Sequel to Long Walk to Freedom - Revision 1 - Chapter 2 Page 2

apartheid negotiators tried to be subtle, it was clear right from the start of the talks that the overriding idea was to prevent us from governing the country, even if we won in a democratic election. I was still a prisoner in Victor Verster when I first met President De Klerk, leader of the National Party. Shortly before that meeting I had read an article written by the editor of Die Burger, then the official mouthpiece of the National Party, under the pen name of Dawie, in which he sharply criticised the concept of Group Rights which was being peddled by that Party as the best solution for the country's problems. This meant that each population group after the first democratic elections would retain permanently the rights and privileges it had enjoyed before such elections, no matter which political party had won. The essence of this fiction, although not openly said, was that there should be no change whatsoever in the economic and political system of the country. White minority would continue to monopolise all the important rights of citizenship. 15