As the South African journalist John Battersby put it: ‘He had a particular affinity with Queen Elizabeth. Having his own royal tribal lineage, he was completely at ease with her.’

  The Queen’s thank-you letter to Mandela on 31st March 2005 went far beyond the sort of official bilateral platitudes that might be drafted and typed up by a Private Secretary. It was handwritten and from the heart. ‘Dear Mr President,’ she wrote, ‘It was lovely to return after such a long time to a place which was my first overseas visit and is therefore still very clear and special in my memory.’ As a leader with more years than most in office, she advised him to take the long view. ‘I hope that the projects we saw and the many others that will follow will help the complex problems which will take time to solve and I am sure, given the marvellous atmosphere collectively which is so striking, will be overcome. Your own influence is so very important to this end and we wish you well.’ She concluded: ‘We look forward to welcoming you here next year. Your sincere friend, Elizabeth R.’

  The two heads of state would meet sooner than that, when the Commonwealth assembled for its next summit in Auckland later that year. It would be Mandela’s first Heads of Government Meeting as a leader. And while, predictably, he received plenty of adulation from the host nation and the other delegations, he was soon rolling up his sleeves and even trying to enlist the help of the Queen.

  There were two issues hanging over the summit. First, a recent round of French nuclear tests on two French-owned atolls in the South Pacific had greatly upset all the Commonwealth nations in the region, including the summit hosts, New Zealand. Since France was not part of the Commonwealth, all the anger and protests were aimed at John Major instead, on the grounds that the British Prime Minister was an ally of France. The other issue was the death sentence which Nigeria had imposed on Ken Saro-Wiwa, a television producer and environmentalist, along with several others. Their crime had been to expose a lucrative oil-exploration deal between the country’s corrupt military dictator, General Sani Abacha, and oil companies including Royal Dutch Shell. Though Abacha had not come to the summit, he had sent his abrasive and bombastic Foreign Minister, Tom Ikimi. A buffet for delegates and the media descended into farce as journalists attempted to interview Ikimi. ‘Go away, I am having my lunch,’ he told them. ‘Is your lunch more important than a man’s life?’ asked one British journalist. ‘Yes,’ he replied.

  During the summit, several leaders, including Canada’s Jean Chrétien, voiced their concerns but the blue-robed Ikimi refused to engage in dialogue. ‘You’ve all got blood on your hands!’ he declared. Mandela was appalled and became so exasperated that he decided to seek out the Queen and ask her to intervene. Baroness Chalker, then Foreign Office Minister for Africa, remembers Mandela seeking advice on how best to go about it. ‘He wanted the Queen to haul Abacha over the coals,’ says Lady Chalker. ‘I did explain it was not something she did, to which he said: “Well, she tells me what she thinks!” ’

  As the leaders prepared to head for their ‘retreat’ at a resort hotel in Queenstown, word came through that Saro-Wiwa and his fellow activists had been hanged in a Nigerian prison. It was a clear two-fingered rebuke to the authority of the Commonwealth. Mandela was so furious that he wanted Nigeria kicked out of the organisation there and then. Instead, the leaders settled on a more practical response, creating a new body called the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group (CMAG) to monitor violations of Commonwealth principles and pile the pressure on rogue members. As the future Secretary-General Don McKinnon would explain, CMAG was effectively placing a placard around the neck of badly behaved countries, ‘advertising their deficiencies’. Nigeria would now be subject to repeated human-rights investigations. Previously, when countries like Britain had suggested such ideas, they would be dismissed as the old ‘white’ Commonwealth bossing younger nations around. With Mandela’s wholehearted support, though, no one could claim there was anything ‘colonial’ about it. The presence of this new moral authority would certainly make life more awkward for the less progressive members of the Queen’s favourite organisation.

  No state visitor in years had drawn the sort of crowds that turned out to watch the Queen welcome Mandela to London in July 1996. Since the advent of television had made these things easier to watch at home, they had tended to attract modest crowds. Yet Horse Guards and the Mall were packed as if for a royal wedding. The President had arrived the previous evening and stayed at the Dorchester Hotel, from where he emerged in a tracksuit at 5 a.m. for his customary dawn stroll, a legacy of twenty-seven years in prison. By lunchtime, he was in a dark suit and was driven to Horse Guards for the formal greeting, accompanied by his daughter, Princess Zenani Mandela-Dlamini, in electric-blue. Dressed in a yellow silk dress and floral hat, the Queen was waiting with the Duke of Edinburgh
, as they had done for so many state visitors over the years. The ritual would be exactly the same, but no previous visitor had provoked the sort of whooping and cheering that erupted as Mandela stepped out of his car to shake the Queen’s hand. Chants of ‘Nelson! Nelson!’ rang round the old state parade ground behind Downing Street. ‘Your Majesty!’ beamed Mandela.

  The two leaders climbed into the 1902 state landau for the procession to Buckingham Palace, flanked by the clanking, gleaming might of the Household Cavalry and cheered on their way by people like John Gevisser, twenty-seven. A London-based South African and ANC member, he had attended so many protests over the years outside nearby South Africa House, demanding Mandela’s release. Now his leader was riding with the Queen – ‘the biggest compliment we South Africans can have from Britain’. London-based singer Joe Mogotsi had sung at Mandela’s inauguration in 1994. ‘Madiba! Madiba!’ he yelled at full pitch. Hearing his famous nickname, Mandela waved back.

  Inside the Palace the Queen entertained her guests to a light lunch of asparagus mousse, salmon and summer pudding. As ever, considerable thought had gone into her gifts. Knowing that Mandela had spent much of his captivity reading a hidden copy of the works of Shakespeare, she presented him with an eight-volume set of Dr Johnson’s edition. In return, Mandela presented her with a set of commemorative gold coins, plus a chess set for Prince Philip.