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help from others in South Africa. He expressed concern about the major Angolan offensive, involving the Cubans and Russians, being mounted against Unita leader Jonas Savimbi’s base at Jamba, in the southeast of the country. The Angolans had a vast amount of heavy equipment and air defence missiles supplied by the Russians, posing military problems for South Africa. I had little doubt that the very capable South African forces operating inside Angola, with their own air support, would stop the Angolan advance. But, clearly, the war there was becoming more costly for the South Africans.
September 1987
    I had a first meeting with FW de Klerk, leader of the National Party in the Transvaal, and then Minister of National Education. De Klerk was reputed to be a very conservative figure, but I found him to be open, friendly and impressively self-confident. He knew, he said, of my involvement in the Rhodesia settlement. He wanted me to know that, if he had his way, South Africa would not make the same mistake the Rhodesians had. What was the mistake, I asked. ‘Leaving it far too late to negotiate with the real black leaders,’ was the reply.
    The Separate Amenities Act, he said, would be repealed in due course. The Group Areas Act could not be repealed immediately,because of the concerns of poorer whites, who were disposed to vote for Treurnicht and his colleagues in the Conservative Party. As sports minister (1978–79) he had abolished apartheid in sport, only for the international sports sanctions to remain in place.
    I made the journey to the Zulu capital, Ulundi, to meet Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, Chief Minister of Kwazulu. He had rejected the government’s offer of ‘independence’ for his homeland and insisted that he would not negotiate until Mandela was released. The ANC and Buthelezi’s party, Inkatha, were engaged in a bloody struggle for power and territory in Natal, with Inkatha predominant in the quasi-feudal rural areas and the ANC among Zulu youths in the townships.
    Visiting Buthelezi in his stronghold at Ulundi was like stepping back in time. On ceremonial occasions he was to be found brandishing a battle axe and wearing a necklace of lions’ teeth, but these accoutrements disguised a very sharp mind indeed. He was intensely conscious and proud of the history of the Zulu nation, reminding me that he had himself played the role of King Cetshwayo in the 1964 film
Zulu
, which also starred a young Michael Caine.
    He knew the Prime Minister well, having been introduced to her by the writer Sir Laurens van der Post. She found Buthelezi’s views on sanctions and the armed struggle far more compatible than those of the ANC. Laurens van der Post, who was a friend of the Prime Minister and of the Prince of Wales, believed that the Zulus were the key to the future of South Africa. In an attempt to broaden his horizons, I arranged for him also to meet Thabo Mbeki, but Laurens dismissed the pipe-smoking Thabo as unacceptably westernised. When she asked me about Laurens’s opinions, I told MargaretThatcher that, while Buthelezi had strong support in Natal and among the Zulu mineworkers on the Witwatersrand, Mandela and the ANC had nationwide support. There could be no settlement without them, as Buthelezi himself recognised.
    In this meeting, Buthelezi said that the problem was defeating two evils – poverty and apartheid, not just apartheid. The experience of neighbouring Mozambique showed the futility of liberation coupled with economic ruin. Apartheid was doomed, but ANC bombs pushed white South Africans deeper into the laager. They were attacking the state at its strongest point. After twenty-five years of ANC attacks, there were no ‘liberated zones’; not even a single bridge had been destroyed. He would continue to seek genuine negotiations through an inclusive
indaba
(discussion). He had just rejected the latest attempts by the government to draw him into