Read The End of Apartheid for Free Online Page A

run by determined opponents of the regime, and when their parties were unbanned we discovered what we knew already – thatwe had established contact with most of the internal leadership of the ANC and PAC.
    I tried also to establish friendships with a number of ex-Robben Islanders who had served long sentences in prison with Mandela, including Neville Alexander, who made the film
Robben Island Our University.
Several of those who had been released belonged to the Africanist tradition, including Fikile Bam and Dikgang Moseneke, both of whom went on to distinguished legal careers in the post-apartheid era – Moseneke as Deputy Chief Justice. In Soweto, Dr Nthato Motlana continued to play a prominent role on behalf of the ANC, and I made regular visits to Albertina Sisulu. I also tried to show all the support I could for the Delmas treason trialists, Popo Molefe and Mosiuoa ‘Terror’ Lekota, by attending sessions of their trial, and was rewarded with their friendship when they eventually were released.
    In Johannesburg, I made contact with Cyril Ramaphosa, leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), at the time in the thick of a miners’ strike. Ramaphosa, a redoubtable negotiator, assured me that he had no intention of ‘doing a Scargill’ and destroying his own union (Arthur Scargill had led the British mineworkers to defeat in a year-long confrontation with the government of Margaret Thatcher in 1984–85). After he had extracted all the concessions he could, one week later the strike was settled.
    As our purpose was to persuade the government to talk to the real black opposition leaders, we sought to use the embassy and consulates as a proving ground for this. A number of Robben Islanders became regular visitors to the embassy, as did a number of NationalParty MPs. We invited representatives of both groups to the embassy, without telling them who else might be there. This led at first to one or two difficult moments, but not for long, as they became accustomed to these encounters and found that there was plenty to discuss. For those who had been imprisoned at one time or another did want to tell those in or close to authority about their experiences, the effects on them and their families of the apartheid laws, including the still-segregated schools and residential areas, and their political demands. There were by now people in positions of real power and influence in Afrikaner society and on the fringes of government, or among its younger elements, who wanted to know whom in fact they were going to be dealing with. Some at least among them could hardly fail to be impressed by the qualities of those the regime had condemned to years of imprisonment for their political acts and views.
    There followed a meeting with PW Botha’s chief henchman, the Minister of Defence, Magnus Malan, leader of the group of so-called securocrats – key ministers and senior defence, police and intelligence chiefs – surrounding the President. A former Chief of the SADF, Malan was the leading proponent of the theory of the ‘total onslaught’ against South Africa by the Soviet Union and its allies. Though careful not to give written orders to this effect, Malan was a great believer in ‘taking out’ enemies of the regime, internally through special force units, which had developed into assassination squads, and externally by whatever means were necessary. He had received from PW Botha our warning about cross-border raids, but contended that he had to defend South Africa against terrorist groups poised to cross the borders. I said that of course he would defend the borders, butthe air strikes on neighbouring capitals that had put an end to the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group’s visit had not hit any ANC targets at all.
    Malan claimed that, in Mozambique, Renamo were not getting help from the South African military. I said that, if that were so, they most certainly were getting