On Monday 4 May, British television viewers were able to watch a movie-length docudrama about the secret negotiations at Mells Park House in Somerset in England in the late 1980s, which led to the ending of apartheid.

In Endgame, shown on Britain's Channel Four (see here), and directed by Pete Travis, the role of ex-President Thabo Mbeki as head of the ANC team of negotiators was acted by the British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. William Hurt played the Stellenbosch academic Willie Esterhuyse, member of the Broederbond and principal negotiator at Mells Park (he described himself as a "fact finder") on behalf of Minister of Justice Kobie Coetsee, National Intelligence Service director Dr Niel Barnard and - more indirectly - President PW Botha (played by Timothy West).

The script for the film, by Paula Milne, was based on the book, The Fall of Apartheid, by Robert Harvey (Palgrave, London, 2001).

Spelling errors in Harvey's book (such as the names of the late ANC and South African Communist Party activist, Harold Wolpe, and of Dr Niel Barnard) would suggest that major issues were not fully investigated in Harvey's history, and that these issues were then transmitted to the script of the film.

Neither in the book nor the film is there any indication that at the time of the 12 separate sessions of talks (eleven of them at Mells House) between 1987 and 1990, Mbeki was a member of the Politburo of the SACP; that his team member Aziz Pahad (subsequently Deputy Foreign Minister in Mbeki's government) was a member of the Central Committee of the SACP as well as a member of the ANC's feared Department of Intelligence and Security, iMbokodo; that an important role in these negotiations under Mbeki's leadership was played by the soon-to-be inaugurated President of South Africa, Jacob Zuma (also a Politburo member of the SACP during this period, and head of intelligence in iMbokodo, but absent from the film); and that the most senior member of Imbokodo, the late Joe Nhlanhla (a "Soviet graduate...who understood Russian perfectly", according to Professor Vladimir Shubin), though not a member of the SACP, was also a member of the ANC's negotiating team during the later sessions, but is also absent in the film.

The SACP and iMbokodo kept watch on the negotiators from the ANC side. But while Endgame flagged up the Broederbond and the NIS as privy to the negotiations from the side of the apartheid government, the secretive bodies keeping watch on the ANC's negotiating process remained out of the frame. To this extent, the film was par for the course for the British media class.

In the same way, there was noticeably less dramatic affect in Endgame's presentation of an ANC bombing in a shopping mall in Roodepoort compared with the maiming of the then ANC activist (and subsequent Judge) Albie Sachs in Maputo.

Tony Trew, a former white South African political prisoner and Oxford graduate who retired as Deputy Chief Executive of the Government Communications and Information System in July 2007 - ahead of the humiliating defeat of his longtime colleague, Thabo Mbeki, at the ANC national conference at Polokwane the following December - was shown as the third principal member of the ANC negotiating team, along with Mbeki and Aziz Pahad.

Trew's "detailed verbatim minutes" of the meetings were made available to Mark Gevisser for his biography of Mbeki, published in 2007. When Mandela formed his cabinet in 1994, he asked Mbeki to set up his office for him, "which Mbeki populated with his own people", Trew becoming assistant to Joel Netshitenzhe, Mbeki's "protege", who became Mandela's communications director and speech writer. (Gevisser, Thabo Mbeki: The Dream Deferred, Jonathan Ball, 2007. pp.543, 658).

Mandela - in prison at Pollsmoor and later at Victor Verster prison, near Paarl - was played in Endgame by the American actor, Clarke Peters.

Mells Park House at the time of the negotiations was the property of the British mining house, Consolidated Goldfields, set up in 1887 in South Africa by Cecil Rhodes and Charles Rudd a year after the discovery of gold at the Witwatersrand.

Michael Young, then head of communications and corporate affairs at Consgold, who had been a political adviser to the Conservative prime ministers Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath, had "had a private word" with the ANC president in exile, Oliver Tambo, in 1986, following a "fruitless" meeting in London between Tambo, Mbeki and other ANC leaders with British businessmen with interests in South Africa. (Allister Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country, Mandarin, 1996. pp.76-77).

In his "private word" with Tambo, Young asked what British business could do that "would address more than the symptoms of the apartheid problem". Tambo's response, according to Young, was: "I would like to see if we could have a dialogue with the Afrikaners". (Sparks, p.77)

This provides the setting to the film. With discrete support from the Consgold chairman, Rudolph Agnew (played by Derek Jacobi in the film), Young travelled to South Africa to make contact with Esterhuyse, which in turn initiated the series of meetings with the ANC, which Young later chaired throughout at Mells Park House.

Tambo is played in the film by the veteran South African actor, John Kani, while Young is played by the British screen actor, Jonny Lee Miller, who acted in Trainspotting.

TIMELINE OF PRE-NEGOTIATION PROCESS

The historical timeline for the negotiating process seems to have been as follows, using mainly Sparks, Tomorrow is Another Country:

March 1982: Mandela, Walter Sisulu, Ahmed Kathrada, Andrew Mlangeni and Raymond Mhlaba transferred from Robben Island to Pollsmoor (in good part, to separate them from Govan Mbeki, who was hostile to the negotiating process).

Late 1984: Mandela wrote to Kobie Coetsee, asking for a meeting, after the beginning of the township revolt. (Sparks, pp.23-24)

November/December 1985: Coetsee met Mandela for the first time in the Volks Hospital, Cape Town, while Mandela was there for prostate surgery. When he left the hospital on 23 December 1985, Mandela was then placed in a section in Pollsmoor prison separated from his fellow ex-Robben Islanders.

November/December 1985: Mandela asked to see George Bizos, as his senior legal adviser, a few days after his meeting with Coetsee, and then met with Bizos at the Volks Hospital. Mandela asked him to visit Tambo in Lusaka to explain the nature of his meeting with Coetsee, so that it would not be thought that he was "doing deals without their concurrence". (Bizos, in Sparks, p.27) Bizos secured permission from Coetsee on board an airplane flight from Cape Town to Johannesburg diverted by fog via Durban, followed a few days later by his trip to see Tambo in Lusaka.

28 February 1986: Bizos saw Tambo in Lusaka for a second time. Judge Johann Kriegler accompanied Bizos to report back to Coetsee on his return. Prior to this, the Eminent Persons Group, led by Malcolm Fraser of Australia and General Obasanjo of Nigeria, had arrived in South Africa, with Obasanjo meeting Mandela in Pollsmoor on 21 February 1986. The whole Group then met with Mandela at Pollsmoor in May. Several more meetings followed between Mandela and Coetsee, who reported back to Botha.

Early 1986: Academics Sampie Terreblanche and Willie Esterhuyse were approached by the ANC with a request to visit Tambo in Lusaka. Sparks writes that this followed an address by him to 12 ANC leaders, including Tambo, in Lusaka in February 1986.

1986: Michael Young asked Tambo about what Consgold could do, after a "fruitless" meeting of ANC leaders with British businessmen in London. Young's connection with Esterhuyse in South Africa took place later that year, leading to the meetings at Mells House.

August 1987: Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and "some fifty Afrikaner dissidents" met with ANC leaders in Dakar, Senegal.

November 1987: First meeting between ANC negotiating team headed by Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner academics headed by Willie Esterhuyse. "There were twelve meetings in all between November 1987 and May 1990. After the first one, all the others were held at Mells Park House on a Consgold estate in the village of Mells, near Bath in Somersetshire." (Sparks, p.82) Wimpie de Klerk on the Mells House meetings: "bonds of friendship...developed between Thabo, Aziz [Pahad], Jacob Zuma and myself". (quoted, p.83) "[The] importance of the Mells meetings was that they were with people deep inside the Afrikaner nationalist establishment, members of the Broederbond and others whose contacts ran right to the top of South Africa's ruling oligarchy". (Sparks, pp.86-87)

May 1988: Coetsee broadened the communication process with Mandela by forming a special committee including Niel Barnard as head of the National Intelligence Service, and others. Mandela's diary noted 47 meetings in all.

December 1988: Following an operation and convalescence at Tygerberg Hospital between 12 April 1988 and the end of September to remove fluid from his lungs, after TB had been diagnosed, Mandela was transferred to Victor Verster Prison near Paarl, following a decision by the committee including Coetsee and Barnard.

July 1989: ANC hosted meeting in Lusaka with 115 white South Africans, representing 35 opposition organisations;

Later, July 1989: ANC delegation met a group of Afrikaner writers in Zimbabwe.

November 1989: First democratic elections in Namibia, leading to independence in March 1990.

2 February 1990: President FW de Klerk unbans the ANC, the SACP and other organisations.

11 February 1990: Release of Nelson Mandela.

RESPONSES TO ENDGAME

Stanley Uys, in London, asked a number of people for their responses to Endgame. These are set out below.

 PROF.GRAHAM WATSON

"It was a well-crafted drama, superbly acted, but, like histories of the kings and queens of England, it is the kind of narrative that we should have grown out of by now. It assumes that great events are marshalled by a few key individuals, and ignores the massive social and economic forces that make such events possible and perhaps even inevitable; thus, De Klerk's astonishing volte face is presented in a less than informative Just So manner."

INGRID UYS:

I understood Young may now doing the same with Hamas (dubious?) : brokering a peace settlement with the Israeli's? But he must have come from somewhere, some background, and that didn't come through in the film.....hmmm...What has happened to journalism - no one seems to investigate anything anymore!A friend of mine in SA was co-producer of the film and was keen for feedback and reviews. He also produced the No.1 Ladies Detective Agency - don't know if you watched that? I did shortly after the director died (forget his name). But I found it embarrassing! It made the Africans completely English, stiff and uptight in their emotional responses and we all know they are the complete opposite! Light, breezy, funny......anyway I thought this production was a lot better.....

TELEVISION INTERVIEW: "At first glance, a drama about talks that helped to end apartheid in South Africa over 20 years ago might not seem like compelling viewing. We'll have to see the film to judge. Interesting, though". Another TV interviewer: "Although not a perfect film, Endgame does a reasonable job in delivering a story ...". The film jumps chapters, and generally it is a bit of a scramble, but most of the comment on it is reasonably favourable.

PEARCE ROOD:

I thought the programme and the article played up the role of Michael Young excessively. A lawyer called Rosenthal (the son of Eric Rosenthal) wrote a book in which he described the key role he had played in bringing the parties together for talks - in his case, in Zambia and, I think, in West Africa. Then there's the lawyer in Brandfort whose wife befriended Winnie Mandela and who was himself a friend of Kobie Coetsee's, who went on to orchestrate talks, having persuaded PW of the merits thereof. And what about the talks between a group of businessmen (Chris Ball et al) and ANC people; and the Afrikaner academics who met the ANC in West Africa. So Channel 4's hype needs to be brought down to earth a little, I think.

 PAUL TREWHELA:

By late 1988 the ANC had no option except to deal, once its patron, the USSR, collapsed, preceded by its "near abroad" in Eastern Europe, accompanied by the clearing out from Angola of Cuban troops, Soviet and DDR advisers, plus the ANC, in terms of the Crocker Accords.

As a film, Flo and I thought it had strengths. There was tension in the menacing chaos of Michael Young's journey into the townships. We thought William Hurt did very well in his portrayal of Esterhuyse. Derek Jacobi as Agnew at Goldfields, Timothy West as PW Botha and John Kani as Tambo were fine, and Niel Barnard was also well portrayed. We thought that Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mbeki carried off his role well, too, and that the time-frame of the drama with its focus on the negotiating process was sound.

Mandela, however, did not appear as anything but a lifeless, cardboard character, the result of weak script-writing, or directing, or acting, or a combination of all three. It was strange to see the best-known figure in this drama presented as such a vacancy. Mandela would probably be the main reason for many non-South Africans to view the film, yet it could only be tiresome for them to see such a figure presented as so lacking in presence.

Jacob Zuma, too, principal protagonist in the real-life nemesis of Mbeki, who had been present in the real-life negotiations at Mells House, is absent in the film.

For South Africans, a different future for the country is withheld from the time-sense of the fiction in the film, while we sense its presence in our own real-time. Mbeki emerges genially as hero in film-fiction only a week before Zuma, absent in the fiction, is inaugurated in his place in the real seat of power. This real-life Shakespearean drama is off-stage, and leaves a troubling sense of dissatisfaction.

One waited for more. Though absorbing for us, it was not ultimately a satisfying film. The real drama of South Africa remains off-set.

STANLEY UYS:

I find Young's first encounter with Esterhuyse odd - he barged unknown into his lecture room. During the discussion that followed on the lawn, the usually amiable Esterhuyse said the thought of talking to "terrorists" would make him "retch." Young was taken aback. Had he misread Esterhuyse? Yet he must have expected that Esterhuyse, who was known in academic and political circles to be concerned about the situation in the country, would react more sympathetically. Also, in the talks at Mell House, when Young is ready to propose an agenda for power-sharing, Mbeki snaps back emphatically that the ANC is interested only in - POWER. Tambo also comes across as hostile to talks. So just what support did Mandela receive from Robben Island prisoners and exiles when they learnt that Mandela was being groomed for talks (the talks that averted a fight to the end in South Africa).

The yawning gap in Endgame, I think, is the omission of the Soviet collapse. If Moscow funds were cut off from the ANC, the ANC would have a lifeline cut off, and a unique opportunity would open for the apartheid government not only to bring an end to the war in Southern Africa, especially in Angola, but also to start negotiations with the ANC. Was Mandela's transfer to Pollsmoor prison on the mainland in 1982 a signal that the regime was trying to detach him from the rest of the Robben Island prisoners in preparation for talks?

Something else jars: the film opens with someone saying an invitation has been received from the ANC for talks. Why would Oliver Tambo and Thabo Mbeki (at first) be so implacably opposed to genuine talks? What was their view of Mandela's solo role in the talks? In an exchange with Mbeki, Young and Esterhuyse laid down as a first principle that the aim was power sharing. Thabo replied bluntly that the ANC was not interested: all it wanted was - POWER. 

A LACONIC COMMENT BY PROFESSOR HERMANN GILIOMEE:

(Response to an interview in The Times, London, in which Young told his untold story):

Good heavens!

LESTER VENTER:

While I enjoyed the film, and thought it was a good piece of drama that captured the spirit of the time, I nevertheless have feelings of disquiet over how it presents the Esterhuyse talks as the breakthrough they never were. These talks were not unique -- and they weren't even the first.There was the big visit to Zambia/Senegal (PW Botha was furious). The Van Zyl Slabbert book no doubt records the event; that group I think went two years before. Also the Gavin Relly talks in Lusaka. And others in London.

That's not to deny the usefulness of the Mells House talks -- they helped to prepare people for what had to come. I think that what perhaps distinguished the Esterhuyse talks was the indirect involvement of Barnard and Botha in the background. I remember covering this topic in conversation with Barnard -- and at the time it struck me that he considered the Mells House confab an interesting sideshow, but nothing more. He was way down the line with Mandela at the time. I think he really was just interested to know that Mandela would be able to bring the rest of the ANC with him if/when it came time to sit at the table.

At the end of the film, many liberties are taken in compressing events -- FW's Big Announcement, release of Mandela, etc. No problem, the film needs to hang together. But once again, it makes out as if the people in Mells House created those events.

I think the telling fact is that none of the histories of the time - and there are some good ones - pay much attention to the Esterhuyse talks; and that would be not because the authors don't know about them. They do, but the talks didn't really amount to anything. That's my view, anyway. I think Willie Esterhuyse was probably mightily surprised to find he was going to be the subject of a movie.

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