Mandela - the hidden choreographer of change

Trevor Manuel: None can doubt that the tumultuous events in the heady days from February 2 to 12 1990 are completely defining of our epoch.

Within this period, the question most frequently asked, as with all other great historic moments, is: "Where were you when Mandela was released?"

As important as the response to that is - and as uplifting as it was to see Madiba take those first steps beyond the gates of Victor Verster Prison - if that is the sum total of our recall, it is sadly misplaced.

I was part of the Mandela reception committee and in this context saw Madiba two days before his release (actually, I was part of the UDF delegation on that occasion).

I was called by the Commissioner of Prisons, General Johan Willemse, on February 10, and was then part of a group of four from the ANC and the UDF who went to discuss the release with Madiba late on Saturday afternoon. I was also part of the convening committee to receive Madiba on the Grand Parade and was privileged to be with Madiba when he cleared the house and the prison and left that house for freedom. I was with him and Winnie on the journey into the city and then to Bishop's Court after the speech, and back for the press conference on Monday.

It is indeed a great privilege to have been there with Nelson Mandela; it was an even greater privilege to see this turning point in our country's history, and it is necessary that none of us ever becomes blasé about such distinct honour.

Through this entire period, I observed Madiba closely and he was calm and in control. Not once did he permit his emotions to get in the way of what needed to be done.

Perhaps the best opportunity for some release would have been on Saturday afternoon - in the house with four comrades, and the realisation of a momentous change in his life and freedom after incarceration of 27 years, just hours away.

Not even then did his emotions surface. This exchange was essentially an opportunity for him to share with us the notes he had prepared for the speech to be delivered on the Grand Parade.

Even on that early Monday morning in the wonderful green surrounds of Bishop's Court, where he'd just spent his first night as husband and father, and when he faced the daunting task of a press conference with possibly hundreds of hostile journalists, wielding all manner of equipment with which he was entirely unfamiliar, he was in control.

He called me very early in the morning, because he wanted his weights so that he could exercise as he had done early every morning in prison.

It would be quite wrong to infer from this that Nelson Mandela is a cold automaton - everybody would know that that was patently untrue: Madiba is the warmest, most spontaneous and engaging world leader you could ever meet.

But he is a leader whose thought processes are always a few steps ahead of the immediate.

Madiba's lack of excitement can only be ascribed to the fact that, for him, there were no surprises. His release was not an unplanned gift - sure, there might have been some debate about the precise date and some of the attendant logistics, but the fact of his release was entirely in the plan that he had crafted.

It was in about 1985 that he initiated the talks that would lay the basis for negotiations.

He saw the late Kobie Coetzee [minister of justice and prisons], who conveyed the offer of President PW Botha that Madiba could be released in exchange for renouncing violence, and he spurned that offer with contempt.

Later, the initiative with Coetzee resumed, and that was followed by a series of meetings with a team led by Dr Neil Barnard.

Madiba was clear and relentless. He argued the positions he took with his fellow Rivonia trialists, who were incarcerated at Pollsmoor with him.

He kept the ANC in Lusaka updated on developments and sought clarity for the arguments he would posit. Later, when the ANC in exile started talks with the apartheid regime, Madiba managed an information flow to ensure a consistency of approach.

When FW de Klerk became president, he had to deal with a fait accompli; the talks intensified and Nelson Mandela was their master.

The release of Govan Mbeki and later of Walter Sisulu, Elias Motsoaledi, Andrew Mlangeni and Ahmed Kathrada was engineered. The message was strong and unequivocal; Nelson Mandela was not negotiating to feather his nest, he was engaged in laying the foundation for a deeper political process.

By November 1989, some of us inside the country had joined a large ANC group of exiles at a conference outside Paris. At this time, the epoch-making events that were to follow were spelt out to us.

We knew then that the apartheid regime would move to meet the conditions for free political activity, as articulated in the Harare Declaration (though the declaration was not adopted until December 14 1989, we had access to an almost-final draft).

The apartheid regime had by then de facto lost the ability to govern.

I repeat, Nelson Mandela's calm demeanour was testimony to the fact that events were not happening to him - he was the engineer.

It is worth pausing to re-examine the content of Madiba's speech on February 11 1990. Seldom has a speech evoked so many of the correct emotions.

Madiba said: "I stand here before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you, the people. Your tireless and heroic sacrifices have made it possible for me to be here today. I therefore place the remaining years of my life in your hands."

These are not platitudes, they are fundamental elements of Madiba's belief system - these words were both completely cerebral and emotional - if you could hear them above the din on the Grand Parade.

He explained how decisions were made in the ANC and his deference to Oliver Tambo as the ANC's elected president.

He explained the preconditions for negotiations, as set out in the Harare Declaration.

He described FW de Klerk as "a man of integrity who is acutely aware of the dangers of a public figure not honouring his undertakings".

And he chose to end the speech with the same words with which he ended his statement from the dock.

"I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities.

"It is an ideal that I hope to live for and to achieve. But, if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

This speaks of the seamlessness of his beliefs across 26 years. None could doubt the sincerity of those words.

The speech was crafted carefully and conscientiously, by Nelson Mandela himself, not by some hotshot 26-year-old sitting with a laptop in a coffee-shop.

This was vintage Madiba. Look back on the 20 years that have elapsed since that speech and ask which word is out of place, which commitment is unredeemed.

But the story of Mandela's release doesn't end when he goes to bed late on the evening of February 11. His first task thereafter is to "meet the people" and he does this by addressing political rallies across the length and breadth of the country.

At most of these rallies, the crowds were larger than any experienced before or since. Addressing them was part of a carefully conceived plan to win the backing of the vast majority for the political events to come.

After about two weeks, Madiba led a delegation to Lusaka to meet African heads of state and the ANC national executive committee. He routed through Harare and then went to Tanzania to, among other things, visit an MK camp at which he donned the MK fatigues and ate and slept with the soldiers, as any smart general would. He visited Morogoro, where the all-important ANC conference had been held in 1969 and he visited the students at the Solomon Mahlangu Freedom College.

He paid a courtesy call to OAU headquarters in Addis Ababa.

With the ANC united behind the project, Madiba led his delegation to Stockholm, where he was reunited with Oliver Tambo and Trevor Huddleston. Every important component of the ANC in exile had been visited, and work back home could continue.

So, exciting as that hot Sunday on February 11 1990 was, we lose the context if we fail to see the hand, the actions and the words of the master, who chose to plot the events that we now call history.