Talking to the Enemy – Prisoner Mandela Engages PW Botha

Talking to the Enemy – Prisoner Mandela Engages PW Botha

On 5 July 1989, Nelson Mandela was taken in the middle of a five-car convoy to apartheid President P.W. Botha’s office at Tuynhuys, the early Cape Dutch home that is situated alongside the Houses of Parliament in Cape Town. When Mandela entered the room, there were the Justice Minister, Kobie Coetsee and Niël Barnard, the Head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), along with a host of prison officials.

A while later the door to the adjoining office opened, where Mandela was ushered in and apartheid President Botha walked from the other side, smiling broadly with his hands outstretched. They met halfway and posed for a picture shaking hands, as everybody left except for General Willemse, Kobie Coetsee and Niël Barnard, who joined Botha and Mandela at the long table for tea.

Mandela began by saying he read an article in an Afrikaans magazine about the occupation of a town in the Free State during the 1914 Afrikaner Rebellion. He said that saw parallels between that struggle and that of Black South Africans. They then got to discussions about the rebellion. According to Mandela, “South African history, of course, looks different to the black man and the white man. Their view was that the rebellion had been a quarrel between brothers, whereas my struggle was a revolutionary one. I said that it could also be seen as a struggle between brothers who happen to be different colours”.

Passionately, Botha elucidated the role Afrikaners could play in Africa to help in the development of the continent, especially in the fields of education, transport, health, agriculture, employment, welfare and the advancement of Africa’s enormous human potential. He then mentioned the relationships he had with African leaders and heads of state, in particular mentioning President Kaunda. He told Mandela that the Zambian leader had said that if “the people of southern Africa came to an agreement with the Afrikaners this would lead to far better conditions in the region”. However Botha was adamant about not allowing outsiders to interfere in South African matters, saying that they should hold hands together to solve their own problems.

After about half-an-hour the discussions were finalised and Mandela began reiterating his viewpoint that the African National Congress (ANC) had not wished to take the route of violence, but was left with no other choice with the refusal of previous National Party (NP) Prime Ministers to meet with ANC leaders. Furthermore, he indicated that he was very pleased with the discussions undertaken between him and the government team, viewing the process as “laying the foundation for fruitful negotiations”.

Botha reassured Mandela that as Afrikaners they were “ready to talk…to participate in real discussions”. Mandela then began raising substantive issues, in particular the unconditional release of all political prisoners, including himself. Botha said he was afraid that he couldn’t do that. Then Mandela asked him to release Walter Sisulu on compassionate grounds, which Botha referred to Barnard to look into it.

Both leaders then began a brief discussion on what they were going to say if news of the meeting happened to leak out, which both agreed would be interpreted as having met for tea in an effort to promote peace in the country. After the statement was agreed upon, Botha then arose, shook Mandela’s hand and said it had been a pleasure. Mandela thanked him and headed for the door.

On Monday, 10 July 1989, Botha circulated the photos of the meeting with Mandela at the meeting of the State Security Council (SSC). According to Niël Barnard, “Anyone who had the slightest inkling of the importance of the meeting realised that regardless of what the future held, a bridge had been crossed”. Barnard maintained that “from the beginning of the talks, Mandela had made it clear that neither of the parties should set conditions for the other party. He and the ANC were prepared to talk to the government but only if they were not bound to any preconditions.”

Furthermore, Barnard asserted that “Mandela admitted that the ANC did not have the military might to overthrow the South African government and agreed that the ANC was ‘not doing so well’ militarily. On the other hand, he was convinced that the government would in the long run not be able to counter the ANC by force. His viewpoint was that once the negotiation process was underway, the need for violence as a means of solving problems would disappear. In other words, the momentum of the peace process would make the use of force redundant.”

For Mandela, the meeting was not a breakthrough in terms of negotiations, but to a certain extent it was a step in the right direction, as Botha had been talking about the need to cross the Rubicon, and the meeting at Tuynhuys was that Rubicon. Accordingly, Mandela felt that since then, there was no turning back.

The engagement with apartheid President P.W. Botha had been preceded by several meetings with leading apartheid politicians and bureaucrats, which began in 1987, wherein Minister Kobie Coetsee had suggested that the apartheid government would appoint a committee of senior officials to conduct private discussions with Mandela. This was done with the full knowledge of the apartheid state president and him (Coetsee) was to chair that committee. The officials that were to be part of the discussions were Lieutenant-General WH Willemse, the commissioner of prisons, Fanie van der Merwe, the director general of the Prisons Department and Dr Niël Barnard.

Before Mandela acceded to such a meeting with Minister Coetsee’s special committee, he requested to first meet with his comrades, which was initially refused, but was conceded to when the apartheid government realised that it might not succeed with secret talks with Mandela if it denied him his request. He was then allowed to meet with his comrades, not as a group, but on a one-to-one basis.

The first meeting was with his close confidant, Walter Sisulu, whose opinion and wisdom he trusted more than anyone else. Sisulu was not against or supportive of the talks with Coetsee’s special committee but indicated that he had wished that talks were initiated by the apartheid regime with the National Executive Committee (NEC) of the ANC. Mandela, however, managed to convince Sisulu that he thought that they should move forward with negotiations and not worry about who initiated them.

The follow-up meetings were with Raymond Mhlaba, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada, who all agreed to the proposal, except for Kathrada, who was resolutely against the idea and felt that Mandela was going down the wrong path. Nevertheless, they all agreed that Mandela should continue with what he had initiated. The next stop was to respond to ANC President Oliver Tambo’s concerns that were raised in a letter that had been smuggled into prison by one of Mandela’s lawyers.

Mandela’s reply to Tambo was that he was “talking to the government about one thing and one thing only: a meeting between the National Executive of the ANC and the South African government”. However, he could not spell out the details, as he could not trust the confidentiality of the communication, but that “the time had come for such talks and that I would not compromise the organization in any way”.

During the early meetings held with Coetsee’s secret committee, Mandela discovered that the apartheid government had a limited understanding about the ANC, as they were victims of naked propaganda that made them to have a distorted version of who the ANC was and what it was about. Hence, Mandela had to first provide them with accurate facts about the ANC and to make them understand its positions on the primary issues that divided the movement from the apartheid government. After he had clarified these preliminaries, Mandela had to deal with the critical issues, which included the decision to embark on the armed struggle; the ANC’s alliance with the South African Communist Party (SACP); the goal of majority rule; and the idea of racial reconciliation.

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
Niël Barnard, “Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss”, Tafelberg, 2015.
Thula Simpson, “Umkhonto we Sizwe: The ANC’s Armed Struggle”, Penguin, 2016.
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.

Castro Khwela
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