- guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 13 1994 02.33 GMT
The pressure was much slower than he expected. His colleague Oliver Tambo, who became president of the ANC, had been sent into exile to organise opposition to apartheid, but he got no support for the armed struggle from the British and American governments, and had to turn to the Soviet Union and East Germany.
In the mid-1960s South Africa under apartheid was booming, bolstered by western capital. The British Labour government which came to power in 1964 encouraged investors and advised them not to criticise the system. It was left to the churches, left-wing leaders and the Anti-Apartheid Movement to maintain support for the ANC. In 1969 Henry Kissinger argued that economic growth would liberalise apartheid policies, and advised Nixon to relax the arms embargo.
Inside South Africa the fanatical Hendrik Verwoerd was succeeded in 1966 by the more genial and corrupt John Vorster but his government used their wealth to build up their police state, to establish the tribal homelands, and to obliterate the ANC.
By the 1970s, as Mandela writes, the ANC 'sank into the shadows'. The all-white election campaigns never mentioned it and most whites assumed that it had disappeared. Possessing any ANC pamphlet could be punished with long detention without trial.
In the early 1970s the Black Consciousness Movement, led by Steve Biko, stirred up young students against apartheid. And when the schoolchildren revolted in the Soweto uprising in 1976, they revealed a much wider black anger. The ruthless suppression which followed forced thousands into exile: in Zambia. Tambo, with Mandela's approval, welcomed many of them into the ANC.
The Soweto revolt and the murder of Biko precipitated a wider revulsion against apartheid across the world and made investors more worried about the black opposition. After P W Botha succeeded Vorster as President in 1978 he raised some hopes by legalising black unions but he used all the power of the army and police to suppress the ANC and to wage war on the black states on the borders.
The ANC were nevertheless showing more signs of effective resistance, beginning with the explosion at the oil plant at Sasolburg in 1981 and the 'Free Mandela' campaign. But they were rebuffed by Reagan and Thatcher, who denounced them as communist terrorists and insisted that trade and investment were liberalising apartheid. They welcomed P W Botha's new constitution in 1983 which gave separate votes to Indians and Coloureds but not to blacks.
The resulting black frustration provoked the formation of the United Democratic Front, a wide coalition across all races and occupations, which became an effective surrogate and cover for the ANC. By 1985 Tambo in exile was calling on his people to 'Render South Africa Ungovernable'. Defiance was spreading through the townships with a new children's revolt, with rent boycotts and counter-terrorism against informers.
Students and church leaders in Britain and America were stepping up the pressure for sanctions and disinvestment, successfully boycotting banks including Barclays and the Chase Manhattan which played in with apartheid. And in July 1985 the Chase ' without realising it ' began the economic threat to South Africa by stopping loans.
Pretoria was becoming at last isolated, and world opinion was now pressing for stronger sanctions. In February 1986 President Botha agreed to a visit by 'eminent persons' from the Commonwealth, who were allowed to visit Mandela in jail. They were then convinced that peace could only be achieved with Mandela's release, and they reported that black support for the ANC was now widespread, and growing. Liberal businessmen as well as poiticians were calling for Mandela's release.
P W Botha in the meantime had broken off relations with the Commonwealth with a new attack on border countries, and in June 1986 he imposed the most ruthless emergency of all, with mass detentions filling the jails. Botha still depicted ANC as terrorist outlaws. He was encouraged by Thatcher and Reagan who helped build up the Zulu leader Buthelezi as the means to divide the black opposition by receiving him warmly in London and Washington.
It was at that time that Mandela began secret talks with Botha's ministers, from his private quarters in prison, culminating in a friendly talk with Botha himself. And when de Klerk took over in 1989 he soon realised there was no alternative to negotiating with Mandela, urged forward by a more far-sighted British Ambassador Sir Robin Renwick. In February 1990 Mandela was finally released, and welcomed by western governments as if he had always been their hero.
