Invictus - Carlin [25]
Barnard was a tall, sleek, dark-haired, humorless fellow. An Afrikaner Mr. Spock, he spoke in a monotone and his features were so blankly set that if you were to run across him a day after meeting him you would probably fail to recognize him. But the workings of his mind were crystal clear, and while he had a stilted way of talking, years later his memory remained sharp regarding the political mood and the fights within government in the 1980s.
“Some people, specifically in the military, but in the police as well, deep down believed that we had to fight it out in some way or another,” he recalled. “We at the NIS believed this to be the wrong way to go about things. We took the view that a political settlement was the only answer to the problems of this country.” That was a very hard message indeed to sell to the South African government apparatus. Barnard had no illusions about that. “But the important thing was that P. W. Botha, who was more or less born and bred within the security establishment, firmly believed that in some way or another we had to . . . how should I say . . . stabilize the South African situation, and then from there try to find some kind of political solution.”
Botha summoned Barnard to his office one day in May 1988, and told him, “Dr. Barnard, we want you to meet Mr. Mandela now. Try to find out what you have been advocating for some time. Is it possible to find a peaceful settlement with the ANC, with this man Mandela? Try to find out his views on communism . . . and then try to find out, are Mr. Mandela and the ANC interested in a peaceful settlement? For we also have deep suspicions about what they would be interested in.”
Barnard’s first meeting with Mandela was held in the office of Pollsmoor’s commanding officer. As Barnard remembered it, recalling Kobie Coetsees first impressions, “Mr. Mandela came in and I saw immediately that, even in an overall and boots, he had a commanding kind of presence and personality.” The two men sat down, both understanding that the real purpose of this meeting was to become acquainted, to develop a relationship that could sustain the political negotiations that might follow. They made some small talk—Mandela asking him what part of South Africa he was from and Barnard inquiring after his health—and agreed to meet again.
Before they did, however, Barnard ruled, just as Coetsee had done, that Mandela should be kitted out in clothes more befitting a man of his stature. As Barnard explained, “Talking about the future of the country in overall and boots: this was obviously not acceptable. We arranged with Willie Willemse, the commissioner of prisons, that at any future meeting he would be clothed in such a way that it serves his dignity and his pride as a human being.” It was not only on the matter of clothes that Mandela should be accommodated, Barnard decided. A more fitting meeting venue was required. “Mr. Mandela had to be on a par, as an equal, at any future meeting, this much was clear to me. I remember saying with Willie Willemse that we could never again hold such a meeting within the prison building. That would not create an equal situation.” From now on, Barnard and Mandela would meet in Willemse’s home on the Pollsmoor grounds rather than in his nondescript office.
This began with the second meeting, at which Mandela turned up for dinner at the Willemses’ dressed in a jacket. “He was a wonderful guest,” Barnard recalled, his natural reserve thawing at the recollection. At these meetings, Willemse’s wife cooked delicious meals, wine flowed, and the two men talked for hours about how to end apartheid peacefully.