been a member of the African National Congress and I will remain a member of the African National Congress until the day I die. Oliver Tambo is much more than a brother to me. He is my greatest friend and comrade for nearly fifty years… . There is no difference between his views and mine.
I am surprised at the conditions that the government wants to impose on me. I am not a violent man. My colleagues and I wrote in 1952 to Malan asking for a round table conference to find a solution to the problems of our country, but that was ignored. When Strijdom was in power, we made the same offer. Again it was ignored. When Verwoerd was in power we asked for a national convention for all the people in South Africa to decide on their future. This, too, was in vain.
It was only then, when all other forms of resistance were no longer open to us, that we turned to armed struggle. Let Botha show that he is different to [his predecessors] Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd. Let him renounce violence. Let him say that he will dismantle apartheid. Let him unban the people’s organisation, the African National Congress. Let him free all who have been imprisoned, banished or exiled for their opposition to apartheid. Let him guarantee free political activity so that people may decide who will govern them.
I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their orphans, to their mothers and to their fathers who have grieved and wept for them. Not only I have suffered during these long, lonely, wasted years. I am not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared to sell the birthright of the people to be free. I am in prison as the representative of the people and of your organisation, the African National Congress, which was banned.
What freedom am I being offered while the organisation of the people remains banned? What freedom am I being offered when I may be arrested on a pass offence? What freedom am I being offered to live my life as a family with my dear wife who remains in banishment in Brandfort? What freedom am I being offered when I must ask for permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when I need a stamp in my pass book to seek work? What freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is not respected?
Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners cannot enter into contracts … I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be separated. I will return.
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The statement made a considerable impact. As Mandela points out in Long Walk to Freedom, it was his first public statement in South Africa in 21 years, and worked to rekindle popular interest in the ANC.
Mandela also explains how the statement was generated. After listening to Botha’s speech on the radio, he made a request to the prison commander for an urgent visit by Winnie and his lawyer, Ismail Ayob, so that he could dictate his response. Permission was delayed, and he eventually saw them on Friday, 8 February, just two days before the rally. A young warder tried to prevent them from having a ‘political conversation’, but Mandela stared him down by demanding that he contact the State President. He then handed Winnie and Ismail his prepared statement, which was read out at the rally.5 What is less well known is that Mandela and his four colleagues in Pollsmoor also responded to the offer in a letter to P.W. Botha.
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The missing letter to P.W. Botha
‘The simple fact is that you are South Africa’s head of government, you enjoy the support of the majority of the white population, and you can help change the course of South African history …’
THE ORIGINAL LETTER to P.W. Botha, in Mandela’s ornate handwriting, resides in the Coetsee archive. Besides Mandela, it was signed by Ahmed Kathrada, Walter Sisulu, Andrew Mlangeni and Raymond Mhlaba. At this point, however, Long Walk to Freedom presents the reader with a curious puzzle. Mandela refers to a letter in a single sentence: ‘Winnie and Ismail were not given permission to visit for a week, and in the meantime I wrote a letter to the foreign minister, Pik Botha, rejecting the conditions for my release, while also preparing a public response.’1
While Mandela might conceivably have written to R.F. (Pik) Botha, this is unlikely, and no such letter has ever turned up. What seems to have happened is that, when Mandela spoke about the letter to P.W. Botha, he was misunderstood by his ghost-writer, Richard Stengel. If this is the case, it is odd that, despite the editorial resources lavished on Long Walk to Freedom, this error was never detected and rectified. Secondly, Mandela omits to mention that the letter was ostensibly a joint effort, written by himself as well as his four colleagues in Pollsmoor Prison. In contrast to ‘My Father Says’, he also does not quote from it.
However, indications are that, at that time at least, he did regard the letter as significant. When Helen Suzman and a fellow member of parliament, Tiaan van der Merwe, visited him at Pollsmoor Prison more than a year later, he told them that, after Botha had made his offer of conditional release, he also replied to him in writing. (This also speaks to the agonisingly long time frames and restrictions Mandela then had to endure in the course of communicating with the outside world.)
Permission to give a copy to Winnie Mandela was refused. According to the covert transcript of the conversation, he then told his visitors: ‘That letter would have exposed the government. They suppressed it. We said we were prepared to negotiate. He [Botha] says the opposite.’ He added that this was what Botha had told the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group (EPG), which had visited South Africa in the interim.
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If Mandela did regard the letter as important, it was with good reason. It differs substantially from the statement read out at the Soweto rally. Among other things, it contains a virulent attack on P.W. Botha. It condemns his offer as ‘ … no more than a shrewd and calculated attempt to mislead the world into the belief that you have magnanimously offered us release from prison which we ourselves have rejected. Coming in the face of such unprecedented and widespread demands for our release, your remarks can only be seen as the height of cynical politicking …
‘… No self-respecting human being will demean and humiliate himself by making a commitment of the nature you demand. You ought not to perpetuate our imprisonment by the simple expedient of setting conditions which, to your own knowledge, we will never under any circumstances accept… .
‘… It would seem that you have no intention whatsoever of using democratic and peaceful forms of dealing with black grievances, [and] the real purpose of attaching conditions to your offer is to ensure that the NP should enjoy the monopoly of committing violence against defenceless people …
‘… You say you are personally prepared to go a long way to release the tensions in inter-group relations in this country, but that you are not prepared to lead the whites to abdication. By making this statement you have again categorically reaffirmed that you remain obsessed with the preservation of domination by the white minority. You should not be surprised, therefore, if … the vast masses of the oppressed people continue to regard you as a mere broker of the interests of the white tribe, and consequently unfit to handle national affairs …
‘… You state that you cannot talk with people who do not want to cooperate, that you hold talks with every possible leader who is prepared to renounce violence. Coming from the leader of the NP this statement is a shocking revelation as it shows more than anything else, that there is not a single figure in that party today who is advanced enough to understand the basic problems of our country who has profited from the bitter experiences of the 37 years of NP rule, and who is prepared to take a bold lead towards the building of a truly democratic South Africa …’
Botha is also taken to task for his adverse response to allegations at the UN that Mandela’s health had deteriorated and that he was being detained under inhumane conditions: ‘There is no need for you to be sanctimonious in this regard. The United Nations is an important and responsible organ of world peace … Its affairs are handled by the finest brains on earth, by men whose integrity is flawless. If they make such allegations, they do so in the honest belief that they were true …’
However, the letter also spells out