Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma were worried about the temporary ascendancy of the radical wing of the ANC. I said that we had worked hard to persuade the government and Buthelezi to accept the ban on the carrying of assegais by Inkatha supporters in the Transvaal townships. We had tried to help the ANC out of the corner they had got themselves into with their ultimatum, with working groups making progress on issues other than the constitution. The discussion paper I had seen for their conference, demanding a transfer of power to an interim government, was a complete non-starter. Where had this come from?
I was told that it had been put forward by a white SACP faction. Zuma said that Mandela was infuriated about police behaviour and the alleged persecution of his wife, causing him not always to think clearly. It was a tragedy that Tambo was so ill. Would I please make some of these points to Mandela, to help counter the influence of Chris Hani, the youth wing and Winnie?
I paid a farewell call on De Klerk, who said that by 21 June all the apartheid laws would have been repealed. I said that we had helped to persuade most of the neighbouring countries to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and hoped that South Africa would now do so. De Klerk said that this was imminent. I described the effort we were making to try to ensure that Mandela was not bound into impossible negotiating positions at the ANC conference. However frustrated he might become at times, trying to proceed without the ANC was not going to be a successful course of action. De Klerk agreed with this. He wanted us to go on using our influence with Mandela, Mbeki and Zuma to help ensure that negotiations on a new constitution were engaged by year end.
July 1991
There followed the dismantling and destruction of all the nuclear weapons that had been developed. South Africa signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and opened all its nuclear plants for inspection, thereby becoming the first and only country voluntarily to have dismantled its military nuclear capability. Apart from having opened the way for a fully democratic constitution and removing from the statute book all the apartheid laws, for this decision also FW De Klerk well and truly deserved his Nobel Peace Prize.
The press began publicising the fact that the government had been providing covert support to Inkatha. De Klerk had been aware that two hundred Inkatha members had been trained by the South African military, ostensibly to provide protection to Inkatha leaders at risk of assassination. But, unsurprisingly, it turned out that some of those involved themselves had launched attacks on the ANC, no doubt with the connivance of those who had trained them. Elements of both the police and the army had been responding to appeals from Inkatha for weapons to help them in their fight with the ANC.
De Klerk removed Magnus Malan from his post as defence minister, assigning him to Water Affairs, where it was thought he could not do much more harm. Adriaan Vlok was removed from Law and Order and put in charge of the prison system. In the democratic era, Vlok would apply for amnesty for authorising the attempted poisoning of the ANC-aligned secretary-general of the South African Council of Churches, the Reverend Frank Chikane, whose name was at the head of a death list handed down to him by PW Botha. Vlok was to make a sincere repentance for this scarcely believable crime.
De Klerk appointed Judge Richard Goldstone to launch a further, and this time successful, investigation into the dirty tricks departments of the police and army. His discoveries, and those of air force general Pierre Steyn later in the year, led to the ‘night of the generals’, on which De Klerk dismissed sixteen senior members of the SADF. Clearly, the head of the SADF, General Kat Liebenberg, should have gone as well. But Hernus Kriel, Minister of Law and Order, warned: ‘What if they decide to get rid of us instead?’ Liebenberg was replaced six months later by General Georg Meiring. When the former head of the army, General Constand Viljoen, told Meiring that they could take over the country in an afternoon, Meiring replied: ‘Yes, and what would we do then?’ (General Viljoen subsequently was persuaded by Mandela himself to stop thinking in these terms and to participate in the 1994 elections.)
Judge Goldstone was clear in his report that, notwithstanding the contribution made to it by elements of the security forces, the ‘primary cause’ of the violence was ‘the political battle between supporters of the ANC and Inkatha’. Mandela dismissed this as ‘superficial’. Although episodically referring to violence from all sides, it was not until 1993 that Mandela fully acknowledged that ‘there are members of the ANC who are killing our people. We must face the truth. Our people are just as involved as other organisations in committing violence.’40
* * *
Having talked to all the main political leaders over my last few days in South Africa, I left convinced that the process of political change was indeed irreversible and that agreement would be reached on a fully democratic constitution. There would be a lot more violence and turbulence, some serious setbacks and apparent breakdowns. But Mandela and De Klerk knew that in the end they were condemned to agree. I did not believe that De Klerk, having gone this far, would try to stop halfway. I felt sure that in due course we would see an ANC government, led by Mandela, with De Klerk and the National Party participating in it. My main worry was whether an accommodation could also be reached with Inkatha.
When I left, Wits University, on the proposal of Helen Suzman, was kind enough to award me an honorary degree ‘for services to the struggle against apartheid’. (The offer from the South African government of the Order of Good Hope I had to decline – on the same grounds Margaret Thatcher had declined the freedom of the city of Johannesburg.) Mandela and Buthelezi added their good wishes, and it was this that pleased me the most, for it demonstrated that, in this deeply divided society, it was possible to try to act as a genuinely honest broker and to retain the confidence of the main participants. This in itself was a demonstration that, in the end, they wanted to try to find a way to agree.
I left with an unaccustomed sense of humility. My predecessors, however hard they tried – and some tried harder than others – could not hope to achieve much in the face of that ironclad regime. And what in the end was achieved was accomplished by and for South Africans – not by any outsider, however well disposed. The most that any embassy could do was to try to help act as a facilitator, and then let South Africans get on with a process in which too much foreign involvement was positively undesirable. For a time the South African government, trying to change but still hard put to bring itself to do so, did feel that it needed one Western country it felt it could appeal to. For a time, Mandela and the ANC also felt they needed someone they could appeal to, with, they hoped, some influence on the other side. Within months, there could be little further need, and certainly much less scope, for such a role.
* * *
Two and a half years later, I was asked by Mandela to fulfil a promise to him that, as soon as he was ready to call for new investment, Britain would be the first to help him to attract back to South Africa some of the companies that had left and to encourage others to invest. This we did at a dinner and reception he addressed at the British embassy in Washington, to which we invited a host of American industrialists and investment fund managers. Throwing away his dreary and partisan prepared speech, as I urged him to do, Mandela declared his intention to seek an accommodation with Buthelezi and to reappoint De Klerk’s finance minister, Derek Keys.
Several of the South African businessmen travelling in his wake had been pillars of the apartheid regime. When I congratulated him on his apparent ability to forget this, Mandela replied, with understandable bitterness, that he forgot nothing, and nor did he forgive, but that he needed them now.
A few weeks later, the first fully democratic elections ever to be held in South Africa resulted in a resounding victory for the ANC and in a coalition government in which, despite the tensions between them, all the main political forces for the time being were represented in a still deeply divided society.
The Government of National Unity lasted until May 1996, by which time De Klerk and his colleagues
felt that the ANC, with their commanding majority in parliament, had little interest in sharing power and certainly not with their former adversaries. With Mandela installed as President, I was amazed to hear, among others from Anthony Sampson, that he had started saying that he preferred dealing with PW Botha, being supposedly more straightforward, than with FW de Klerk, whom his ANC colleagues continued to regard as a serious political rival. Very exceptionally, I asked to see Mandela, who received me in his office at the Tuynhuys. After the usual greetings, I recalled the meetings I had had, in the same office, with PW Botha, which had entailed arguing, with no success, for his release and for people’s lives, for instance those of the Sharpeville Six.
Whatever their disagreements, I reminded him, he should please bear in mind that, but for De Klerk, he would not have been elected President and might still be in jail. Mandela, characteristically, informed his assistant that ‘the ambassador is right’ (though I had ceased to be one), adding that De Klerk had richly deserved his Nobel Peace Prize, ‘for he had made peace possible’.
Notes
38 Mandela, op. cit., pp. 584–5.
39 Financial Times, 1 June 1991.
40 Welsh, op. cit., pp. 413–4.
CHAPTER XV
‘We did not join the ANC to become rich; we joined it to go to jail’
During Mandela’s state visit to the UK as President of South Africa, in July 1996, he combined with the Prince of Wales to sponsor a musical evening at the Royal Albert Hall. Asked to look after him in the interval, I pointed out that, when it came to the performance by Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the entire audience would be expecting him to get up and dance, as he was accustomed to do in South Africa. Mandela was worried that this might offend the Queen, whom he greatly admired and had taken to calling ‘Elizabeth’ (not a form of address allowed to anyone else on the planet, except Prince Philip). But get up and dance he did in the Royal Box, with the Duke of Edinburgh following suit – and then the Queen. This was not a feat that could have been accomplished by any other world leader.
When the time came for Mandela to hand over as President, his own preferred candidate to succeed him was Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary-general of the ANC, who had played the leading role in negotiating the new constitution. The party hierarchy insisted on Thabo Mbeki, who had played no less crucial a role in the transition. Mbeki, however, was anxious to step out from the shadow of his predecessor and had anyway been running the government under him. Mandela complained to me and others that, while he could get through to any other world leader, he had difficulty in doing so with his successor, who did not always bother to return his calls.
After he stood down as President, Mandela told me how much he detested Robert Mugabe, whom he regarded as having betrayed everything the liberation movements had fought for. He referred to him derisively as ‘Comrade Bob’. Always meticulous about time-keeping himself, he also was infuriated by Mugabe’s habit of arriving in regal style two hours late for meetings of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Asked on one occasion what the people of Zimbabwe should do about him, Mandela said: ‘If necessary, take up arms!’ This earned him some severe remonstrances from the ANC, urging him not to rock the boat, whereupon he fell silent on the subject. In 2000, when the government-sponsored land seizures began in Zimbabwe, however, Mandela told me that, if anything of the kind were to occur in South Africa, he would come out of retirement and ‘stop this on the first farm’.
Meanwhile, he did start to criticise the Mbeki government’s denialism about HIV/Aids. This led him to discover that his intense loyalty to his party was not always reciprocated. He was summoned to explain himself at a meeting of the national executive committee (NEC) in March 2002. Mbeki did not attend the meeting himself, but Mandela was astonished to find himself being heckled in the meeting by a claque of Mbeki supporters for criticising the government. A furious Mandela never attended another NEC meeting.
The difference between the ANC he believed he represented and its conduct as the ruling party was denounced by his great friend Archbishop Tutu (‘they stopped the gravy train just long enough to get on it themselves’). At the 1997 conference in Mafikeng, during which he handed over the presidency of the party to Thabo Mbeki, Mandela railed against corruption. Yet, after standing down as President of the country, to the disappointment of his admirers and despite his own unease, he remained silent about its departures from his ideals. There were many who would have liked to hear him remind his colleagues that, as Kgalema Motlanthe observed of his fellow Robben Islanders: ‘We did not join the ANC to become rich; we joined it to go to jail.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am very grateful to Jonathan Ball for suggesting that I should publish this account of numerous meetings with PW Botha, FW de Klerk, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu and others at a crucial time in South Africa’s history, and to Jeremy Boraine, Alfred LeMaitre and the team at Jonathan Ball Publishers for their help in producing it. I have been grateful to John Carlin and David Welsh for their suggestions on the manuscript and to Katie Gareh and Marie-France Renwick for their invaluable help with it.
I must especially record my thanks to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and to the FCO historians Professor Patrick Salmon and Dr Richard Smith for their kindness in enabling me, in writing this book, to review all the reports I sent from South Africa while I was ambassador and the messages exchanged between the Prime Minister, PW Botha and FW de Klerk at the time.
INDEX
African National Congress (ANC) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38
Agnew, Rudolph 1
Ahtisaari, Martti 1, 2, 3
Aldana, Carlos 1
Alexander, Neville 1
ANC see African National Congress (ANC)
Anglo American Corporation 1
Arafat, Yasser 1
Asoyan, Boris 1
Azanian People’s Organisation (Azapo) 1, 2
Azapo see Azanian People’s Organisation
Baker, James 1, 2, 3
Bam, Fikile 1
Barnard, Niel 1, 2, 3
Basson, Wouter 1
Bernardt, Hymie 1
Boesak, Allan 1, 2
Boraine, Alex 1
Botha, PW (Pieter Willem) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 messages to and meetings with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
Botha, Roelof (Pik) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24 and Namibia 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Breytenbach, Jan 1
Broederbond 1, 2
Bush, George HW 1, 2, 3, 4
Buthelezi, Mangosuthu 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28
Cachalia, Azhar 1
Caine, Michael 1
Callaghan, James 1, 2
Carlin, John 1
Carolus, Cheryl 1
Carrington, Peter 1, 2
Carter, Jimmy 1, 2, 3
Castro, Fidel 1
CCB see Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB)
Cetshwayo, King 1
Chalker, Lynda 1, 2, 3
Chand, Prem 1, 2
Charles, Prince of Wales 1, 2
Chase Manhattan 1
Chernyaev, Anatoly 1
Chikane, Frank 1
Chissano, Joaquim 1, 2, 3
Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) 1, 2, 3, 4
Coetsee, Jacobus (Kobie) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Cohen, Hank 1, 2
Commonwealth 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 conferences 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Eminent Persons Group 1, 2, 3
Conservative Party (South African) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Corbett, Michael 1
Crocker, Chester (Chet) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Cuéllar, Javier Pérez de 1, 2, 3
Dab
engwa, Dumiso 1
De Beer, Sam 1
De Klerk, FW (Frederik Willem) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 as State President 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29
and Mandela 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21
De Klerk, Willem (Wimpie) 1, 2, 3
De Kock, Eugene 1, 2
De Kock, Gerhard 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
De Lange, Pieter 1, 2
Delmas treason trial 1, 2
De Villiers, Dawie 1
De Wet, Christiaan 1, 2
Dhlomo, Oscar 1, 2
Dole, Robert 1
Dommisse, Ebbe 1
Dos Santos, Eduardo 1
Douglas-Home, Alec 1
Duff, Antony 1
Du Plessis, Barend 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Du Preez, Max 1
Eglin, Colin 1
Elizabeth II, Queen of Great Britain and Northern Ireland 1, 2, 3
Esterhuyse, Willie 1, 2
Fairweather, Patrick 1, 2
First, Ruth 1
Flower, Ken 1, 2, 3, 4
Fraser, Malcolm 1
Frasure, Robert 1
Gaddafi, Muammar 1
Geingob, Hage 1
Geldenhuys, Jannie 1, 2
Genscher, Hans-Dietrich 1
Gilmour, Ian 1
Giliomee, Hermann 1, 2
Glaze, James 1
Goering, Heinrich 1
Goering, Hermann 1
Goldstone, Richard 1, 2, 3, 4
Gorbachev, Mikhail 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
The End of Apartheid Page 15