How Nelson Mandela Worked with F.W. de Klerk to End Apartheid

In 1991, two years after he became president of South Africa, F.W. de Klerk, who died at the age of 85, secretly met with Nelson Mandela at Tuynhus, the South African president’s residence in Cape Town. Mandela was then prisoner number 466/64 at nearby Victor Verster prison. Mandela may have been a prisoner, but he was by then the most famous political prisoner in the world. De Klerk was a longtime National Party functionary who had succeeded the ferocious P.W. Botha as the head of the racist apartheid government of South Africa.

It was the first time they had met, and prison officials had hurriedly ordered a three-piece suit and tie for Mandela. The meeting was formal, but cordial. The two discussed the future of South Africa and Mandela’s possible release. De Klerk and the National Party had recently released a five-year plan that enshrined the idea of “group rights,” a version of traditional apartheid policy that said whites and blacks would remain separate with neither dominant. South African Blacks saw this as a way of avoiding majority rule.

Mandela didn’t hesitate. He said that was unacceptable.

Mandela recalled all of this to me in 1993 when I…