release of Mandela. No personal commitment or undertaking by Mandela is mentioned.
Next, at its meeting on 14 December, the SSC (in effect P.W. Botha) decides ‘he will have no objection’ if Mandela is informed that various people and institutions have asked for him to be released, but that this will only be considered if he undertakes to ‘abide by the law’. While these people are said to include Matanzima and other homeland leaders, the offer no longer seems to imply that Mandela would be released to the Transkei. However, this introduces the notion of a personal commitment by Mandela, which was not present in Coetsee’s recommendation.
Next, expectations that Mandela would tell Bethell he was prepared to renounce political violence – or that Bethell would persuade him to do so – have a predictable but disappointing outcome. Accordingly, Van der Merwe recommends to the next meeting of the SSC that the previous resolution would need to be abandoned for the time being, but proposes – remarkably – that the situation should be kept as fluid as possible and options kept open, thereby avoiding both sides painting themselves into a corner.
Indeed, Van der Merwe’s memorandum seems to be a desperate attempt to prevent Botha from presenting Mandela with any kind of ultimatum. By then, senior prison staff were on intimate and even cordial terms with Mandela, perhaps to the point of feeling protective about him, and Van der Merwe knew precisely what the outcome of the SSC decision (effectively Botha’s) would be. Whether this intervention was either initiated or encouraged by Coetsee is unknown. It is also unknown whether the SSC met between the date of the letter and Botha’s eventual statement in parliament. But the die had been cast.
Next, Botha announces in parliament that he is prepared to release Mandela and other ‘security prisoners’, provided they formally renounce violence. On the one hand, the move signifies that Botha and the government have finally abandoned their long-held objective of releasing Mandela to the Transkei. On the other, Botha’s announcement does exactly what Van der Merwe tried to avoid, namely to harden positions on both sides. Once again, it appears that, albeit seven months before his infamous speech in Durban, Botha moved to the bank of the Rubicon, and then stepped back from it.
The response from Mandela and his four ‘comrades from the roof’ is predictable. It would take two more years before Coetsee would start talking to Mandela; four more before Govan Mbeki would be released from Robben Island; and five more before Mandela walked out of Victor Verster Prison.
While it would be specious to suggest that their earlier release would have hastened the resolution of the South African political conflict, the intervening years saw two states of emergency and the deaths of many thousands of people, both in South Africa and in the broader southern African region, which bore much of the brunt of the South African conflict.
////
Later in 1985, Mandela writes, he was taken to the Volks Hospital in Cape Town ‘under heavy guard’ for a prostate operation. Besides Winnie, he had a surprising and unexpected visitor in the form of Kobie Coetsee, who dropped by the hospital unannounced ‘as if he were visiting an old friend’. On the way back to Pollsmoor Prison, he was told that he would be separated from his colleagues, and was placed in a new cell unit comprising three rooms and a separate toilet. Again, no explanation was provided.1
While he was not happy about being separated from his colleagues, he realised that his solitude gave him a new opportunity, namely to begin discussions with the South African government. ‘I had concluded that the time had come when the struggle could best be pushed forward through negotiations … My solitude would give me an opportunity to take the first steps in that direction, without the kind of scrutiny that might destroy such efforts.’
This would be extremely sensitive, and a decision to talk to the government was so important that it should only have been made by ANC headquarters in Lusaka. But he felt the process needed to begin, and he had neither the time nor the means to communicate fully with Oliver Tambo. ‘Someone from outside needed to take the first step, and my new isolation gave me both the freedom to do so and the assurance, at least for a while, of the confidentiality of my efforts …’
In a candid passage, Mandela writes: ‘I chose to tell no one what I was about to do. Not my colleagues upstairs, nor those in Lusaka. The ANC is a collective, but the government had made collectivity in this case impossible. I did not have the security or the time to discuss these issues with my organisation. I knew that my colleagues upstairs would condemn my proposal, and that would kill my initiative even before it was born. There are times when a leader must move out ahead of the flock, go off in a new direction, confident that he is leading his people the right way …’
Within a few weeks, he wrote to Coetsee to propose talks about talks, but received no response. However, another opportunity to be heard came in early 1986.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.
