Code: 05260451

End of Apartheid

Name: End of Apartheid
Brand: Biteback Publishing
SKU: 05260451
Availability: OutOfStock

by Robin Renwick

Language: English
Binding: Hardback
Number of pages: 288
Publisher: Biteback Publishing, 2015
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Book synopsis

An insider's blow-by-blow account of the release of Nelson Mandela and the dismantling of apartheid. As British ambassador to South Africa, Robin Renwick was in the midst of these seismic events in world history. Appointed to South Africa as Margaret Thatcher's envoy, Renwick became a personal friend of Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk and Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, acting as a trusted intermediary between the three parties. He describes meetings with P.W. Botha, warning him against military attacks on the neighbouring countries and arguing for the lives of the Sharpeville Six as 'like visiting Hitler in his bunker'. Renwick personally persuaded Margaret Thatcher to descend on Windhoek in support of the Namibia agreement. His close relationship with F.W. de Klerk helped him to garner international support for his reforms. On the eve of his epoch-making speech to Parliament of 2 February 1990, de Klerk told him: 'You can tell your Prime Minister she will not be disappointed'. He paints a vivid portrait of Mandela - far wilier and a bit less saintly than others have portrayed him - describing his meetings with him immediately after his release, inviting him to his first meal in a restaurant in Johannesburg for twenty seven years, rehearsing him for his meeting with Margaret Thatcher (and telling Thatcher that she must not interrupt him!). Their meeting went on for so long that the British press in Downing Street started chanting, 'Free Nelson Mandela'. The Iron Lady warmed to her visitor but told him to 'stop all this nonsense about nationalisation'. The Mandela charm worked no less effectively on the Queen, who he took to calling 'Elizabeth' and persuaded to dance with him at the royal box in the Albert Hall. This extraordinary account, based on the author's diaries of the time, contains information from the hitherto unpublished Foreign Office and 10 Downing Street records at the time.