Mandela and De Klerk Meet for the First Time
On 5 April 1990, an informal three-hour meeting in Cape Town between Nelson Mandela, as a “free man”, and President F.W. de Klerk, agreed to reschedule formal talks between the apartheid government and the African National Congress (ANC). The purpose of these “talks-about-talks” was to negotiate the adoption of a new democratic constitution for South Africa.
The talks were set to take place on 11 April 1990; however, the ANC cancelled the talks after police shot and killed several anti-apartheid demonstrators in Sebokeng, a township in the southern Pretoria-Witwatersrand-Vereeniging (PWV) area, on 26 March 1990. After F.W. de Klerk gave instructions for an in-depth investigation into the Sebokeng shootings, an agreement was reached between the ANC and the apartheid government. Therefore, the reconciliatory talks were rescheduled to take place from 2 to 4 May of the same year.
This particular three-hour meeting was the first time de Klerk and Mandela had met since Mandela’s release from prison in February 1990, and therefore a significant occasion in the negotiations that would lead to the creation of a “New South Africa”. The meeting came after the ANC, the main opposition group fighting white rule, managed the collapse of talks de Klerk had arranged for same day with leaders of the six nominally self-governing black tribal bantustans (homelands) to discuss the impending negotiation process.
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