The End of Apartheid by Robin Renwick Read Free Book Online Page B

was asked to pass a simple message from the Prime Minister to PW Botha. This was that she had refrained fromputting pressure on him, but if he did nothing he would make things difficult for everyone, including him. A few days later, on 5 November, there was a modest step forward, with the release from prison of the long-term Robben Islander and hardline Marxist, Govan Mbeki, father of Thabo. In reporting this, I warned the Prime Minister that the release of Mandela was as remote as ever.
November 1987
    Meeting with another senior member of the government, the courteous and erudite Gerrit Viljoen, De Lange’s predecessor as head of the Broederbond. His scholarly accomplishments included first-class honours in Classics from King’s College, Cambridge. Asked what I wanted to talk about, I said that it was the resettlement of the Magopa people, victims of a forced removal from the Ventersdorp district in 1983. Viljoen put his head in his hands. ‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘I have just had the most dreadful hour with Mrs Suzman about the Magopas and now there’s you!’ In the event, a partial resettlement was agreed for the Magopas. I had an equally friendly meeting with his cabinet colleague, Dawie de Villiers, former captain of the Springbok rugby team, who also appeared firmly in the ranks of the
verligtes
.
    I kept telling South African audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town that the international campaign for increasing sanctions against them was born not of malevolence, but of frustration at the lack of any visible progress towards any meaningful political rights for the black population. Apartheid was unsustainable; it also was unaffordable. The question was not whether it would disappear, but how protracted its death throes would be, and how much more self-inflicted damage wouldbe done meanwhile. Thanks to Ton Vosloo and the
verligte
editors of
Beeld
and
Die Burger
, Willem Wepener and Ebbe Dommisse, these comments were featured regularly in the Afrikaans press.
    At this time the government decided to try to silence one of its most effective critics, the
Weekly Mail
newspaper, which had shown itself to be particularly accurate in exposing many of the murkiest deeds of the security forces. I had befriended its courageous editor, Anton Harber, and other members of the editorial team. The government clearly was hoping that the paper would go to the wall financially before, through the courts, it could get permission to start publishing again. I went to see Anton Harber at the
Weekly Mail
office in Johannesburg to hand over sufficient funding for the paper to be able to survive for the three months or so that looked likely to be necessary to achieve this.
    In Pretoria, I attended a party given by a young member of the embassy staff, John Sawers – nowadays head of MI6 – at which Johan Heyns was asked by a group of ANC supporters what he was trying to do. ‘I am trying to change the hearts and minds of my people,’ replied Heyns. ‘That’s no use: we want power now,’ they asserted. ‘But you are not going to get power until I change the hearts and minds of my people,’ was Heyns’s reply.
December 1987
    I arranged for Helen Suzman to meet the Prime Minister. She told Margaret Thatcher that PW Botha had no plans to release Mandela. He wanted to keep the neighbouring countries vulnerable. He had run out of ideas for reform. We had to work on his potential successors.
    At the end of the year, I had a discussion with Van Zyl Slabbert.He believed, as I did, that the idea of a suspension rather than a renunciation of violence was one whose time would come, but not if it were served up from outside. Meanwhile, both sides still thought they could win – the security forces that they could contain the situation and the ANC that they could somehow seize power. Slabbert, Suzman and the influential Stellenbosch academics did not believe that either side could win, but it