The End of Apartheid

by Robin Renwick

  I arranged for the Prime Minister to give an interview to Richard Steyn, the liberal editor of The Star. It was true, she said, that she had gone out on a limb over South Africa, for instance, in support of De Klerk at the Commonwealth conference in Kuala Lumpur. Now other countries were coming round to her point of view. ‘I find I quite often start out on a limb, but eventually find quite a lot of company there.’ She spoke warmly about Mandela, but wished that he would stop talking about nationalisation and the armed struggle.

  With the ANC still in a state of extreme disorganisation, there followed an episode much appreciated by my colleagues. I had arranged to meet Mandela one afternoon, as scheduled, at his party headquarters in Johannesburg. I arrived there to be told that Nelson Mandela had gone to meet me at the British embassy in Pretoria – where the embassy staff were thrilled to have the opportunity to meet the great man.

  As I kept urging the ANC leaders to suspend the armed struggle, I found an unexpected ally in Joe Slovo. Despite the misgivings of his wife, Ruth First (killed in Maputo in 1982 by a bomb despatched by the South African security police), he had defended every twist and turn of Soviet policy since the Second World War. Yet face to face I found him quite a genial, would-be avuncular, character, with a clearer grasp of strategy than many of his colleagues. He understood the need, he said, to demonstrate to De Klerk and his supporters that negotiations could be carried forward in good faith. As Mandela recounts in his memoirs, it was Slovo who proposed, first to him, and then to the ANC politburo, that this step should now be taken, a move he had concerted with Mandela. This was agreed despite some opposition for, as Mandela also observed, MK and the armed struggle had achieved among ANC supporters a popularity far beyond what had been achieved on the ground.35

  This paved the way for a further agreement with the government, in the form of the Pretoria Minute, signed on 6 August 1990. The agreement declared that preparatory talks would be held to open the way to full constitutional negotiations and announced the formal suspension of the armed struggle.

  Mandela by now was telling me that he was exhausted. He was planning to go for three weeks to Cuba, where he could receive some medical treatment. I said that he had just made a successful visit to the United States. It would dismay his legion of supporters there if he were now to spend three weeks with Fidel Castro. Asked if I had any other ideas, I suggested a stay with his and my friend Enos Mabuza in Kangwane, alongside the Kruger National Park. This was a great success. He resisted an appeal from Winnie (‘Come back, we are at war’) to return to Soweto. I arrived at the embassy one morning to be told that Mandela was trying to reach me. I telephoned him in Kangwane, imagining some new crisis in negotiations, only for him to give me the politically incorrect news that he had succeeded in shooting a blesbok.

  September 1990

  De Klerk announced that membership of the National Party henceforth would be open to people of all races, a move that represented a complete break with the history of his party. The polls were showing that, after Mandela, De Klerk was the most popular figure among all South Africans. Meanwhile, Jacob Zuma was trying to broker an agreement with Inkatha to reduce the violence in Natal, though the ANC continued to insist that Mandela had no plans to meet Buthelezi. An inquiry by the highly respected judge Richard Goldstone censured the police for the March shootings in Sebokeng.

  5 September 1990

  Meeting with Mandela, I congratulated him on the suspension of the armed struggle. Mandela said again, privately, that he would drop the idea of a constituent assembly. I said that, as the Prime Minister had suggested, we hoped that the government and the ANC would try to reach agreement on constitutional principles before the formal negotiation was engaged. The process still risked being derailed by the violence in the townships. Mandela said that he had been telling ANC supporters that they must not attack the Zulu hostel-dwellers. He accepted De Klerk’s sincerity, but the police at lower levels were out of control. There were elements of the security forces who did not want negotiations to succeed and who were supporting or conniving at violence against the ANC.

  I said that we welcomed the agreement between Zuma for the ANC and Frank Mdlalose for Inkatha to curb the violence in Natal. Mandela said that he still wanted to meet Buthelezi, but he could not do so in circumstances that would split his party. It would help if Buthelezi could be persuaded to stop making violent statements against the ANC. Would I please speak to Buthelezi? I said that I would speak to Buthelezi, but equally violent statements were being made about him and Inkatha by the ANC.

  I said that we would give the ANC some help over the return of exiles and further help with his security. He said that he was committed to the suspension of violence, but that required restraint by the police also. Would I please assure the Prime Minister that he had taken full account of what she had said to him at their meeting? He would not allow the negotiating process to be derailed.

  I said that the situation of black South Africans was not really going to improve until the return of new investment. We had noted Mandela’s statement that he would not think it necessary to wait for a new constitution to be agreed before proposing the easing of sanctions. We believed that De Klerk was getting close to announcing his intention to abolish all the remaining apartheid legislation. We favoured protection in the new constitution for minority rights, but would not agree with any racially based white veto. Mandela said that he could not advocate the easing of sanctions until the movement was ready for this, but hoped to do so in due course.

  I said that I was glad that De Klerk had been given a good reception when he visited Soweto; Mandela strongly agreed. He added that he valued highly Britain’s role as what he described as the principal supporter of the negotiating process.

  Mandela resumed his punishing schedule of visits abroad, with much effort devoted to fundraising for the ANC. I was conscious of the fact that, among his overseas contacts, I was the one who spent some of my time arguing with him. Most of the others came rather to worship at the shrine. It was a commentary on the quality of this extraordinary man that, far from resenting such expressions of difference, he seemed positively to welcome them and to find them more interesting than unadulterated adulation.

  Nearly all our meetings were attended by just him and me. But on one occasion I went to see him with his and my great friend, Helen Suzman. He had just returned from a visit to Libya. I suggested, politely, that it was not a good idea to have described Muammar Gaddafi as a supporter of human rights. Mandela tried to explain that he had said this because Gaddafi had given money to the ANC, at which point I was brushed aside by Mrs Suzman: ‘How could you be so silly, Nelson!’ she exclaimed. When, a few months later, Mandela suddenly declared that the voting age should be reduced to fourteen, which he claimed (inaccurately) was the case in Brazil, this earned him another ‘Don’t be silly, Nelson’ call from Helen Suzman.

  On another occasion, discussing Inkatha, Mandela suggested that they had the support of only 1 per cent of the population. When I questioned this, he brandished a copy of The Economist, which indeed suggested that this was so – on the basis of a survey of the townships in the Transvaal. I replied that if he ever got around to meeting Buthelezi in Ulundi, he would find that in rural, feudal Zululand north of the Tugela, Inkatha commanded 100 per cent support.

  As the ANC still contended that Inkatha alone were responsible for the violence, I handed him a photograph of a group of young ‘comrades’ necklacing a Zulu hostel dweller. Mandela’s reaction was: ‘But those are not our people.’ I pointed to the ANC logos on their T-shirts. Following this exchange, Mandela started to make more and firmer statements calling on both sides to end the violence. It came as a surprise to Mandela that Inkatha won a majority in Natal in the 1994 elections. He acknowledges in Long Walk to Freedom that he had seriously underestimated Inkatha’s support.36

  Buthelezi wrote to the Prime Minister to express concern that the ANC were keeping open the possibility of a return to th
e armed struggle, and that negotiations could not simply be between the government and the ANC. He and Mandela had no trouble with each other personally, but Mandela was under severe pressure from his comrades. On the following day, De Klerk lifted the state of emergency in Natal.

  I saw Buthelezi to ask about the discussions with Zuma and the ANC. The latest meeting had been joined by Mbeki. Buthelezi thought that the ANC now realised that they could not just brush Inkatha aside. I raised the issue of violence against Xhosa-speaking workers at a colliery in northern Natal. I said that we strongly supported the inclusion of Inkatha in negotiations. Mandela was rowing backwards on nationalisation. He and Mbeki were firmly committed to a negotiated outcome – with which Buthelezi agreed.

  October 1990

  William Waldegrave, Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, made what he described as the first ‘normal’ ministerial visit to South Africa. Leaders from the entire political spectrum had passed through the embassy while he was there. De Klerk would not make the Gorbachev mistake, he felt, of stopping halfway in reform. He did not think that the actual constitutional negotiations would be as difficult as many imagined, as the government were not intending to insist on racially based blocking groups.

  8 November 1990

  Passing through London, Mandela telephoned the Prime Minister from the ANC headquarters there. He said that he had inquired about meeting her and was disappointed to hear that she was in Geneva. She said that she was delighted to hear from him, and hoped that he was making progress with De Klerk. He said that she could rest assured about this; he would be seeing De Klerk again on 27 November. Both sides realised that a peaceful solution was urgent.

  The Prime Minister said that we expected the remaining apartheid legislation to be repealed in the next parliamentary session. Mandela said that the ANC wanted the Internal Security Act also to be repealed. The ANC had two demands – the complete scrapping of apartheid and giving everybody the vote. There was mutual confidence between him and De Klerk.

  Margaret Thatcher said that she was pleased that the ANC had suspended the armed struggle and there was less emphasis on nationalisation. Mandela said that he had invited South African business leaders to come up with alternatives to nationalisation. Instability could result from the absence of a fair distribution of resources. She added that she had heard that there would soon be a meeting with Buthelezi, which she welcomed.

  Mandela was worried about Renamo-style activity spilling over into South Africa. He was disturbed that De Klerk was not seeking to deal with this problem at its source. She said that Renamo was a terrible organisation, and that we were helping President Chissano to fight it. Mandela said that he knew that Chissano was grateful for our assistance.

  The Prime Minister said that Namibia seemed to be doing well; Mandela agreed. She had seen President Nujoma at the UN. Mandela concluded that he was full of optimism and glad to find that the Prime Minister shared it.

  12 November 1990

  Mandela told me about his telephone conversation with the Prime Minister, who he knew was by then beleaguered within the Conservative Party. I told him that we would help with the resettlement of exiles through the non-governmental organisations we were supporting, as would the EC. Mandela said that he would still like the funding to be given directly to the ANC. I said that would not be possible.

  In his statements overseas, Mandela had attributed responsibility for the violence that was taking place exclusively to the security forces. I said that, as a friend, I hoped that he would not continue to do so now that he had returned. I and my staff and the British press all visited the townships regularly. There were many incidents taking place in which ‘comrades’ claiming to belong to the ANC Youth League were clashing with the supporters of other parties, whether Inkatha, PAC or Azapo, as they had done recently in Bekkersdal and Brandtville.

  This seemed to have an effect as, subsequently, he started saying publicly that clashes were taking place between rival black political parties. I added that clashes between ANC supporters and black municipal councillors also posed dangers. We were trying to get the government to announce that they were prepared to move to a non-racial system of local government. Finally, we discussed security at his house, which still needed to be improved.

  22 November 1990

  When Margaret Thatcher was in the process of being ousted as Prime Minister by her party colleagues, Mandela gave an interview about her to the BBC. In it he said that while they had disagreed about strategy, in particular about sanctions, ‘we have much to be thankful to her for’.37

  Notes

  32 Mandela, op. cit., p. 576.

  33 Thatcher, op. cit., p. 533.

  34 Nelson Mandela, press conference, 4 July 1990.

  35 Mandela, op. cit., p. 578.

  36 Mandela, op. cit., p. 611.

  37 BBC interview with Mandela, 22 November 1990.

  CHAPTER XIII

  ‘The only alternative to negotiations now is negotiations later’

  November 1990

  At this point, in another sign of a return to normality, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Commons descended on us in South Africa. I invited them to a dinner in Pretoria at which the entire political spectrum of South Africa was represented, from the Conservative Party, the National Party and Inkatha to the ANC, PAC and the head of Azapo. Next day, Khulu Sibiya in City Press inquired why such a gathering could take place only in a foreign embassy, suggesting that South Africans had better start doing more of this for themselves.

  We took the committee around the projects we were supporting in the townships, by which they were sufficiently impressed to suggest that the same model of supporting projects directly, bypassing government, should be adopted elsewhere in Africa.

  I asked Mandela to meet the committee, which he agreed to do. But he insisted that I should get there in advance and sit on his side of the table, so that I could be introduced as his advisor! The committee paid tribute to the work of the embassy in seeking to build bridges between the ANC and the government and its ‘community diplomacy’.

  Buthelezi had another meeting with the Prime Minister. She said that Mandela had told Douglas Hurd that he continued to owe a debt of gratitude to Buthelezi for refusing to negotiate with the government while he was still in prison. But he could not go straight for a reconciliation that would split his party from top to bottom. He had to move one step at a time. A meeting between them by now had been delayed for nearly a year.

  Also in November, Justice Louis Harms presented his report on the misdeeds of the security forces. This had been commissioned by De Klerk in January, when Magnus Malan had confessed to him that elements of the CCB, which he had created, were out of control. Harms recommended the dissolution of the CCB, which De Klerk approved, only to find out later that the military, contrary to his orders, had kept CCB agents on their payroll. But Harms, to general amazement, dismissed allegations about a death squad operating at Vlakplaas, outside Pretoria, accepting the evidence of its commander, Eugene de Kock, instead.

  He did so despite the fact that the activities of this unit were being exposed by Max du Preez and Jacques Pauw of Vrye Weekblad. De Klerk was facing a systematic cover-up of these activities by the police and army generals, led by General Kat Liebenberg, head of the SADF who, it subsequently transpired, had himself intervened to protect CCB operatives. Justice Harms had badly failed his country and his President. De Klerk started to rely increasingly on a much tougher judge, Richard Goldstone.

  December 1990

  As John Major took over as Prime Minister, Mandela sent him and the other European heads of government a letter thanking him for his commitment to ending apartheid, but asking that the European Council should defer any easing of sanctions. Chancellor Kohl disagreed; he told John Major that they must do something to help De Klerk, who was ‘remarkable, very reliable and taking great risks’.

  Oliver Tambo and his wife returned to South Africa o
n 13 December. I did not go to the airport to meet him as he was bound to be exhausted by the flight. One of my over-eager European colleagues did so instead, only to be told by the anglicised Tambos that they wanted to see ‘our ambassador’.

  Next day, I went to see them in Soweto. It was a tragedy that Oliver Tambo, by now very frail, had not been able to return to South Africa until so close to the end of his life. Tambo told me that he favoured a meeting between Mandela and Buthelezi. At the ANC preparatory conference, which I attended later in the month, he made a controversial speech in which he called for the ANC’s sanctions policy to be reconsidered. The ANC, he said, faced international marginalisation unless it took the initiative to de-emphasise sanctions. Although his speech had been discussed and approved by the national executive, it went down badly with the overheated delegates. Mandela also was criticised for ‘personal diplomacy’ and for being out of touch with the rank and file.

  23 January 1991

  Meeting with Mandela. I said that we had been encouraged by his firm stand at the ANC conference in favour of negotiation. We were glad that a meeting with Buthelezi at last had been agreed for 29 January. Mandela said that he was reasonably optimistic about the prospects for negotiations, but De Klerk clearly had problems in carrying the security establishment with him and was not able to control the security forces. He claimed that the police had been given warning about the attacks on ANC supporters in Sebokeng and other townships in which forty-three people had been killed. There were other incidents which led him to question the sincerity of the government, though not of De Klerk himself. Mandela accepted that violence also was resulting from black political rivalries.