Mandela and De Klerk Meet for the First Time

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.

Interestingly the meeting also occurred within hours of a military coup in the tribal bantustan of Venda, near the Zimbabwe border. The apparently bloodless military coup d’état took place in the “independent Bantustan” of Venda, which was the second in five weeks after another “Bantustan Coup” by Brigadier Oupa Gqozo in the Ciskei, which took place on 4 March 1990. The coup succeeded in the overthrow of government of President Ravele, and the establishment of military rule under the Council of National Unity headed by Colonel Ramushwana. Coup leader Colonel Gabriel Ramushwana announced that he would manage the area’s affairs until it was re-incorporated into South Africa.

In a news conference after their meeting in De Klerk’s office in Cape Town, De Klerk seemed to be pleased with the results of the meeting, saying in a separate news conference that there had been “general agreement” on the need to end the violence across the country. He also mentioned that he and Mandela had decided to open regular “channels of communication” to avoid “misunderstandings” of the type that arose on 26 March 1990 over the police killing of up to 11 anti-apartheid demonstrators in the black township of Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg.

In protest of that incident, the ANC cancelled its scheduled inaugural negotiating session with the government that was set for 11 April 1990. De Klerk said that he had ordered an “in-depth investigation” into the Sebokeng incident and indicated that the appointment of a more formal judicial inquiry was also likely.

Mandela also appeared to be satisfied with the talks, saying that they had taken place in “a cordial and pleasant atmosphere” and added, “We think the meeting was productive”. According to Mandela, he and de Klerk had discussed “a wide variety of strategies” to deal with the ANC charges of police brutality and with the surge of public violence in the two months since De Klerk legalised black political organisations and released him from more than 27 years in prison.

Mandela predicted that a new government policy would emerge under which anti-apartheid demonstrations would be dealt with less aggressively. “The cordial nature of the discussions and the concessions’, Mandela said, “made by both sides give us the perception that we are correct in sitting down with the government to explore a settlement”. The date and place for new talks between the government and the ANC were not announced during that night because Mandela said the Liberation Movement’s National Executive Committee (NEC) in Lusaka, Zambia, had to be consulted first.

The first formal meeting between the two sides was earmarked to deal with remaining obstacles to full negotiations between the two leaders and they were intended to lead to the end of apartheid and the establishment of a new political system for South Africa. Mandela’s perception was that the apartheid “government was in no great rush to begin negotiations; they were counting on the euphoria that greeted my release to die down. They wanted to allow time for me to fall on my face and show that the former prisoner hailed as a saviour was a highly fallible man who had lost touch with the present situation.”

Mandela’s assessment was that “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He was a gradualist, a careful pragmatist. He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation. He was not prepared to negotiate the end of white rule. His goal was to create a system of power-sharing based on group rights, which would preserve a modified form of minority power in South Africa. He was decidedly opposed to majority rule, or ‘simple majoritarianism’, as he sometimes called it, because that would end white domination in a single stroke.”

The ANC knew that the apartheid government was fiercely opposed to a winner-takes-all parliamentary system and instead advocated for proportional representation that had structural guarantees built-in for protecting white minority veto. This implied that even if they were prepared to allow the black majority to vote, as well as develop new legislation, it was to be countered with this white minority veto. Mandela had to immediately deal with this matter in his informal; engagement with De Klerk, which he described to him as “apartheid in disguise, a ‘loser-takes-all’ system”.

Nelson Mandela’s analysis was clear that “The Nationalists’ long-term strategy to overcome our strength was to build an anti-ANC alliance with the Inkatha Freedom Party and to lure the Coloured Afrikaans-speaking voters of the Cape into a new National Party. … The (apartheid) government attempted to scare the Coloured population into thinking the ANC was anti-Coloured. They supported Chief Buthelezi’s desire to retain Zulu power and identity in a new South Africa by preaching to him the doctrine of group rights and federalism.”

Sources:
Wikipedia.
South African History Online (SAHO).
David B. Ottaway, “De Klerk, Mandela Hold 3-Hour Meeting”, The Washington Post, 6 April 1990.
Thula Simpson, “Toyi-Toyi-ing to Freedom: The Endgame in the ANC’s Armed Struggle, 1989–1990”, Department of Historical and Heritage Studies, University of Pretoria, 2009.
Nelson Mandela, “Long Walk to Freedom”, Abacus, 1994.

Castro Khwela
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