He had been fund-raising for the ANC overseas since his first travels, but now he stepped up the pace. In July 1993 he toured the United States for ten days, appealing for funds in each city. “I want a seven-figure check and I want it now,” he was quoted as saying. In Britain he was supported by old ANC allies like Richard Attenborough, the director of Cry Freedom, and David Potter, the founder of Psion computers; but he also reached out to ultraconservatives, to the chagrin of many antiapartheid activists. In May 1993 he welcomed tycoons at a fund-raising reception at the Dorchester Hotel, including old opponents of the ANC like Lord King of British Airways and Lord Weinstock of General Electric, who now competed to shake his hand. Mandela’s old friend Trevor Huddleston, who believed in “holy anger,” was dismayed to watch him forgiving men who had opposed sanctions and connived with apartheid. Mandela collected large sums from Europe, America and Asia, nobbling the presidents he met on his travels. De Klerk, whose National Party had collected so much from South African businessmen in the past, was vexed by the ANC’s “enormous election budget.”13
The campaign formally opened on February 12, 1994. No one doubted that the ANC would win more votes than de Klerk’s National Party: “We are dealing with a mouse,” said Mandela. “We in the ANC are like an elephant.” The more serious question was whether they would win the two-thirds majority which would enable them to revise the constitution. But would the election happen at all? Two major parties had not registered: Buthelezi’s Inkatha and the Afrikaner Volksfront. Together they were capable of pulling South Africa apart. Accommodating these two dangerous forces was to prove Mandela’s most testing and precarious task behind the scenes of the election campaign.
Mandela had always seen the right-wing Afrikaners as formidable enemies. Even if they could not mount an armed rebellion, they could deploy their many supporters in the military and the civil service to bring a black government to a halt. The most publicized resistance was from the AWB, led by Eugene Terre’Blanche, who had crashed into the headlines when they invaded the World Trade Centre. With their horses, their fake swastikas and their bloodcurdling rhetoric they played up to the TV cameras, evoking memories of the Boer War. But their stage army of overweight thugs did not risk their own lives, and had little of the courage or resourcefulness of the lean, brave commandos who defied the British ninety years before.
A more serious danger came from the Volksfront, the broad alliance of right-wing groups formed in May 1993, which included the AWB but also the Conservative Party under its new leader, Ferdi Hartzenberg, a hard-line Afrikaner farmer. The Volksfront was led by General Constand Viljoen, an elegant, white-haired soldier who had recently retired as head of the defense forces and who was much more popular than Hartzenberg. Viljoen could not believe in a multiracial democracy; he thought it was an artificial invention, like instant coffee: “a little bit of coffee, a little bit of milk, a little bit of brown sugar.”14 He demanded a separate Afrikaner nation, or Volkstaat, and was prepared to defend his own people against the police: he twice stated in public that no Afrikaner should shoot another Afrikaner. Mandela saw him as a real threat to law and order, because “the Afrikaners are like the Zulus: they are very loyal to their leaders.”15
Viljoen’s Volksfront worried Mandela still more after October 1993, when they allied themselves with Buthelezi and the two homelands Bophuthatswana and Ciskei, which were also boycotting the elections, in the odd coalition COSAG. Mandela saw the grouping as a “grave threat” to the negotiating process, and told businessmen that the Afrikaner right could do more damage than the armed struggle in the eighties, through their supporters in the civil service, the army and the police. If they carried out their threat of civil war, he warned, “thousands of whites could die.”16 Privately he reckoned that if Viljoen were part of a plot, it would be difficult for an ANC government to make use of the army.17
But Mandela also had respect for some Afrikaner conservatives, whom he saw as more honest and straightforward than de Klerk. He had first met General Viljoen in August 1993, through the mediation of his twin brother, Braam, who was friendly to the ANC. Mandela told Viljoen: “General, you may defeat us now, but if you take the road of violence, someday you and your people will be destroyed.”18 He recognized Viljoen as a real leader of men: “He was a very popular chap, because he was simple, down to earth, religious and honest.”19 Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma began a series of friendly talks with Viljoen, who soon said publicly that he was making more progress with the ANC, who were more sincere than de Klerk. Mandela was under fire from his executive for talking to the Afrikaner right, but he insisted on continuing to talk to prevent the crisis from escalating. De Klerk was hurt that Viljoen, whom he knew well, should prefer to deal with Mandela; he saw Viljoen’s power base as essentially racist, and recalled how his followers had regarded Mandela as a communist terrorist.20 But Mandela had established a personal rapport with the General which became a key to peaceful elections.
The issue of a Volkstaat, the old Afrikaner dream, remained contentious. Mandela left the way open for a referendum, though it would not bind him as President. Viljoen thought it an honest answer which he could take to his people. But Hartzenberg of the Conservative Party was not satisfied by Mandela’s uncertain commitment, and told him openly that he would prepare to stop the elections by force.21 In fact the ANC still did not think a Volkstaat practicable under democratic conditions, because its supporters were scattered across the country, with a majority nowhere; and it was hard now to define an Afrikaner who would be entitled to live there: “It’s not a state but a state of mind,” said one future Minister.
Mandela was reaching out to other Afrikaner leaders to avoid a showdown. He had three meetings with Pik Botha, the veteran Foreign Minister, whom he found the most positive man in the government toward the ANC.22 Pik Botha was skeptical about Afrikaner rebels: he thought they might take control of a few towns, but their resistance would not last. But he was keen to be helpful: he had said eight years earlier that he would serve under a black President, to the fury of President Botha; and he now took to calling Mandela “Mr. President.”
Mandela’s boldest move was to visit ex-President Botha himself, the “Great Crocodile” who had kept him in prison for so long. On February 12, when the election campaign opened, Mandela went to Wilderness, the peaceful seaside resort on the Cape coast where P. W. Botha had retired. Mandela had maintained a surprising respect for the old man, two years older than himself and equally tall; and he suspected he could have negotiated more effectively with him, as a strong man he could trust, than with de Klerk. He seemed to regard Botha as a white chief: once, when his plane had made an emergency landing near Wilderness, he asked Pik Botha for P.W.’s telephone number, explaining jokingly: “It is an African custom for a chief to inform another chief when he is traveling in his area.”23 And now he thought P. W. Botha could exert a restraining influence over the Afrikaner right and the military.
P. W. Botha received him in the gloomy study adjoining his house. He still saw South Africa in Cold War terms and Mandela as a communist; but he also regarded him as a gentleman and a chief, like his nephew Matanzima. Mandela recalled how they had both committed themselves to peace when they had met in the Tuynhuys, and explained his worries about violence: “If the election date is postponed people will slaughter us.” He was prepared to compromise over self-determination, and asked Botha to help him to persuade Afrikaner leaders.
Botha replied that South Africa was in a dangerous condition, approaching chaos: Mandela must hamba kahle (go slowly); otherwise “things will turn too ghastly to contemplate.” But the world should leave South Africans alone to solve their own problems. Mandela stressed that “the real crux of the problem is between the Volksfront, the government and the ANC: I would like to involve these people.” Botha proposed that Mandela should bring all the Afrikaner leaders to meet him, including de Klerk (though not Terre’Blanche, whom Mandela wanted to involve). They parted on friendly te
rms, after Botha presented Mandela with a copy of his book of speeches, Fighter and Reformer. Mandela wrote in the visitors’ book: “Had a constructive and fruitful discussion with ex-President P. W. Botha. Nelson Mandela, 51 Plein St.”24
Mandela could not persuade de Klerk to cooperate in the proposed meeting—“he was emotionally opposed to P. W. Botha intervening”—and it never happened. In fact, Botha was not very helpful, by his own account: he did not press Viljoen, who was “a very independent person.” But Mandela remained very grateful to Botha for “trying to bring about peace in our country.”25
It was the Afrikaner Generals who remained the key to peaceful elections and the transition afterward. Their future loyalty remained in some doubt: they had waged war on the ANC for thirty years, and many felt betrayed by de Klerk’s peace making. General Meiring, the head of the defense force, had made a tough speech in 1992 denouncing Modise, Kasrils and Hani; and Kasrils—who would soon become Deputy Minister of Defence—feared that the ANC might find themselves ambushed “like Piet Retief in Dingaan’s kraal.” They were reassured by some senior military leaders: the head of the Air Force promised if necessary to use his planes to bomb rebel forces. But the ANC still saw a real possibility of a military coup in the African or Latin American tradition.26
Mandela used all his authority and flattery to reassure the military and security leaders. Some time before the election he had visited the Police Commissioner, General Johan van der Merwe, at his office to ask if he would serve under him. Van der Merwe said he had already served longer than his original contract. Mandela also visited General Meiring, who answered yes without hesitation, and promised to be ruthless with anybody who tried to interfere with the elections.27 Some colleagues thought he was too trusting of Meiring and others. But he was determined to placate ex-enemies, whatever their past misdeeds.
By March civil war was looking closer, as right-wing Afrikaners and Buthelezi’s party boycotted the elections, together with the two homelands, Ciskei and Bophuthatswana, or “Bop.” The people of Bop now came into the front line. They had been given South African citizenship to allow them to vote, but their dictator, Lucas Mangope, still resisted elections, while his people were in full revolt against him. Mangope decided to call on the Afrikaner Volksfront to defend him. General Viljoen rashly agreed, and mobilized his small private army to move into Bop to support Mangope’s own forces. But Viljoen’s army was outbid by much wilder troops from the AWB—led by Terre’Blanche—who swaggered into Mmabatho, the capital, brandishing handguns, pistols and rifles, shooting blacks in the streets. The Bop army, outraged by this white invasion, promptly rebelled against Mangope and fired back at the raiders. Viljoen’s army discreetly withdrew, but the AWB went on the rampage until they were forced to retreat in disarray. Television cameras caught the full horror when three Afrikaners in a blue Mercedes who had been shooting through the car window were stopped by gunfire and then confronted by Bop policemen, one of whom shot them dead in cold blood. It was a devastating image. “The bubble of adventure, the heroic re-enactment of historic Boer myths,” wrote Allister Sparks, “was punctured in a day of blood and humiliation.”28
There was more talk of bloodshed. “South Africa braced itself for a race war yesterday,” wrote the London Sunday Times, under the headline “BOERS BAY FOR REVENGE ON ‘KAFFIRS.’ ”29 But the fiasco of the “Battle of Bop” soon proved a political godsend for Mandela—and peace. Mangope was overthrown; the ANC could operate freely in Bop; while the Afrikaner military rebels were disgraced. General Viljoen was appalled by the fiasco, and decided at the last minute, on March 16, to leave the rest of the Volksfront and to contest the elections through his own party, the Freedom Front. Mandela would always be grateful to the General. “When he pulled out,” Mandela said later, “I knew that the question of the right wing was just for the police.”30 But it was a very close-run rescue. De Klerk would have faced a serious situation, he said afterward, if Viljoen had successfully intervened to reestablish Mangope’s illegal authority in Bop. Would de Klerk have sent the South African army to move against Viljoen, and would they have fired against their former commander? He left the questions unanswered. Ironically, it was the thugs of the AWB who saved the day, by discrediting the whole expedition and Mangope’s regime, along with the system that created it. “With his removal from power,” de Klerk wrote later, “the last remnants of Dr. Verwoerd’s elaborate edifice of grand apartheid came crashing to the ground.”31
There was still a serious danger of resistance from the white right, and there remained the other major obstacle to a peaceful transition: Buthelezi, who remained adamant against the election and the new constitution, which he saw as belittling the Zulu kingdom: “No foreign forces shall come into it to rule over us,” he told an Inkatha congress in January. He was supported by the weak Zulu King, Goodwill, who now wanted to rule over an enlarged sovereign kingdom including the whole of Natal, as in 1830. Hopes of a settlement had dwindled in a new turmoil of killings, and the transitional government sent troops to Natal to try to limit the violence. The massacres seemed all the more sinister after Judge Goldstone on March 18 reported a “horrible network of criminal activity” linking Inkatha with South African police. “It appeared at last to corroborate the long-held suspicions,” de Klerk admitted later, “concerning the existence of a sinister third force within the security forces.”32
Mandela had tried to conciliate: “I will go down on my knees to beg those who want to drag our country into bloodshed,” he told a rally. He went to Durban to try to charm Buthelezi, and discussed the possibility of international mediators. But the deadlock remained, and the King stayed close to Buthelezi, who was still boycotting the elections on the closing date, March 11, when Viljoen decided to join the campaign.
Buthelezi then planned a provocative demonstration on March 28 in the center of Johannesburg. The day before, Mandela warned de Klerk, who in turn warned the police chiefs, who took no visible precautions. When the marchers approached Shell House, the ANC headquarters, Mandela gave orders to the security guards: “You must protect that house even if you are to kill people.”33 Some of the demonstrators fired handguns and shotguns into the building; the police disappeared, and the ANC feared that the marchers would invade them. ANC guards, after firing a warning shot, aimed straight at the crowd, killing eight people, including some who were hit in the back as they fled. One journalist inside the building saw it as “a bloody counterattack from those in a building under siege.”34 De Klerk phoned Mandela, and agreed that the police should not search for weapons inside Shell House: the next day Mandela personally stopped them from entering the building. But de Klerk then complained that Mandela reneged on a promise to cooperate fully with a police investigation.35 The blame continued to be fiercely debated. Mandela believed that de Klerk had deliberately allowed the march, as he had allowed the massacre at Sebokeng in July 1990. Four years later the judge in a High Court inquest found that the ANC had been wrong in claiming that Inkatha had conspired to attack them; but he also blamed the police and Inkatha.36
The “Shell House massacre” was followed by further killings and scare stories. “Emergency plans are being made to airlift up to 350,000 Britons out of South Africa,” the London Daily Mail reported on April 3, “should the country slide into chaos after this month’s elections.” Buthelezi appeared implacable: “We have now entered a final struggle to the finish,” he warned, “between the ANC and the Zulu nation.”37 On April 8 Mandela and de Klerk met Buthelezi and the Zulu King in the Kruger National Park game reserve, where Mandela (said de Klerk) “spoke in a careful and measured manner.” He promised the King “more powers than the Queen of England,” while insisting that the elections could not be postponed. But Buthelezi and the King were intransigent, and the summit ended with no breakthrough. “South Africa prepared for civil war yesterday,” said the London Sunday Times.38
The expected bloodbath looked all the more fearful in the light of the massacre
s in Rwanda at the time; the security forces were privately warning that South Africa could see a million dead.39 But there was a last hope. At the summit Buthelezi had agreed on inviting international mediators, to which Mandela consented, though other ANC leaders were wary. A team of seven arrived, led by Henry Kissinger and the former British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, and including a huge Kenyan professor, Washington Okumu. They were holed up for three days in the Carlton Hotel in Johannesburg, trying to conciliate. Kissinger met Mandela with Cyril Ramaphosa, who insisted that the mediators should not allow postponement. The ANC and Inkatha were playing a dangerous poker game, it seemed to Colin Coleman, one of the mediating team: “We were looking into the flames.”40 Kissinger and Carrington left after no progress had been made: “If we had stayed we would have become part of the problem,” said Kissinger afterward. “In a way, our failure achieved success.”41
Buthelezi was now still more isolated. Old allies, including General Obasanjo and Mrs. Thatcher, sent messages advising him to join the elections.42 The last homeland, the Ciskei, gave in. The King of the Zulus was being wooed away from his uncle Buthelezi by Mandela, while Zulu civil servants were worried about their future paychecks under a separatist government.
Before Buthelezi left Johannesburg, Professor Okumu met him at the airport to make a last plea, warning him that the elections would leave him out, and that the outcome could be bloody. Buthelezi now suggested he might join, on three conditions: if Inkatha was not discriminated against; if the Zulu kingdom was enshrined in the constitution; and if international mediation was resumed after the election. The next day he confirmed his offer. A draft memo of understanding was quickly produced and approved by Buthelezi, and Okumu then flew down to Cape Town with Coleman and two executives of Anglo-American to present it to Mandela at the Cape Sun Hotel. Mandela had just returned distraught from a rally where a fence had collapsed and two people were killed, but he quickly agreed to the outline and rang de Klerk, who concurred, with some reservations.43 On April 19 Mandela and de Klerk met in Pretoria with Okumu and Buthelezi, and agreed on the general terms, while experts prepared a revised text to meet concerns raised by Buthelezi. It was only a week before the elections, and the ballot papers had already been printed; but the electoral commission was still, amazingly, able to print stickers to add to the sheets with the name of Inkatha; while de Klerk generously agreed that his National Party would lose its special place at the bottom of the ballot paper.44 The ANC leaders were intensely relieved, but they still did not know what had changed Buthelezi’s mind.45
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