You Must Set Forth at Dawn (43 page)

Was it a heart attack? An epileptic fit? A stroke? A diabetic crisis? It did not matter to me in my delicious apathy.
He's in excellent hands
—as if I had joined the doctors in diagnosing the cause of the man's collapse. He was assisted out and into the ambulance—perhaps from Mitterrand's official medical fleet— and the meeting continued. I was perhaps the most serene being in the halls and labyrinths of the Elysée Palace all that day. It was a good thing that my faith was not misplaced. The patient recovered fully and rejoined us for the rest of the conference. Nothing, however, could match that moment when, for once, I understood what a gift it was to be at one with the superfluous population of the world.

IT BECAME OBVIOUS to me, some moments later, why the flashback had occurred. It was not the mere recollection of the bloodless face of François Mitterrand—which, in any case, proved quite capable of some animation and even occasional banter, mostly in the form of self-deprecatory remarks, as the evening progressed. More evocative was the contrast between that other gathering at the Elysée Palace and the present. At the TNP restaurant, we were drawn into a tense discussion of life and death, the threatened collapse of a barely rising edifice on which millions of eyes were affixed in optimistic expectation. One was denied the luxury of indifference, even of detachment. To make matters worse, instead of an abundance of healers, I wondered—was this should-be celebratory dinner, in the tranquil air of a Paris night, a feast of undertakers?

I looked toward Cyril Ramaphosa, who had yet to speak. His message was similar, but his tone was more accommodating. All expressed grievances against Inkatha, and against Buthelezi personally. Thabo Mbeki was obviously the main hard-liner. He could hardly pronounce the name “Buthelezi” without his smallish, nearly triangular face expunging all expression, leaving only the hardness of his eyes. Mandela returned to the theme. He introduced a novel point of consideration by calling attention to Buthelezi's hurt feelings. He offered that perhaps Buthelezi had not been given sufficient credit for what he had achieved during the antiapartheid struggle. The problematic chief had, after all, remained steadfast to the cause.

“Why should we fight among ourselves?” Mandela asked, somewhat rhetorically. “If it were possible, I would go and meet Buthelezi tomorrow, even tonight. I know him. He respects me. If he and I were to sit down today and thrash it all out, all these unnecessary killings would stop.”

Mbeki again interjected. His tone was stiff; it cut through the mellow ambiance like a party-line diktat. “His atrocities against our members are unforgivable. We cannot sit down and talk to such a man. There is nothing to be gained by it. For a dialogue to take place, there has to be a talking point. With Buthelezi there is none.”

I thought Nelson Mandela looked rather sad and wistful. Obviously he did not share Mbeki's view. His smile was, however, not quite one of resignation. It could have been my hyperactive antennae, but I had the distinct impression that Mandela's statement did not quite correspond to his inner intent, that he was biding his time. Certainly that surmise was contradicted when he said, “Well, you've heard our comrades. If the Executive Committee were to learn that I accidentally ran into Buthelezi and exchanged a ‘good morning' with him, there would be a riot!”

I turned to Mbeki. “I hope you realize what you're saying. You are leaving yourself no choice but to kill him. You'll have to kill him. And you know where that might lead.”

Mbeki gave a slight shrug but said nothing further, at least not on that subject.

By the following morning, the glow of an intimate evening with my—and the world's—favorite avatar had dissipated. It took no special political instinct or intelligence to understand the urge for reprisals. My recollection remained focused on the sharp separation between Nelson Mandela's thinking and that of his “young Turks.” Even the body languages of those two—Thabo Mbeki and Nelson Mandela—spoke volumes, and the contrast read out a stark warning. I returned to Nigeria far uneasier than when I had set out for dinner—and had begun to consider if it was not time for another dinner with my reigning devil, the real one this time, but a pliable one!

THE TRUTH WAS, I realized, that my student-days obsession with South Africa had merely gone into hibernation. Now it was bludgeoned awake as the figures of fatalities rose sharply by the day. No-go zones between Inkatha- and ANC-controlled areas in various cities—Johannesburg and its suburbs most notoriously—had become battlegrounds, streets turned into open spaces of death. The predicted was taking flesh; the broken white power had regrouped and begun to exploit divisions between the fraternal enemies. It became difficult to understand—how was it possible that no influential African nation had stepped in, brokered peace between the warring duo, and left the Boer diehards stuck to the starting blocks of their devious plots? It was the looming taunt that haunted me:
See, we hand over power to them, negotiated power, that
is, and all they do is slaughter one another.
The suspicions, clashes, and killings were not new, nor were the jostling for political advantage and the fear of being overwhelmed by a more powerful partner in any struggle. It was not a situation that was peculiar to South Africa; liberation history has not been niggardly in its instructional scripts.

The continent needed a South African success! South Africa's task of recovery, black majority–ruled but in partnership with the rest of the nation, would be made less arduous—it seemed obvious—if, during its uncertain period of transition, she had a staunch shoulder within the black continent itself to lean upon. The obvious candidate was Nigeria—her size, her resources, her manpower. As so often happened, the motions began in Oje Aboyade's home. Could it . . . Was it possible that we could play a role in this? Oje became caught up in the idea, activated his direct line to the Artful Dodger.

My first demand, in outlining a plan for a Mandela-Buthelezi encounter to Ibrahim Babangida, was absolute secrecy. Knowing the torrid ideological space that demarcated the ANC from Inkatha, the very idea of creating a bridge left one exposed. If the plans miscarried, we had to assure ourselves, in advance, of the means of a dignified withdrawal and a stout public denial of any attempt to intervene. Despite the substantial support it had received from successive Nigerian governments, the ANC leadership was especially jealous of its independence. The party was obsessed with its self-image of ideological purity, ostentatiously contemptuous of Nigeria as a nation that lacked political direction or a progressive ideology. The mood within that party hierarchy was not so different from that of the Bolsheviks toward their “liberal” and “bourgeois” allies after the success of the revolution—ANC considered its struggle disciplined and “correct” based on the class analysis of history. By contrast, Nigeria was a spoiled, rich brat, a crude succession of hotchpotch dictatorships and feudal conspiracies. That nation had done no more than its duty in offering diplomatic and material assistance to the South African liberation fighters, perhaps more than any other African country except Libya and the “frontline” nations—Tanzania, Zambia, Angola, Namibia, and Mozambique. There was no reason for any expression of gratitude or special recognition. The ANC was morbidly afraid of contamination by the directionless nature of Nigerian society. Once the apartheid regime had fallen, it set out to distance itself from such an embarrassing benefactor.

This attitude would later cause vocal resentment in Nigerian leadership circles—the ANC (Mandela) was accused of pointedly traveling around the world immediately after his release but refusing to step into Nigeria en route to say “Thank you”! Babangida nursed the same feelings of resentment, grumbling that the ANC leadership was made up of arrogant ingrates. No matter, he soon warmed up to the idea of doing this one thing—acting to stop the looming bloodbath. He had nothing to lose by a little investment; if it worked, his image would receive a boost on the international screen.

Babangida agreed to send his foreign minister, General Ike Nwachukwu, to talk to me. Nwachukwu, with his impressive “soldierly” bearing, was one of those Nigerians who could claim to belong to any part of the country. Born of an Igbo father and a Fulani mother, this general had grown up in the North, where he also spent much of his military career. During the civil war, he had remained steadfast to the federal cause. He spoke Yoruba with hardly a trace of an accent, while his English carried a faint upper-class tinge that was probably consciously cultivated from contacts with the British officer class during his military training in England. Hausa tripped effortlessly from his tongue. Nwachukwu was markedly urbane in manners—the result perhaps of his numerous sojourns in Lagos as well as his training spells and attachments in various countries. We met in Yemi Ogunbiyi's house, the rendezvous for many semiofficial encounters that took place, of necessity, in Lagos. The general arrived in an excitable state and announced that Babangida had offered to make a plane from his official fleet available to Mandela and Buthelezi. They could fly secretly into Nigeria for a meeting, or indeed to any part of the world agreed between them. Then came Ike Nwachukwu's own proposal, one that virtually took my breath away.

Bubbling with enthusiasm, Nwachukwu outlined a plan for the Ooni of Ife, the historic ruler of Ile-Ife and acknowledged spiritual head of the Yoruba, to lead a full-fledged delegation of royal heads into South Africa! Chief Buthelezi, the amiable general reasoned, was a traditional chief in his own right. So was Nelson Mandela—the general had done some homework, I had to give him that! In his view, this shared background held the key to netting the two frisky fishes. The Ooni of Ife, accompanied by a galaxy of crowned Nigerian heads from all corners of the nation, would fly into South Africa in Babangida's private jet. The Ooni would summon his two fellow (but junior) royalty to his presence. He would then chide them for their belligerence— undoubtedly in the special language that traditional chiefs all over the continent use when they are among their own kind. He would say to them, presumably, “Look here, fellows, it's time we crowned heads and chiefs sorted out this problem. We understand one another; we cannot afford to dent the prestige of our crowns in public”—not exactly Nwachukwu's words but definitely the spirit of his plan. The Ooni of Ife would load them into the presidential jet and waft them into a Nigerian seclusion, where our local kings would act as arbiters. After which the combatants would embrace, and the continent would live happily ever after. The world would see that we in Africa have time-tested ways of resolving our problems. I listened. Ike Nwachukwu was so carried away by the sheer originality of his plans that he failed to glimpse anything of my reaction, which was one of plain, undisguised horror.

When I narrated the evening's encounter to Oje, we both conceded that the general meant well but that it would be best to leave the Ministry of Foreign Affairs out of the project, using that department strictly for logistical support. Thus did I come to embark on my initiation into the world of shuttle diplomacy—an activity that I clearly underrated until firsthand experience taught me differently. The one-off Nigeria-Senegal FESTAC experience had proved a most inadequate training ground; the emphasis this time was on the word “shuttle,” not on the diplomacy. In any case, diplomacy of any kind requires, above the necessary training or experience, a very special temperament.

Babangida agreed with our proposal to proceed step by step, making private contacts rather than a royal blitz through the debris of apartheid. I would first of all explore the mood within the ANC very tentatively and discreetly, next move toward a tête-à-tête with Mandela, possibly involve Archbishop Desmond Tutu, then track down Buthelezi. After that, we would consider how best to inveigle the two principals into a secret tryst in a place and at a time of their own choosing, a presidential jet always standing by to take off at a moment's notice. Babangida would send funds to the embassy in Washington to take care of my traveling expenses.

Thus came my saga of meetings—more accurately described as ambushes— and of telephone calls from one end of the globe to another, wondering who had hypnotized then brainwashed me into such an undertaking. Compelled to isolate the most defining of these encounters, I would list three. One was a long walk down a Lisbon avenue with an ANC Communist, late into the night. Another was a telephone discussion with the Inkatha leader, Chief Buthelezi. The third was the last of my telephone exchanges with fellow writer and ANC antiapartheid stalwart Nadine Gordimer.

IT HAD BEEN a long day in Lisbon, a series of sessions—and receptions—at one of those encounters between “North” and “South,” in 1991. I shared the podium with Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, then beginning to enjoy his honorable retirement from the presidency of Tanzania. We were interacting for the first time since the Pan-African—resurrection—conference in Dar es Salaam in 1973, a year in which General Yakubu Gowon had been consolidating his dictatorial rule of Nigeria. It was at this chaotic gathering that the original credentials of the Pan-African movement as an all-come, nongovernmental forum had been formally buried.