The End of Apartheid (13 page)

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.

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.

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The Prime Minister said that we expected the remaining apartheid legislation to be repealed in the next parliamentary session. Mandela said that the ANC wanted the Internal Security Act also to be repealed.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.

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.

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'.
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CHAPTER XIII

‘The only alternative to negotiations now is negotiations later'

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.

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 on 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.

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.

Mandela said that in a meeting with De Klerk and Adriaan Vlok, the Minister of Law and Order, Vlok had claimed that the ANC had a double agenda, with the military wing still planning to use force. The ANC had said that they did not trust the government either.

Mandela said that he did not expect miracles from his meeting with Buthelezi, but agreed that it would be psychologically important. I said that the government's attitude mirrored his own about the security forces. They accepted that Mandela and Mbeki were negotiating in good faith, but had legitimate concerns about ANC arms caches and ‘self-defence units'.

I said that we had noted Mandela's statement in Lusaka that, if negotiations did not succeed, the ANC would have to ‘seize power'. We did not believe that the ANC were in a position to seize power. If negotiations broke down, they would simply have to be started up again. De Klerk appeared to accept this, and I hoped the ANC did too. Mandela said that he did. He was pleased with the remarkable improvement in relations between Britain and the ANC and was
grateful for the role the embassy had played in this. He looked forward to meeting John Major later in the year.

In a separate meeting, Thabo Mbeki felt that progress was being made in the discussions with the government. They wanted to move ahead on constitutional principles and some sort of interim council on which the ANC could be represented. Mbeki said that the front-line states would be meeting on 7 February to discuss the maintenance of sanctions. I said that, if they repeated the same old mumbo jumbo about ‘nothing having changed', they would lose all credibility. The ANC should be thinking in terms of the selective easing of sanctions. Mbeki said that he realised that EC sanctions were likely to be further eased by June and that the Americans also were likely to move in the course of the year. I suggested a selective relaxation of the sports boycott, now that cricket had a unified governing body; Mbeki was open-minded about this.

De Klerk wrote to John Major to thank him for his role in the decision by the European Council to lift the ban on new investment in South Africa. The security legislation was being reviewed with the objective of ensuring free political participation by all concerned. He was hoping to call a constitutional conference before the end of the year.

De Klerk announced in his speech at the opening of parliament the repeal of all the remaining apartheid legislation, including the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act. John Major wrote to congratulate him on this and to say that we would be looking for a further response from the international community. John Major spoke
to the Australian prime minister, Bob Hawke, about the need for progress in lifting sanctions. He found, not to his surprise, that Hawke was mainly interested in getting rid of sports sanctions.

I told Van Heerden that we would be seeking a relaxation of the sports boycott in relation to sports that were integrated and had a unified sports body, such as cricket. The justice department, however, were still making difficulties about some of the exiles, in spite of the indemnity agreed in the Groote Schuur Minute. Mbeki wanted to bring back the two to three thousand people still in Lusaka, and it was in everyone's interests to help him wind up the ANC headquarters there.

Barend du Plessis thanked me for our help in getting a more positive European response, adding that for Kaunda to state that the world must maintain sanctions to ‘help De Klerk vis-à-vis the right wing' was fatuous even by his standards. If De Klerk did not get support from the international community, Treurnicht would exploit that against the government.

Meeting at his office in parliament with De Klerk and Lynda Chalker, Minister of State in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. De Klerk was pleased that the Europeans had set about lifting sanctions. The ANC were no longer being allowed to dictate their policies. De Klerk said that the ANC had wanted to deal with the government to the exclusion of the other political parties. The ANC's statement on 8 January in favour of a multiparty conference had been a major step forward. It had triggered heavy criticism of Mbeki and other moderates, which Mandela had sought to counter with tough-sounding
rhetoric. De Klerk was trying to accelerate the return of exiles through a judicial procedure.

Despite Conservative Party advances, he was confident he could win a referendum of the white electorate. The best help he could get from the outside world would be a rugby tour! We said that lifting the sports boycott would take a bit more time. It might have to be done sport by sport. De Klerk said that, obviously, access to the IMF and external capital was more important. I stressed the need finally to resolve the remaining issues over the release of prisoners. De Klerk expressed strong support for our military actions in the Gulf, where coalition forces were fighting to dislodge Saddam Hussein's forces from Kuwait. He planned to meet the Prime Minister in London in April.

In a meeting with Mandela, he claimed that the EC decision on new investment had made it harder for him to hold his supporters back from mass action. We pointed out that sanctions were crumbling anyway. To maximise their leverage and accelerate the end of apartheid in sport, the ANC should offer to relax sports sanctions in cases where the sports were integrated. Mandela clearly was having to manage tensions within the organisation between Mbeki and the radicals, but said that he was continuing to make progress with De Klerk.

Dinner with De Klerk. He thought that the exchanges between Mandela and Buthelezi, following their meeting in Durban on 29 January, were doing something towards moderating the violence in Natal. The ANC were backing away from their commitment to nationalisation. In De Klerk's opinion, Mandela knew almost nothing about economics, but
De Klerk spoke warmly of him as a figure of real dignity and authority. He could be rigid and dogmatic, and sometimes his statements did not make sense, but he had to straddle two very different tendencies within the ANC in order to carry his constituency with him.

Mandela issued a statement accusing the government of complicity in the violence in the black communities and of aiding Inkatha. The government should outlaw the carrying of traditional weapons, dismiss the ministers of Defence and Law and Order, dismantle counter-insurgency units, suspend the police officers in Sebokeng, begin phasing out single-sex migrant workers' hostels and appoint an independent inquiry. If these demands were not met by 9 May the ANC would suspend negotiations and discussion of a new constitution.

Steve Tshwete for the ANC and representatives of the sports bodies agreed a constitution for fully unified rugby in South Africa. De Klerk announced that over nine hundred ‘political' prisoners had been released. Over four and a half thousand applications for indemnity had been approved for the exiles.

To try to help break the deadlock, I had lunch with Joe Slovo, regarded as the master strategist by his colleagues in the ANC politburo. Slovo said that the government must phase out the migrant workers' hostels and ban the carrying of traditional weapons. I said that in response to
the ANC's ‘ultimatum' we had urged the government to offer a multiparty meeting on the violence and a commission of inquiry headed by a judge. The ANC had rejected both proposals and were threatening to suspend talks on the new constitution. ‘The only alternative to negotiations now,' I added, ‘is negotiations later'. There would be no sympathy for anyone who broke them off. ANC supporters as well as Inkatha were responsible for the violence, and, however poor the performance of the police, the government could not stop them on their own.

Slovo agreed that it was a mistake to have called the ANC document an ultimatum. I said that the idea of arming ANC ‘self-defence units' was likely to cause further trouble. They needed to start talking again to Inkatha. Slovo acknowledged that the violence was not benefiting De Klerk. There was some convergence in the government's and the ANC's positions on the constitution and, he agreed, this was the fundamental issue. I said that, the sooner negotiations were started on the future constitution, the easier it would be to manage the transitional problems. I learned afterwards that Slovo had used exactly the same argument with his colleagues on the ANC's national executive committee.