The unbanning of the ANC, followed by the release of Nelson Mandela, marked a crucial change in the history of South Africa. Those dramatic events, watched by the entire world, were the consequence of secret talks that took place in England. Thabo Mbeki, along with other key ANC leaders, and Prof. Willie Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner academic, who acted as lead negotiator for the Nationalist party regime, hammered out a secret deal that prevented an outright, violent clash. For a long time that story was seldom told. The new movie “Endgame” reveals what happened during those negotiations that saved South Africa from anarchy.

In 2001, Robert Harvey, a UK politician wrote a book about this event called “The Fall of Apartheid”. It was not a best-seller but it was read by screenwriter Paula Milne, a successful British TV dramatist, who passed it on to BBC film director Pete Travis, who found it fascinating.“I could not believe that nobody seemed to know anything about this story” said Travis when I interviewed him “it was so dramatic and unexpected and when Paula Milne was commissioned by the BBC to create a film-script based on the talks I was excited by the idea. “Because the talks were so secret, she wanted to hear the story from all the key players before she wrote the final script. She spent several months in South Africa talking to all of them before she came back to England to write the screenplay”, said Travis.

Jonny Lee Miller
 
The most notable feature of the “Endgame” is that, unlike so many other films on this subject, it was not a self-righteous denunciation of the evils of “apartheid”, with saintly revolutionaries triumphing over fascist bigots. Milne’s incisive script showed that the negotiations were much subtler and multi-layered, and that both parties wanted the same thing - a peaceful transition to a new dispensation. “We wanted to be truthful but we did not want the film to be a documentary” said Travis. “We wanted to make a suspenseful drama that showed all the sides and attitudes of all the participants. I likened it to the film ‘The Battle of Algiers’ that told the story of the Algerian war against French colonial rule in North Africa in 1950s. The facts were accurately portrayed, but all the combatants and their beliefs were honestly and fairly represented” he said.

A key player in these talks was Michael Young (played by Jonny Lee Miller) a representative of Goldfields, a British mining company with major interests in South Africa. He describes himself as “the licensed liberal” in the company and he was uneasy about how bad the situation could get. He believed that things were definitely going to change in South Africa. It was simply a matter of how long the Nationalist regime could last and Young believed his role was to work out how Goldfields could remain in South Africa for the long haul. Other major corporates were making donations, hoping that black education would create a black middle-class and a black business community that would be the salvation of the country. Michal Young took the view that there was only one issue: ‘How do you get from a rigid, totalitarian, white-driven state to a black state through the process of the ballot box?’

Chiwetel Ejiofor as Thabo Mbeki

It was at his behest that Goldfields sponsored the top-secret meetings at Mells Park, a country house hotel in Somerset. It was essential to have credible representation from the National Party but it was unlikely that PW Botha would participate. Michael Young had to find the right person who represented the Nats, but did not have an unbending, ideological and political commitment. Making that choice was like something from a John Le Carré novel. Young knew that he was constantly followed and he knew that any wrong move would see him sent back to England with no explanation. Eventually Young decided that Willie Esterhuyse, an Afrikaner academic at Stellenbosch University, was right for the job. He shared Young’s anxiety about future violence and understood Young’s strategy and he agreed to lead the South African delegation.
 
It was an intriguing story and Paula Milne’s script got the green-light from the BBC, with full financing from the UK. Most of the film was shot in England, where the talks were held, but director, Pete Travis, had to deal with the thorny issue of casting. On a big-budget movie, casting high-profile international stars was a form of insurance. People recognise the names of popular actors and that attracts a wide audience. That assumption always plays badly with South African actors who resent the casting of foreign stars to play high-profile South Africans. “For the sequences that were shot in South Africa, we used South African crews and as many South African actors as we were right for the roles,” Travis said. “John Kani played Oliver Tambo, with many South Africans played the smaller roles, people Faith Madukwana as Winnie Mandela, Moshidi Motsegwa, Mike Huff, Bo Petersen, Stephen Jennings, and other” said Travers, “but we needed international stars in the lead roles”.

Willian Hurt

Chiwetel Ejiofor, who had previously worked in South Africa in the film of Gillian Slovo’s “Red Dust”, was cast as Mbeki, and Willie Esterhuyse is played by Oscar-winner William Hurt. “Hurt went to great pains to get the South African accent right” said Travis. “When he came to South Africa to shoot the remaining scenes, it was great relief to hear the local film crews complimenting the accuracy of his accent. The South African accent is notoriously difficult, especially when the character is an Afrikaner, but Bill put in a lot of time to make it sound authentic.” The small role of Pres. Nelson Mandela is played by Clark Peters, an African-American actor and in the role of the security boss, Dr. Neil Barnard, is played by UK actor Mark Strong, who scored a recent hit in “Kick-Ass” and in Ridley Scott’s new “Robin Hood”. There will always be controversy about that kind of casting but, as Pete Travis said, “A big-budget movie needs high profile stars, but the real issue is whether the actor can play the role well and honestly” which, as the film shows, these actors certainly do.

While interviewing Pete Travis I suggested that the film works like a taut thriller in the style of Costa Gavras, like “Z” and “State of Siege” and he was pleased by the comparison.“We did tighten the story line and it was played with more pace and tension, to give a strong line of suspense” he said. The actual meetings went on for many months, spanning the end of the Botha presidency, into the De Klerk years. “Everybody knows how things turned out”, said Travers, “and how the resulting consequences changed South Africa, but in a film you need to keep the audience tense and focused, even when they know how it ends”, Travis said. Travis said that similar tactics were employed during the actual talks. The decision was to not split the participants into sections. They did not group the ANC delegation in the one section, with the Goldfields people and the Nat contingent in others. They mixed everyone up together so that they were constantly meeting each other in the corridors and at meals, which led to more relaxed and informal interaction.

Clarke Pters as Mandela

Another tactic was to end negotiations every day in the late afternoon, leaving the evening free to allow for what Esterhuyse called “Glenfiddich diplomacy”, informal meetings in a social setting in which they met as people, not as delegates or rivals. In a UK interview on “Last Broadcast”, Michael Young explained how it worked. “Thabo Mbeki said to me, much later on, that the great fear of the ANC. was that when the signals of a readiness to talk came from Pretoria, the ANC in exile might not have recognised them. It really was critical to create informal communication and awareness between everyone, to let them understand what the other guys were about, and that their tolerances and fears were understood by the other side. That’s what these talks were about.”

It was a brilliant strategy and Michael Young kept a very low profile, both during and after the talks. He said “I didn’t want to do anything that would damage Mandela’s government or Mbeki’s government.  “When the facts about the negotiations did eventually leak out from within South Africa” Young said, “and when I was approached about the film, I decided that if it was going to be treated, then I wanted it to be treated fairly. “Given that it was going to become public property, I wanted it to be completely accurate,” said Young, “and I am hugely impressed. I’m not a film man, so I’m speaking as a businessman, but I think the film has succeeded so well in capturing the essence of what we were about, but at the same time, capable of keeping the audience’s attention. I’m very happy with it.”

Chiwetel Ejiofor
   
“Endgame” opens in South Africa on June 11.