The End of Apartheid (12 page)

Mandela was planning to visit the United States, which would be followed by a visit to London to meet Mrs Thatcher. He called to ask me to meet him at a private clinic in Johannesburg. He had been admitted, suffering from exhaustion. I said that we were extremely worried about his schedule in the US, where he was due to visit seven cities in ten days. To give him some rest before going there, we planned to arrange for him to spend a quiet weekend in the English countryside with his great friend and colleague Oliver Tambo. Mandela was delighted at this gesture.

What he wanted to talk about, however, was how to tackle Margaret Thatcher. I said that I hoped that Mandela would bear in mind that no foreign leader had worked harder for his release and for the unbanning of the ANC. Following De Klerk's speech on 2 February, shots had been fired at the embassy in Pretoria by right-wing extremists, because they considered that the Prime Minister had influenced De Klerk to take these steps. Governments that were unconditional supporters of the ANC had no influence with the South African government. Mandela told me again, as he had said publicly, that, given the influence she could exert, he was determined to get her on his side. He wanted her as an ally and not as an enemy.
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I suggested that we should have a rehearsal for the meeting. ‘You can be Mandela,' I said, ‘and I'll be Mrs Thatcher.' He thought this was an excellent idea. There followed an exchange punctuated by much laughter on both sides. Mandela described the efforts he, Tambo and the ANC had made to engage with the government before he was convicted of treason and that all they were demanding now was a fully democratic constitution. ‘You will find us firm allies on all that,' I told him, ‘but you must stop all this nonsense about nationalising the banks and the mines!'

I congratulated him on not having used the word ‘nationalisation' once in recent weeks. ‘But it was your idea,' he said, referring to the influence of the London School of Economics on budding African politicians in the 1950s. ‘It was fashionable then,' he added with a smile. It was not fashionable now, I replied, and he should not try this line of argument in Downing Street. I added that, personally, I did not believe that the ANC would end up nationalising anything. We
had just been through all this with Swapo. Nationalisation had failed everywhere it had been tried in Africa. Mandela thanked me warmly for these ‘tips' for his meeting with the Prime Minister.

During his stay with Tambo, Mandela telephoned Margaret Thatcher. She proceeded, he said, to give him ‘a stern but well-meaning lecture'. His schedule was too heavy. He must cut it in half. ‘Even a man half your age would have trouble meeting the demands that are being made on you. If you keep this up, you will not come out of America alive!'
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Mandela said that the Prime Minister had played a great part in securing his release and that of his colleagues and ensuring that the South African government would sit down and talk to them. Margaret Thatcher said that she hoped that the ANC would now suspend the armed struggle. Mandela replied that the problem was that the South African government seemed unable to restrain the police. But he was totally committed to negotiations, for which he had been struggling for over a decade. If De Klerk removed further obstacles to negotiations, the ANC would announce an end to hostilities. The Prime Minister said that there was no question of lifting the major UN sanctions, but the country needed investment and De Klerk deserved encouragement. The Prime Minister felt ‘a bit disappointed' about Mandela's position on the armed struggle.

I responded that, in his meeting with her, Mandela above all was anxious to establish some kind of personal rapport, ‘which should not be difficult, given the character of the man'.

CHAPTER XII

‘Free Nelson Mandela!'

I saw Margaret Thatcher in 10 Downing Street before Mandela arrived. I asked her to remember that he had waited twenty-seven years to tell her his story. This earned me a glare from the clear blue eyes. ‘You mean I mustn't interrupt?' she said. Not for the first half-hour, I suggested. Asked if Mandela was anything like Mugabe, I was able to assure her that I had never met two human beings, let alone political leaders, less like each other than Nelson Mandela and Robert Mugabe.

Mandela arrived in the rain with, as we had feared, a mild case of pneumonia. The Prime Minister attempted to revive him with a small glass of port. ‘She chided me like a schoolmarm for not taking her advice and cutting down on my schedule', he observed.
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She then proceeded to listen for almost an hour as Mandela explained to her the history of the ANC and the difficulties he was facing in negotiations. He expressed his gratitude for the pressure she had exerted to help secure his release. She found him, as she wrote in her memoirs,
‘supremely courteous, with a genuine nobility of bearing and – most remarkable after all that he had suffered – without any bitterness. I warmed to him.'

She told Mandela that he would get support from the British government in the negotiations for a new constitution. She urged him to suspend the armed struggle – whatever the justification for this, it had now been overtaken – and to meet Buthelezi. Also, she declared, he must stop talking about nationalising the banks and the mines, thereby frightening away all new investment.

As, to her, he still seemed to be stuck in ‘some kind of socialist time-warp', over lunch she launched into some home truths about basic economics, with Thabo Mbeki clearly agreeing with her. She concluded that ‘South Africa was lucky to have a man of Mr Mandela's stature at such a time. Indeed, I hoped that he would assert himself more at the expense of some of his ANC colleagues.'
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Charles Powell's comments on the meeting were that it had taken place in an excellent atmosphere. The Prime Minister already was aware of Mandela's natural dignity. She had been impressed by his courtliness and obvious sincerity. His initial comments had lasted, uninterrupted, for over fifty minutes, ‘possibly a record!' He had implied that the armed struggle could be given up quite soon, and believed in De Klerk's integrity. The international community should leave the timing of the lifting of sanctions to the ANC. He recognised that there could not be a constituent assembly before a new constitution was drafted. There were huge economic imbalances which had to be addressed, but the ANC had not decided on nationalisation. They wanted to work with the business community. Margaret Thatcher had
concluded the meeting by saying that South Africa was very fortunate to have De Klerk and Mandela at this juncture.

The meeting had gone on for three hours, causing the press assembled outside in Downing Street to start chanting ‘Free Nelson Mandela!' Mandela felt that it had gone very well, though he did not, as he observed, make the slightest headway in arguing, very half-heartedly, for more sanctions. He went on to see Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, who asked how he had got on with the Iron Lady. ‘She was warm and motherly,' Mandela replied. ‘You must have met some other lady,' Kinnock protested.

At his press conference that afternoon, choosing his words with heavy emphasis, Mandela declared: ‘She is an enemy of apartheid.' Their differences lay in regard to the methods of inducing the government to dismantle the system. The meeting had been productive and he had come away from it ‘full of strength and hope'.
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His reaction, as he said slyly to me and others, was that the Prime Minister was ‘a woman he could do business with!'

The South African police uncovered Operation Vula, a secret ANC operation authorised by Tambo in 1986 to prepare the infrastructure for a ‘people's war'. The leading operative, Mac Maharaj, was arrested along with other mainly SACP members of the clandestine unit – Pravin Gordhan, Siphiwe Nyanda and Billy Nair. Mandela was taken aback, as he knew nothing of the operation. Joe Slovo told him that it was moribund. In reality, it was regarded by those involved as an insurance policy in case negotiations failed.

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.
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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.

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.

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.
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Buthelezi wrote to the Prime Minister to express concern that the ANC were keeping open the possibility of a return to the 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.