Prelude

Abstract

On 16 June 1999, a trim, reserved, impeccably dressed man with a grey beard was sworn in as South Africa’s new president, succeeding a giant of the century, a modern icon whose awesome strength and magnanimity after decades in prison had made possible reconciliation between the races after more than 70 years of institutionalized racial repression. In that crystal clear, blue-skied winter’s day, surrounded by foreign dignitaries such as the Ruritanian-attired Colonel Qaddafi of Libya and an almost exclusively black audience of politicians, bureaucrats and senior military figures, including the gold brocaded figure of the country’s would-be Evita, Winnie Mandela, Thabo Mbeki seemed far too small to be stepping into Nelson Mandela’s shoes. Yet this man had played almost as crucial a role in the sudden unravelling of apartheid as his famous predecessor, one which is almost entirely unknown and began just under 12 years before in the utterly implausible setting of the Compleat Angler Hotel in Marlow — the first of a series of historic meetings at secret locations in Britain at which white South Afrikanerdom first confronted its nemesis.