Free The End of Apartheid by Robin Renwick

Western countries would then lift sanctions. Leutwiler said that he was not there to bargain. The President clearly did not understand that Western governments could not simply instruct the banks to resume lending to South Africa. He had suggested, ridiculously, that South Africa did not have political prisoners, and had bridled at any mention of Buthelezi.
    Leutwiler’s conclusion was that the President was a bitter old man, with a very unhealthy atmosphere around him. Pik Botha and Barend du Plessis both had agreed with the message that was being delivered, but neither had said a word in the meeting, except to agree with the President.
    Leutwiler reported subsequently to the Prime Minister that the last-ditch atmosphere around PW Botha was like that which must have prevailed around Hitler in his bunker.
    Notes
    13 Anatoly Chernyaev,
My Six Years with Gorbachev
, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000, pp. 99–103.

CHAPTER VI

‘I realise you want to see a new impetus for change’
January 1989
    While preparing for the opening of the new parliamentary session, PW Botha suffered a stroke. The Prime Minister sent him a polite message saying that she was sorry to hear that he had been suddenly taken ill. Chris Heunis was appointed Acting President. I reported that this did not mean that he was likely to succeed PW Botha. De Klerk was likely to be the successor. I added that, in this highly autocratic system, the President’s illness was likely to create a prolonged period of uncertainty. I forecast that he would still try to hang on grimly.
    A week later, I reported that most of his cabinet hoped PW Botha would retire, but doubted he would do so. He was tired, confused and not capable of taking decisions for the time being. He would have to face an election within a year. His most likely successor, FW de Klerk, was friendly, approachable, personally impressive, much calmer andmore pragmatic, but preoccupied with the right-wing threat in the Transvaal. He feared that immediate repeal of the Group Areas Act could cost him his own seat in parliament. But he had strong views on the need for firm civilian control over the military.
    Rudolph Agnew of Consolidated Goldfields reported to Charles Powell at 10 Downing Street on the secret talks at Mells Park between a small group of Afrikaners led by Professor Willie Esterhuyse of Stellenbosch University and Thabo Mbeki and his colleagues in the ANC. Esterhuyse was believed by the Mells Park organisers to be a senior advisor to PW Botha, which, unfortunately, was not the case. But, as he told Mbeki, he was reporting back to senior members of the NIS. Esterhuyse himself told me about these contacts in February. I told him that meetings of this kind with the ANC were welcomed by us. We knew that he had established a good rapport with Mbeki. These were emphatically not negotiations, but they had opened up a useful channel of communication with the ANC.
    The Prime Minister attended a dinner in London with Jan Steyn, head of the Urban Foundation, Anton Rupert and the heads of Rio Tinto, BP and Shell. I warned that they would tell her that they had little influence on the South African government, but Anton Rupert was a friend of De Klerk and could have an important influence on him.
2 February 1989
    De Klerk was elected by the National Party members of parliament to replace PW Botha as leader of the National Party, though Botha intended to cling on to his position as President. De Klerk defeated Barend du Plessis by sixty-nine votes to sixty-one, with several ofthe
verligte
National Party MPs voting for the finance minister, who was thought also to have the support of PW Botha, not because the President had suddenly become a reformist, but because Barend had less of an independent power base than De Klerk.
    I was on good terms with both the contestants, but was glad of the outcome, as I had been impressed by De Klerk’s strength of character, which was going to be