conversations with his stream of visitors were recorded and transcribed.)
A longer, unedited version of this account appears in Nelson Mandela: Conversations with Myself (published in 2010), a selection of items from Mandela’s personal archive, including the unedited transcripts of 70 hours of interviews with Stengel. This passage reads:
The following day, in the afternoon, Kobie Coetsee, the minister of justice, came and … wanted to know how this building was – the house – and went from room to room inspecting it. We went outside inspecting the security walls, and he says, ‘No, these security must be raised’ … He was very careful and he … wanted to make sure that … I was comfortable, and he also brought me some nice, very expensive wines … He was very kind, very gentle, and then he told me … ‘No, we’ll move you here. This is a stage between prison and release. We are doing so because we hope you’ll appreciate it. We want to introduce some confidentiality in the discussions between ourselves and yourself.’ And I appreciated that. That’s what happened …11
At least, even according to the actual interview, Coetsee did not tell Mandela that his ‘discussions’ with his interlocutors would be private.
Next up is F.W. de Klerk, who succeeded Botha as State President some six weeks after the latter’s meeting with Mandela, and eventually released Mandela in February 1990. (Botha had suffered a stroke and, after initially relinquishing the party leadership while holding onto the presidency, was eventually ousted when most of his cabinet turned against him.) In his autobiography, The Last Trek: A New Beginning (1998), De Klerk writes intermittently about his interactions with Coetsee, in his characteristically deliberate and measured style.
Soon after becoming leader of the NP in the Transvaal, De Klerk recounts, he attended a cabinet team-building and planning exercise at a remote Defence Force base on the border between Namibia and Angola. At some stage, ‘elements within the security establishment’ mooted the idea that, if all other options for constitutional reform were exhausted, the government should suspend the existing constitution and rule by decree. ‘I vehemently opposed this idea, and was strongly supported by other senior members of the cabinet, including Chris Heunis and Kobie Coetsee.’12
He also writes, again with seeming approval, that, as Minister of Justice, Coetsee always insisted that all the government’s actions, especially during the states of emergency, should be taken in strict compliance with the law, and he had ‘even established a legal centre’ to assist them in doing so.13
In 1986, he notes, Botha proposed the formation of a National Statutory Council as a forum for negotiations with black South Africans. However, it never got off the ground. Neither Chris Heunis, as Minister of Constitutional Development, nor himself, then leader of the NP in the Transvaal, was informed of the exploratory discussions with Mandela which were being conducted by a few senior officials as well as Coetsee.14 However, he later writes, again with tacit approval, that Coetsee had cleared the meeting between Mandela and Botha with him beforehand, in his capacity as leader of the NP.15
When, in the course of the constitutional negotiations, tensions developed around the release of political prisoners, De Klerk was persuaded ‘with the greatest reluctance’ to change his initial position. Coetsee was bitterly upset when he learnt about the decision, as he wanted to use this issue as a bargaining chip with the ANC. ‘He came to see me, and offered to resign. I assured him that he was a valued member of our team, and that he had an important role to play. He agreed to remain in the cabinet.’16 Later, in his only personal remark about Coetsee, De Klerk remarks drily that the latter was ‘renowned for playing his cards close to his chest’.17
In an interview with Carlin, De Klerk reiterated that he did not participate in the behind-the-scenes discussions with Mandela, and was not briefed about this process when it began. Immediately after becoming party leader in February 1989, he was briefed by Kobie Coetsee, and from then onwards he was ‘fully part of the whole process’. He had prior knowledge of the meeting between Botha and Mandela. It had his approval, and from the start of his presidency, the release of Mandela and other political prisoners was ‘very high’ on the agenda.
Seemingly trying to get him to discard his reserve, Carlin asks: ‘You say in your book that when Kobie Coetsee did tell you about these talks … you weren’t critical, but you were surprised …’
Holding his line, De Klerk replies: ‘Surprised in the sense that I had not been informed, inquisitive and surprised that such a high-profile person would be negotiating from jail, and asking myself to what extent Mandela would have a mandate to do so …’
He was eventually told that after initial discussions, some rules had been relaxed and Mandela was allowed to have ‘certain interactions’ in order to obtain a mandate and keep his power base informed about what he was doing. ‘Obviously, I found that acceptable, because you can’t just deal with an individual without a mandate. It would have limited advantages, whereas if he were properly mandated, it would have far greater implications, and hold much more promise.’18
From 1989 to 2005, Padraig O’Malley, an Irish academic and mediator specialising in the problems of divided societies, notably Northern Ireland and South Africa, amassed many hours of interviews with role players in the South African transition. Entitled ‘Heart of Hope’, the O’Malley Archive is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory, and is available online.19
O’Malley interviewed De Klerk no fewer than six times between 1995 and 1999, and questioned him about Coetsee in their penultimate session, in July 1998. After playing a major role in opening up a dialogue between the government and Mandela, O’Malley suggested, Coetsee seemed to have ‘disappeared off the screen’, and became ‘more of an opponent of some of the elements of the settlement that was reached than a proponent’.
De Klerk said he would not say this. Coetsee was accused of having failed to negotiate a more favourable amnesty situation (presumably for members of the South African security forces). It was true that the amnesty negotiations had stumbled from time to time, which led to certain measures being written into the transitional constitution that should have been negotiated in greater detail. However, the ANC had delayed this deliberately. This was the issue that almost scuttled the peace conference, and triggered the infamous clash between De Klerk and Mandela at Codesa.
Many people, including NP members, blamed Coetsee for the outcome of the negotiations around amnesty, and Coetsee had become a controversial figure. However, De Klerk would not say that Coetsee opposed the eventual agreements. After the elections, Coetsee was made president of the Senate, with the support of the ANC. ‘Even now, there’s a very good relationship between him and Mandela. He is one of the few NP former high-profile figures that Mandela never said anything negative about.’20
But comments about Coetsee by another key role player in the transition enter a different landscape. Besides Coetsee, Dr Niël Barnard, head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) from 1979 to 1992, played a major role in the secret talks with Mandela. In an interview with Carlin, he portrayed Coetsee and his role in changing the dynamics around Mandela in a reasonably favourable light. Coetsee, he said, had been ‘critically involved’ in the view that Mandela had to be prepared for life after prison, and leading the country. ‘So Kobie Coetsee was responsible, as far as I can recollect. Let’s now move Mr Mandela from Pollsmoor to Victor Verster … so that he can live in a normal house, so that he can gradually prepare himself for life after prison.’21
In Secret Revolution: Memoirs of a Spy Boss, however, the notoriously abrasive Barnard takes a different tack. He now claims that P.W. Botha asked him (Barnard) to head the ‘small government team’ tasked with undertaking exploratory talks with Mandela. At that time, he and the NIS were ‘entirely unaware’ that Coetsee had already held numerous conversations with Mandela. He had regularly seen Coetsee, especially at meetings of the State Security
