Free Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game That Made a Nation by John Carlin Page B

other, still incarcerated political prisoners. One of them was Tokyo Sexwale, an Umkhonto we Sizwe firebrand who spent thirteen years on Robben Island on terrorism charges. Sexwale was one of a small group of young ANC Turks who had gotten close to Mandela on the island, who not only listened to him talking politics but relaxed with him, engaging him in games of Chutes and Ladders and Monopoly before Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor. Recalling that visit to Mandela at Victor Verster, Sexwale laughed. “We saw one television set in the house. That was bad enough. But then we saw another. Two television sets! This, surely, was definitive proof, we thought, that he had sold out to the enemy!”
    Smiling broadly, Mandela assured them that this was not a television set. He explained to his openmouthed guests that this machine could boil water. He took a cup of water, and gave them a triumphant demonstration, placing the cup inside and pressing a couple of buttons. A few moments later, Mandela removed the cup of steaming water from the microwave—a device his guests had never seen before.
    With Jack Swart ever in attendance, Mandela would entertain dinner guests as varied as Barnard, Sexwale, and his lawyer George Bizos at his new “home.” Before the guests arrived, Swart and Mandela would discuss such matters of etiquette as which might be the correct wine to serve first. As for the vegetables, some came from Mandela’s own garden, which had a swimming pool and a view of the magnificently craggy mountains surrounding the lush valleys of the Cape winelands. Paradise for Mandela wouldn’t have been complete without a gym, furnished with exercise bike and weights, where he toiled diligently every day before dawn.
    The idea, as Barnard explained it, was to ease his transition, after what was now twenty-six years of hibernation, into a brave new world of microwaves and personal computers. “We were busy creating a kind of atmosphere where Mr. Mandela could stay and live in at least as normal a surrounding as possible,” Barnard said. The deeper purpose, or so Barnard claimed, was to help him prepare for government and a role on the world stage. “Many times I told him, ‘Mr. Mandela, governing a country is a tough job. It’s not like, with a lot of respect, sitting in London in a hotel and drinking Castle beer from South Africa and talking about government. [Barnard was aiming a barb at the ANC’s exiled leaders.] I told him, ‘Government is a tough job, you must understand that it is difficult.’ ”
    Barnard also bore the more difficult task of preparing President Botha, the “krokodil,” to meet with Mandela. The initial pressure for such a meeting came from Mandela himself, who began to express some impatience with the pace of progress. He wanted these talks to pave the way for a negotiations process involving the ANC, the government, and all other parties that wished to take part, aimed at ending apartheid by peaceful means. When 1989 came around, after more than six months of meetings between prisoner and spy, Mandela had had enough. “It is good to have preliminary discussions with you on the fundamental issues,” Mandela said to Barnard, “but you will understand that you are not a politician. You don’t have the authority and the power. I must have a discussion with Mr. Botha himself, as quickly as possible.”
    In March 1989, Barnard delivered a letter from Mandela to his boss. In it Mandela argued that the only way a lasting peace could be reached in South Africa would be via a negotiated settlement. He said that the black majority had no intention, however, of accepting the terms of a surrender. “Majority rule and internal peace,” he wrote, “are like the two sides of a single coin, and White South Africa simply has to accept that there will never be peace and stability in this country until the principle is fully applied.”
    Perhaps more significant than this letter was the fact that Mandela