Asked by the media two or three days after his release if he would agree to De Klerk’s terms on lifting the State of Emergency, Mandela had said, ‘The attitude of the ANC is perfectly clear. No negotiation will take place until the government has met all those preconditions because to get a mandate from our people is impossible with these conditions, without the State of Emergency being lifted and without political prisoners being released and without exiles being given the assurance that if they return they will be doing so under an amnesty and none will be prosecuted.’6

The liveliness and diversity of the more than ‘fifteen hundred delegates from forty-five regions, from home and abroad’ gave Mandela a glimpse into the crazy-quilt make-up of the ANC community.7 A significant percentage of the delegates were the returned exiles, many of whom were part of the ANC’s diplomatic mission. The fact that these individuals had helped to ensure, as Mandela expressed it, that ‘almost every country in the world in due course shunned South Africa, and [ensured that] apartheid [was] condemned as a crime against humanity, was a measure of the success of their historic campaign. Those who lived in exile criss-crossed the five continents to brief heads of state and governments on our situation, attending world and regional gatherings, flooding the world with material that exposed the inhumanity of apartheid. It was this worldwide campaign, which made the ANC and its leaders, inside and outside the country, one of the most well-known liberation movements of the world.’8

Mandela had already met with the general ANC membership in Lusaka, Zambia, earlier in March, but this was the first time such a meeting took place on home soil. The reality of the South African situation, the threat of violence hanging in the air, meant that the state had to keep an eye on the unexpected and, by implication, on its own over-exuberant zealots who might take issue with the ANC holding its conference in Nasrec. As a result, the venue’s perimeter bristled with antennae on official-looking sedans housing hard-faced security men; and, now and then, an armoured police car trundled along the street, its headlights, protected behind steel wire, probing the shadows cast by the late-afternoon sun. Standing in twos and threes a short distance from the tent, the ANC security detail kept its own vigil. Indoors, there were just too many people whose loss would plunge the country into turmoil; they were the lynchpins of the new dispensation currently being hatched.

It was here, under the marquees on the sports ground and outside during breaks in proceedings, that Mandela saw the interaction of the delegates with the leadership, notably members of MK and their commanders. As a founding member of MK, his high regard for its members shines through.

‘The fighters of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK) displayed exceptional courage and infiltrated the country on many occasions, attacked govern-ment installations, clashed now and again with the apartheid forces, and in several engagements put them to flight. Other freedom fighters worked inside the country, either above or underground, urging the masses to rise and resist all forms of oppression and exploitation. They braved the brutality of the regime regardless of what happened to themselves. For their liberation they were prepared to pay the highest price. Still others languished in apartheid jails fearlessly asserting their right to be treated as human beings in their own fatherland. They literally dug themselves in [in] the lion’s den, demonstrating once again the universal principle that evil men cannot smother the freedom flame. Some of these courageous fighters are still alive, helping to address national problems, and they now enjoy the fruits of their labour at last. Although many of them are old, frail and jobless, they become animated when we remind them of their historic achievement. Others have passed on, never to return. We acknowledge them all as men and women who have made [a] decisive contribution to our liberation.’9

*   *   *

The year ended but the violence continued. This, however, did not stop the first phases of negotiations towards a democratic outcome despite the serious attempts of the right wing to sabotage the process. Sydney Mufamadi, one-time general secretary of the General and Allied Workers Union and later on the ANC executive, remembers the earlier efforts at instigating a lasting peace in a country that was increasingly spiralling into uncontrollable violence.* He says:

Now, before, the release of our senior political leaders, culminating in the release of Madiba, the UDF and COSATU [Congress of South African Trade Unions] started to reach out to Inkatha … for ways of ending the violence, particularly in Pietermaritzburg … where the violence was at its most intense. We … took trips to Lusaka to discuss that initiative because our interlocutors in Inkatha – Dr Mdlalose, Dr Madide and Dr Dhlomo – the three doctors, had an express instruction from [the president of the IFP, Chief Mangosuthu] Buthelezi to say to us [that] they will continue to deal with us if … our dealings with them have the support of Lusaka … [which] wouldn’t oppose any move that was intended to bring about peace.*10

But, angry ‘at this brutalisation that was taking place’, activists on the ground ‘were not keen to negotiate’. If Lusaka was to be involved at all it had to be ‘by way of arming them to fight back. So we had all these difficulties of having to persuade our own people about the merits of negotiations.’11

The confusion was deepened by the release from prison of the ANC leadership, especially the legendary, fiery and uncompromising Harry Gwala, aptly nicknamed ‘The Lion of the Midlands’, who ‘was not convinced about the usefulness of negotiations’.†12 Gwala regarded any meeting between the ANC and Buthelezi and King Goodwill Zwelithini, the head of the Royal Zulu Family, as an anathema.‡ (In those sentiments, Gwala was not alone. Mandela later told Richard Stengel, with whom he collaborated on Long Walk to Freedom, how when he visited Pietermaritzburg in 1990, the people wanted to ‘choke’ him when he mentioned Buthelezi.§13)

‘That,’ says Mufamadi, ‘did not help because we had made some progress on the ground in persuading the younger comrades,’ and this success was being jeopardised by ‘a comrade who is senior to all of us’. Madiba came out and ‘made a call on the people of KwaZulu-Natal to lay down arms … Initially there was some resistance, which we had to work to overcome.’14

With more and more revelations of covert state involvement, which forced the state to take action, there was a marked decline in some of the more horrific violence, such as attacks on commuters on trains. These attacks had done much to disrupt and intimidate mass support for the ANC. The capacity of the growing right-wing parties to thwart progress by political means was diluted in 1992 when De Klerk called a referendum of white voters to endorse ‘continued negotiations’ and got a big majority voting ‘yes’, nearly 69 per cent of the voters. Smarting from this defeat, right-wing parties substituted their resistance for terrorism and mobilised for armed revolt. Different strands of the Afrikaner right wing yearned for a separate state and there was much sabre rattling.

In a 1992 interview with Irish peacemaker Padraig O’Malley, Conservative Party (CP) leader Ferdinand Hartzenberg said that the CP would help other parties by not participating ‘because [Mandela] wants us to participate and to admit that we will accept the outcome of the negotiations – and that we are not prepared to do.* We say if we get an ANC government in this country we will do the same that we have done at the beginning of this century when Britain tried to rule this country.