Mandela

by Anthony Sampson

  I also try to put Mandela’s life into a wider global context, with the help of his letters and hitherto unpublished diplomatic and intelligence sources. I trace how the Western world misunderstood and mishandled the gathering South African crisis in the 1960s and ’70s, and was misled about Mandela and his friends through the obsessions and crusades of the Cold War; how he so nearly disappeared from the world’s radar screens; and how governments and individuals contributed to his triumphant return. I have tried to trace the changing and contradictory perceptions of South Africa in the outside world, providing first dire predictions of an imminent bloodbath, then a model of negotiation and reconciliation, with Mandela at the center.

  In this ambitious task I owe an obvious huge debt to President Mandela himself, who has been generous with his precious time, not only by giving personal interviews, but by reading the draft typescripts. He has corrected points of fact and detail, while honoring the agreement not to interfere with my own judgments; and his lively comments have added to rather than subtracted from the original draft. It has been a rare experience to have such exchanges with a major historical figure in his own lifetime, which I hope compensates for any of the limitations of a contemporary biographer.

  I also owe debts to Mandela’s close friends, some of whom have been friends of mine since the early fifties. Ahmed Kathrada, Mandela’s colleague in jail for twenty-five years, has been my chief adviser and a major source throughout the enterprise, and has unlocked doors which would otherwise have remained closed; he has selflessly given long interviews and allowed me to see his valuable letters—which will soon be published. Walter Sisulu, whom I often interviewed in the fifties and sixties, has patiently given his time for long, reflective talks, adding his special insights into the political background and thinking over fifty years. Mac Maharaj has been through the drafts and has added his unique knowledge of events in and out of jail. Professor Jakes Gerwel, the Secretary of the Cabinet, has given me many ideas and perceptions about Mandela and his government. Nadine Gordimer, my oldest and most valued white South African friend, with whom I usually stayed in Johannesburg, has contributed her unique observations as a close friend of the President and as witness to many historical events. Frank Ferrari, the most distinguished American authority on South Africa, has shared many experiences with me and has added his own judgments. Dr. Nthato Motlana, another veteran of the fifties, has been forthcoming with his own witty recollections and insights. Adelaide Tambo, the widow of Oliver Tambo, who has been a friend in both London and Johannesburg, has provided reminiscences and letters which throw new light on the friendship between the Mandelas and the Tambos. George Bizos, Mandela’s chief lawyer, whom I first met at the Rivonia trial and whom I have seen on every successive visit to South Africa, has been generous with his wisdom and vivid memories from the front line.

  Old Drum colleagues, who have witnessed the extraordinary changes in South Africa over five decades, have provided their varied recollections and views. They include Jim Bailey, the former owner of Drum; Es’kia Mphahlele, the former literary editor; Jürgen Schadeberg, the pioneering photographer and picture editor, and Peter Magubane, his distinguished successor; Arthur Maimane, the versatile writer whom I first lured into journalism in 1951; Esme Matshikiza, widow of the brilliant composer and journalist Todd Matshikiza, together with their son John Matshikiza; and Sylvester Stein, my immediate successor as editor in 1955.

  Two former biographers of Mandela, both lifelong friends of the President, have been wonderfully unselfish and forthcoming with advice and documents: Mary Benson, the veteran campaigner against apartheid in London, has had unique insights into the ANC and the Mandela family over forty years; while Fatima Meer, who has seen Mandela through many critical experiences since the fifties, has given me invaluable advice and precious documentation. My old friend Joe Menell generously allowed me to see transcripts of the extensive original interviews for his documentary film about Mandela. For more general advice on difficult problems of biography I am grateful to Michael Holroyd and Arthur Schlesinger.

  Among the many new friends who have helped me, I am especially grateful to Gail Gerhart, the uniquely well informed editor of the five-volume history of black politics in South Africa, From Protest to Challenge, which is indispensable to any student of the subject. She has been unstinting in her advice and in sharing her sources, including unpublished documents and interviews. I am grateful to Iqbal Meer, President Mandela’s London lawyer, both for making the arrangements for the book and for very constructive suggestions. I have appreciated the help of Ismail Ayob, the President’s long-standing attorney in Johannesburg. And I have learned much from Guy Berger and his colleagues at Rhodes University, where I enjoyed a very productive stay.

  I have had wonderful assistance from librarians and archivists in South Africa who have put previously unseen documents at my disposal. They include the Brenthurst Library, with its unique collection in Johannesburg; the Cullen Library at Witwatersrand University; the ANC archives in Shell House, Johannesburg, and also at Fort Hare University; the valuable Cory Library at Rhodes University, Grahamstown; the Harry Oppenheimer Library at the University of Cape Town; the Mayibuye archive at the University of the Western Cape; and the admirable press cuttings of the Johannesburg Star and the Cape Times. I have also been given access to government archives which must remain more discreet. In London my researcher has used the libraries of the School of Oriental and African Studies and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies; while in Washington the National Security Archive has been wonderfully helpful.

  My whole task has been made much easier by the energy and resourcefulness of my research assistant, Dr. James Sanders, who has been persistent in tracking down documents, checking sources and finding new avenues of investigation which have unearthed remarkable new information from archives in London, Washington and Pretoria. His contribution has gone far beyond research, and I owe much to his creative and scholarly mind, which provided ideas, questions and solutions to difficult problems, and made the whole enterprise less lonely and more enjoyable.

  Through the stressful process of editing and preparing the book for publication I have enjoyed marvelous support and cooperation from the team at HarperCollins. The first idea of the book came from Stuart Profitt, without whom it would not have happened; but after he left HarperCollins in 1998 it was strongly backed by the chairman, Eddie Bell, by my long-suffering editors, Richard Johnson and Robert Lacey, and by Helen Ellis, the publicity director, all wonderfully committed to the project. I have also benefited from the encouragement and long experience of my American editor, Charles Elliott of Alfred A. Knopf. I am grateful to Jonathan Ball, my publisher in South Africa, for his help and enthusiasm. As always I have been loyally supported by my agent, Michael Sissons, who has now seen me through over twenty books. And I could not have got through the task without my assistant, Carla Shimeld, who has once again remained efficient and unflappable in producing order out of chaos. Above all, my enjoyment and human understanding of the subject have been magnified by having my wife, Sally, with me through many of my travels and interviews.

  I have been indebted to many people for corrections and clarifications, but I must take full responsibility for any surviving errors; and I will be grateful for any rectifications and suggestions from readers which I can incorporate in subsequent editions.

  I would like to thank all the following people in South Africa who have generously contributed interviews and conversations with myself or my assistant James Sanders (marked with an asterisk):

  Rok Ajulu, Neville Alexander, Charles Anson, Kader Asmal, Ismail Ayob, Beryl Baker, Fikile Bam, Niël Barnard, John Battersby, David Beresford, Guy Berger, Hyman Bernadt, George Bizos, Tony Bloom, Alex Boraine, Pieter Botha, Pik Botha, P. W. Botha, Lakhtar Brahimi, Christo Brand, Jules Browde, Gordon Bruce,* Brian Bunting, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Amina Cachalia, Andrew Cahn, Luli Callinicos, Arthur Chaskalson, Frank Chikane, Colin Coleman, Keith Coleman, Jeremy C
ronin, Eddie Daniels, Apollon Davidson, F. W. de Klerk, Ebbe Demmisse, Robin Denniston, Helena Dolny, John Dugard, Barend du Plessis, Tim du Plessis, Dick Endhoven, Ivan Fallon, Barry Feinberg, Ilse Fischer, Maeve Fort, Amina Frense, Philippe Garson, Mark Gevisser, Angus Gibson, Frene Ginwala, Pippa Green, James Gregory, Louisa Gubb, Adrian Hadland, Anton Harber, Tony Heard, Rica Hodgson, Bantu Holomisa, Evelyn Holtzhausen, John Horak, Verna Hunt, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Zubeida Jaffer, Joel Joffe, R. W. Johnson, Shaun Johnson, Pallo Jordan, Ronnie and Eleanor Kasrils, Mark Katzenellenbogen, Liza Key, Martin Kingston, Horst Kleinschmidt, Mavis Knipe, Wolfie Kodesh, Alf Kumalo, Terror Lekota, Hugh Lewin, Tom Lodge, Raymond Louw, Enos Mabuza, Graça Machel, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Peter Magubane, Stryker Maguire, Arthur Maimane, Evelyn Mandela, Maki Mandela, Parks Mankahlana, Barbara Masekela, Nathaniel Masemola, Kaiser Matanzima, Don Mattera, Joe Matthews, Govan Mbeki, Thabo Mbeki, Iqbal Meer, Irene Menell, Roelf Meyer, Raymond Mhlaba, Abdul Minty, Joe Mogotsi, Ismail Mohammed, Popo Molefe, Eric Molobi, Ronnie Momoepa, Ruth Mompati, Murphy and Martha Morobe, Shaun Morrow, Mendi Msimang, Mary Mxadana, Beyers Naude, Joel Netshitenzhe, Lionel Ngakane, Carl Niehaus, Wiseman Nkhuhlu, Kaizer Nyatsumba, Andre Odendaal, Chloe O’Keefe, Marie Olivier, Dullah Omar, Harry Oppenheimer, Tony O’Reilly, Aziz Pahad, Essop Pahad, Sophie Pedder, Benjamin Pogrund, Cyril Ramaphosa, Narissa Ramdani, Mamphela Ramphele, Dolly Rathebe, Bryan Rostron, Anthony Rowell, John Rudd, Albie Sachs, Peter Saraf, Raks Seakhoa, Jeremy Seekings, Ronald Segal, Michael Seifert, Wally Serote, Tokyo Sexwale, Lazar Sidelsky, Mike Siluma, Albertina Sisulu, Elinor Sisulu, Zwelakhe Sisulu, Gillian Slovo, Mungo Soggott, Roger Southall, Allister Sparks, Tim Stapleton, Hendrik Steyn, John Sutherland, Helen Suzman, Tony Trew, Ben Turok, Desmond Tutu, Philip van Niekerk, Xolisa Vapi, Ben Verster, Esther Waugh, Enid Webster, Leon Wessels, General Willemse, Moegsien Williams, Jacob Zuma.

  And to the following in London and elsewhere abroad:

  Heribert Adam, David Astor, Mary Benson, Rusty and Hilda Bernstein, Betty Boothroyd, Lord Camoys, Cheryl Carolus, Lady (Lynda) Chalker, John Colvin, Ethel de Keyser, David Dinkins, John Doubleday, Richard Dowden, Marcus Edwards, Eleanor Emery,* Sir Patrick Fairweather, Michael Gavshon, Dennis Goldberg, Denis Healey, Sir Edward Heath, Denis Herbstein, Eric Hobsbawm, George Houser,* Trevor Huddleston, Lord (Bob) Hughes, Joel Joffe, Paul and Adelaide Joseph, Glenys Kinnock, Brian Lapping, Colin Legum, Martin Leighton,* Freda Levson, Anthony Lewis, John Longrigg,* Trevor Macdonald, Shula Marks, Sir Kit McMahon, Jacques Moreillon, Lionel Morrison, Lady (Emma) Nicholson, Robert Oakeshott, Thomas Pakenham, Nad Pillay, Vella Pillay, Elaine Potter, Sir Charles Powell, Lord Renwick, Jon Snow, Lady (Mary) Soames, George Soros, Richard Stengel, John Taylor, Noreen Taylor, Michael Terry, Stanley Uys, Randolph Vigne, Per Wastberg, Brian Widlake,* Donald Woods, Ann Yates, Andrew Young, Michael Young.

  IN THIS revised paperback edition I have made some corrections and additions to the original text. I am grateful to all those correspondents who have taken the trouble to suggest changes.

  Anthony Sampson

  London

  December 1999

  PROLOGUE

  The Last Hero

  WESTMINSTER HALL in London, the ancient heart of the Houses of Parliament, is preparing to honor a visiting head of state, in a ceremony which happens only once or twice in a lifetime. The last such guest of honor was General de Gaulle in 1960; this time, in July 1996, it is President Nelson Mandela. The comparison is apt, for both were solitary, lost leaders who came to be seen as saviors of their country. But Mandela’s transformation is much more surprising than de Gaulle’s. In the past, many of the politicians in the audience had regarded him as their enemy, who should never be permitted to lead his country. Many Conservative members of Parliament had condemned him as a terrorist; the former Prime Minister Lady Thatcher, who is sitting near the front, had said nine years before that anyone who thought the African National Congress was ever going to form the government of South Africa was “living in cloud-cuckoo land.” Now cloud-cuckoo land has arrived in Westminster Hall. But the ceremonials in this medieval hall have legitimized many awkward shifts of loyalty over the centuries, whether from Richard II to Henry IV in 1400 or from Charles I to Oliver Cromwell in 1649. And now all recriminations are drowned in a fanfare of trumpets.

  It is like a scene from grand opera, with Beefeaters lining the steps and helmeted guardsmen at the back of the hall. The Lord Chancellor, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, arrives in his robes of state. Then, at last, the tall, lean figure of Nelson Mandela appears and walks shakily down the grand staircase, holding the hand of the Speaker of the House, Betty Boothroyd: she says afterward it was the most memorable five minutes of her life. The Labour peer sitting in front of me allows tears to flow down his cheek. The band of the Grenadier Guards plays “Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika,” for decades the hymn of South Africa’s black revolutionaries. The Lord Chancellor makes a modest speech, recalling how this hall has witnessed the slow evolution of democracy, ever since the Magna Carta in 1215, and how Britons and South Africans share the democratic right to one person, one vote. Then he warmly introduces the former revolutionary, who now looks as benign as an old-fashioned English gentleman.

  Mandela speaks slowly, with his usual formal emphasis. Although most guests cannot hear him through the echoing acoustics, it is a tough speech which does not please Lady Thatcher, as she says afterward. He looks back two hundred years, to when Britain first colonized South Africa and seized the land of his forebears. He reminds his audience how the ANC first petitioned the British Parliament eight decades ago, in protest against being left to the mercy of the white rulers of the new Union of South Africa. But now, he says, he comes as a friend of Britain, to the country of allies like William Wilberforce, Fenner Brockway, Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. He goes on to refer to the horrors of racism, whether in South Africa or in Nazi Germany—“How did we allow these to happen?”—and the appalling massacres and miseries in other parts of Africa; but he ends by looking ahead to the closing of the circle, to Britain and South Africa joining hands to construct a humane Africa.

  This is the historic Mandela: the last of the succession of revolutionary leaders in Asia and Africa who fought for their freedom, were imprisoned and reviled and were eventually recognized as heads of state. But the Afrikaner nationalists were much more ruthless enemies, and he now shows more magnanimity than his predecessors, giving hope both to his own people and to others that they can bridge their own racial chasms. He has become a universal hero at the end of the twentieth century. In a time of vote counters, spin doctors and focus groups, he conjures up an earlier age of liberators, war leaders and revolutionaries. To conservative traditionalists he evokes memories of great men who personified their own country; to the liberal left, battered by lost causes, he brings new hope that righteous crusades can still prevail; his three decades in jail cut him off from the surge of materialism and consumerism that swept through the Western world.

  As Mandela goes through the pompous routines of a state visit, he even brings new life to the British monarchy itself, under siege with its own troubles. Some of the audience go straight from Westminster Hall to the Dorchester Hotel, where he is giving a banquet for the Queen. He arrives with her, looking both more regal and more at ease than the monarch as he lopes between the guests. At the end of the lunch he gives another brief speech, reminding the Queen that he’s just a country boy, thanking her for opening all doors to British society and for letting him walk in her garden early in the morning. The Queen’s relaxation in his company is obvious as they talk. “She’s got a lot in common with him,” one courtier explains. “You see, they’ve both spent a lot of time in prison.”

  In the evening another Mandela is presented to the young generation: the showbiz idol and friend of pop stars. He is the guest of Prince Charles, together with most of the royal family, for a concert attended by five thousand people at the Albert Hall. Mandela has always praised musicians for their role in confronting racism, and for
agitating for his release from jail; now they have gathered to pay him tribute, beginning with Phil Collins’s Big Band and ending with a triumphant finale led by the South African trumpeter Hugh Masekela. The whole audience claps and sways. In the royal box Mandela jumps to his feet and begins jiving, jauntily swinging his arms. Prince Charles awkwardly begins to shuffle, the Queen makes some cautious claps, and even Prince Philip is seen to tilt. Beside them Mandela seems like a fantasy monarch: the man with rhythm who can swing and dance with his subjects.

  The next morning there is another Mandela: the champion of the underdog, the people’s president who can bring all the races together. With Prince Charles he makes a tour of the multiracial south London neighborhood of Brixton, where he is greeted by a huge crowd of black and white Londoners. From there he goes on to Trafalgar Square, dominated on one side by South Africa House, the old fortress of apartheid which is now the symbol of liberation. The square is closed to traffic, and is packed solid with people wearing Mandela T-shirts and waving flags. As he walks slowly through the crowd children gaze in wonder, and reach out to touch him. When he appears on the balcony of South Africa House he seems more like a pope blessing the crowd than a politician: “I would like to put each and every one of you in my pocket.” He talks about love, without embarrassment: “I am not very nervous of love, for love is very inspiring.”

  Why should an elderly African politician attract such unique affection—not just in Britain, but throughout Europe, America and Asia—at a time when politicians everywhere are more distrusted than ever before? What has happened, I cannot help wondering, to the stiff, proud young lawyer and revolutionary whom I first knew in Johannesburg in the fifties, who looked so suspiciously at the hostile white world and made fierce speeches denouncing the British imperialists? What has changed that young man’s flashing smile into the welcoming grin which seems so genuinely warm?