On the evening of 2 May, after De Klerk conceded defeat in a televised address, the party celebrated at the ballroom of the Carlton Hotel, which abuts the Carlton Centre, Africa’s tallest skyscraper, with fifty floors towering above the central business district of Johannesburg. Although advised by his doctor to take it easy as he had a cold, Mandela could not pass up the opportunity to rejoice with his compatriots. Here, to an ecstatic crowd, he briefly spelt out his mission and mandate as president of the country’s first democratically elected government.
Mandela said: ‘I must apologise, I have contracted a cold and I hope my voice will be able to stand up to the pressures this evening. My doctor, who examined me very early this morning, asked me to rest for today and tomorrow and to do as little talking as possible. And he said if I do that this cold would clear in two days’ time. I hope you will not disclose to him that I did not obey his instructions.
‘Fellow South Africans, the people of South Africa, this is indeed a joyous night. Although not yet final, we have received the provisional results of the election. My friends, I can tell you that we are delighted by the overwhelming support for the African National Congress.
‘Within the last few hours, I have received telephone calls from State President de Klerk, General Constand Viljoen, Dr Zach de Beer and Mr Johnson Mlambo, the first deputy president of the PAC, who pledged their full cooperation and offered their sincere congratulations.* I thanked them all for their support and look forward to working together for our beloved country.
‘I would also like to congratulate President de Klerk for the strong showing the National Party has displayed in this election. I also want to congratulate him for the … years that we have worked together, quarrelled … and that at the end of our heated exchanges, we were able to shake hands and to drink coffee.
‘My congratulations also go to Dr Zach de Beer, as well as to General Constand Viljoen, with whom I have had numerous discussions and whom I regard as worthy South Africans who are going to make a contribution in the Government of National Unity.
‘I also look forward to having discussions with the leaders of the liberation movement who have not been able to make the threshold. I will go to my organisation because I have got certain ideas. They have suffered together with us. I was in jail with many of them. We suffered together in the battlefields, and it hurts me a great deal that they should not be able to have made the threshold, which other parties have made.
‘To all those in the African National Congress and the democratic movement who worked so hard these last few days and through these many decades, I thank you and honour you.
‘To the people of South Africa and the world who are watching: this is indeed a joyous night for the human spirit. This is your victory too. You helped end apartheid; you stood with us through the transition.
‘I watched, along with you all, as the tens of thousands of our people stood patiently in long queues for many hours. Some sleeping on the open ground overnight, waiting to cast this momentous vote … This is one of the most important moments in the life of our country. I stand before you filled with deep pride and joy; pride in the ordinary humble people of this country. You have shown such a calm, patient determination to reclaim this country as your own, and joy that we can loudly proclaim from the rooftops – free at last!
‘I am your servant; I don’t come to you as a leader … We are a great team. Leaders come and go but the organisation and the collective leadership that has looked after the fortunes and reverses of this organisation will always be there. And the ideas I express are not the ideas invented in my own mind. They stem from … the Freedom Charter; from the decisions; resolutions of the National Conference and from the decisions of the National Executive Committee …* It is not the individuals that matter; it is the collective leadership which has led our organisation so skilfully.
‘And I stand therefore before you humbled by your courage, with a heart full of love for all of you. I regard it as the highest honour to lead the ANC at this moment in our history, and that we have been chosen to lead our country into the new century.
‘I pledge to use all my strength and ability to live up to your expectations of me as well as the ANC.
‘I am personally indebted and pay tribute to some of South Africa’s greatest leaders including John [Langalibalele] Dube, Josiah Gumede, G. M. Naicker, Dr Abdurahman, Chief Luthuli, Lilian Ngoyi, Bram Fischer, Helen Joseph, Yusuf Dadoo, Moses Kotane, Chris Hani and Oliver Tambo.* They should have been here to celebrate with us, for this is their achievement too.
‘Tomorrow, the entire ANC leadership and I will be back at our desks. We are rolling up our sleeves to begin tackling the problems our country faces. We ask you all to join us – go back to your jobs in the morning. Let’s get South Africa working.
‘For we must, together and without delay, begin to build a better life for all South Africans. This means creating jobs, building houses, providing education and bringing peace and security for all.
‘This is going to be the acid test of the Government of National Unity. We have emerged as the majority party on the basis of the programme, which is contained in the Reconstruction and Development Programme.† There we have outlined the steps that we are going to take in order to ensure a better life for all South Africans.
‘Almost all the organisations that are going to take part in the Government of National Unity have undertaken … to contribute to the better life of our people. That is going to be the cornerstone … on which the Government of National Unity is going to be based. And I appeal to all the leaders who are going to serve in this government, to honour that programme. And … to contribute towards its immediate implementation.
‘If there are attempts on the part of anybody to undermine that programme, there will be serious tensions in the Government of National Unity.
‘We are here to honour our promises. If we failed to implement this programme, that will be a betrayal of the trust which the people of South Africa have vested in us. It is a programme, which was developed by the masses of the people themselves in People’s Forums. It has been accepted by state corporations, by government departments, by business, academics, by religious leaders, youth movements, women’s organisations. And nobody will be entitled to go to that, to participate in that Government of National Unity to oppose that plan.
‘But I must add we are not going to make the Government of National Unity an empty shell. We want every political organisation that participates in that Government to feel that they are part and parcel of a government machine, which is capable of accommodating their views within the context of the Reconstruction and Development Programme. We do not want to reduce them into mere rubber stamps, to rubber stamp the decision of any organisation except to say that that programme has to be carried out without reservation.
‘The calm and tolerant atmosphere that prevailed during the elections depicts the type of South Africa we can build. It set the tone for the future. We might have our differences, but we are one people with a common destiny in our rich variety of culture and traditions.
‘We also commend the security forces for the sterling work done. This has laid a solid foundation for a truly professional security force, committed to the service of the people and loyalty to the new constitution.
‘People have voted for the party of their choice and we respect that. This is democracy.
‘I hold out a hand of friendship to the leaders of all parties and their members, and ask all of them to join us in working together to tackle the problems we face as a nation. An ANC government will serve all the people of South Africa, not just ANC members.
‘We are looking forward to working together in a Government of National Unity. It is a clear mandate for action. To implement a plan to create jobs, promote peace and reconciliation, and guarantee freedom for all South Africans.
‘Now is the time for celebration, for South Africans to join together to celebrate the birth of democracy.
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br /> ‘Let our celebrations be in keeping with the mood set in the elections – peaceful, respectful and disciplined – showing we are a people ready to assume the responsibilities of government.
‘I promise that I will do my best to be worthy of the faith and confidence you have placed in me and my organisation, the African National Congress. Let us build the future together, and toast a better life for all South Africans.
‘Lastly, I just want to say that in some areas we may not have done as well as we hoped. But that is how democracy functions. There should be no tensions in any region in which we have not emerged as the majority party. Let us stretch out our hands to those who have beaten us, and to say to them: we are all South Africans; we have had a good fight. But now this is the time to heal the old wounds and to build a new South Africa.
‘I also want to say that there are sports teams that were supposed to come to South Africa. They have not done so because of the state of emergency. I invite all of them to come to South Africa irrespective of the state of emergency. We the people of South Africa will welcome them with open hands.
‘I thank you.’22
Sometime later in the evening he was given a gift from James Motlatsi, president of the National Union of Mineworkers. Mandela then returned to the microphone and said: ‘Well, I’m sure you’ll bear with me. I can’t resist saying thank you to Comrade James. You must know that my association with the mineworkers’ union can be described only by words intimate, because my first job, my very first job, was in the mine as a mine policeman. So I appreciate this gift because those links between the mineworkers and me have lasted and given me strength and hope throughout these many years. And I thank you.’23
* * *
Like the boxer he once was, Mandela focused all his energy into one blow that would fell the iniquities and inequalities of the past and fashion a truly democratic South Africa. He was a marvel for the staffers in his office, a human dynamo that aimed to reach all constituencies. Jessie Duarte, then chief operations officer in the ANC presidency, remembers how he phoned every head of state who had assisted the ANC’s election campaign.24
In the days leading up to his inauguration, he conveyed the message that the election was a new beginning and a summons to a national partnership for change. Following a programme that would have tired a man half his age, on the weekend before he was to be elected president by Parliament, Mandela spoke to congregations in Cape Town at a mosque in the Bo-Kaap, and addressed worshippers in a Sea Point synagogue, as well as Anglicans and Methodists in their churches respectively.25
In an event organised by the South African Council of Churches to give thanks for the peaceful elections, Mandela addressed a multifaith service at the FNB Stadium in Soweto, where he thanked Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Jewish leaders for their part in the struggle for liberation.
‘Nothing I can say can fully describe the misery of our people as a result of that repression,’ Mandela said, ‘and the day we have been fighting for and waiting for has come. The time has come for men and women, African, coloured, Indian and White, Afrikaans- and English-speaking, to say we are one country, we are one people.’26
Duarte remembers that Mandela
also met all the chiefs of the intelligence and the army. He met General Meiring and a General Brown from the police, and he met Magnus Malan.* This was after the election. He said that they had to hand over decently. He wanted to know the strength of the army, what is in the intelligence apparatus, who were the people there. Clearly he had an idea that things had changed and he said so. He took a great interest in those elements: police, army, the Justice Department. I think that came not only from his background but his experience as a prisoner, things that he had experienced that [had gone] wrong for him, the actual issues about justice. He called Bantustan leaders to say that it was time to move forward together.27
Earlier, while still in prison, Mandela had been ambivalent towards the Bantustan system.† Although he ‘abhorred it’, he ‘felt the ANC should use both the system and those within it as a platform for our policies, particularly as so many of our leaders were now voiceless through imprisonment, banning or exile’.28
But in the run-up to the elections, Mandela wanted to avert Walter Sisulu’s mordant prophecy from coming true. In 1977, Sisulu had written from prison about the so-called independence of the Bantustans. ‘With “independence” for Bantustans, the Nats [National Party] will have gone a long way in dividing our people along ethnic lines. Furthermore, the Nats have sown seeds that may well become a time bomb that will explode in our midst, long after they and white minority rule have been vanquished.’29
Therefore, in talking to Bantustan leaders, Mandela wanted to ensure that they were all on side in the creation of a unitary, independent state, and to avert the spectre of tribalism that one of the ANC’s founders and presidents, Pixley ka Isaka Seme, warned about in October 1911.‡ ‘The demon of racialism, the aberrations of the Xosa-Fingo feud, the animosity that exists between the Zulus and the Tsongas, between the Basutos and every other Native must be buried and forgotten; it has shed among us sufficient blood! We are one people. These divisions, these jealousies, are the cause of all our woes and of all our backwardness and ignorance today.’30
For Mandela, security was key both to a stable transition and to the growth and development needed for socio-economic change.
He writes: ‘A few weeks before the general election of 1994, and accompanied by Alfred Nzo and Joe Nhlanhla, who later became Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Intelligence respectively, I had a discussion with General Georg Meiring, Chief of the South African Defence Force, and thereafter with General Johan van der Merwe, National Commissioner of the South African Police, later known as SAPS.*
‘I asked each one whether he would serve under an ANC government if we won the election. General Meiring assured us without hesitation that he would serve the new government loyally and provide it with adequate security, an undertaking, which he tried to the best of his ability to honour. General Meiring’s failure to resist pressure from Military Intelligence to discredit his obvious successor, General Siphiwe Nyanda, and other top black army officers tended to tarnish his otherwise clean image.†
‘The discussion with General van der Merwe was not that easy. He was accompanied by General Basie Smit, the second in seniority, and by General Johan Swart, former Commissioner of Soweto. General van der Merwe informed us that he would be retiring soon, and intended to hand over command to Basie Smit. I pointed out that I was interested in him only; that if he would not be available, I would then appoint a successor of my own choice.’31
Sydney Mufamadi remembers the discussions between the generals and Mandela:
General Meiring had been asked to stay on, and then at one point he took the so-called intelligence report to President Mandela, which was making very serious allegations about senior members of the previously non-statutory forces, MK in particular … of plans to engineer a coup against the government. President Mandela took the allegations seriously enough and appointed Chief Justice [Ismail] Mahomed, and those allegations were found to have no basis. Georg Meiring did not last long after that … President Mandela saw the strategic necessity of an inclusive arrangement in order to build the new South Africa. But he needed to be satisfied his interlocutors were of the same mind.32
Mandela’s disinclination to continue with General van der Merwe was based on a more fundamental aspect, the violence wracking the country, and its sponsors. Mandela made his offer to appoint Van der Merwe as commissioner of the new police service to assure him and his cohorts that they wouldn’t be prosecuted for past crimes; but they had to show reciprocity.
‘Van der Merwe was not appointed as head of the new South African Police Service,’ says Mufamadi, ‘because, even as we were very close to the elections in 1994 … we continued to have very serious incidents of … politically motivated violence – in parts of the Reef, the East Rand in particular and
KwaZulu Natal – which suggested that the structures that were created for purposes of carrying out that violence … had not been dismantled.’ One of the incidents was a ‘big massacre in the Port Shepstone area’ in 1995. ‘President Mandela was not satisfied that we could count on the leadership of General Van der Merwe, who was very hesitant about participating in the Truth [and Reconciliation] Commission [TRC].’33
Based on the Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, No. 34 of 1995, the TRC was set up by the GNU to help deal with what had happened under apartheid. The conflict during this period resulted in violence and human rights abuses. In Mufamadi’s – and Mandela’s – view, the TRC ‘was not just going to talk about who did what in the past, but actually close the space for whoever might have been thinking about continuing to carry out incidents of violence, to continue to do so because the truth would have been known about who was in the hit squads…’34
When General van der Merwe failed to respond to Mandela’s overtures, Mandela terminated the offer. Soon thereafter, Mufamadi continues, ‘we set up the unit to investigate the infrastructure that was clearly still in place fomenting violence in KwaZulu Natal … [which was] led by the then superintendent, Frank Dutton. And what was good about it is that it got the cooperation of quite a significant number of people who were involved previously in the hit squads – they were coming forward with information.’35
In speaking and interacting with every part of South African society, Mandela was imprinting his authority as leader on both the ANC and the country. ‘What a lot of people didn’t realise,’ Barbara Masekela observes, ‘was that he was not going to be the president of the ANC only. He was going to be the president of all the people of South Africa. I thought it was my duty to expose him to as wide a range of people as possible so that he can have as accurate as possible an insight into society. He appreciated it deeply.’36
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