CABINET “BOSBERAAD” TO DISCUSS REFORM

Between 3 – 5 December 1989 President De Klerk met with his cabinet at the D’Nyala game reserve in north-western Transvaal to discuss a comprehensive negotiation strategy.

“We began by asking ourselves how we could promote negotiations for a new constitutional dispensation.  We agreed on the need  of seizing the initiative and occupying the moral high ground.  We tossed proposals around and weighed the implications of each option.  We also considered the enormous risks involved in reform and discussed fall-back position should things go wrong. As chairman I concentrated on focusing the discussion on the principles of the policy for which we had now received a mandate. The final test would be whether our strategies and actions could establish a new dispensation which would ensure justice for all South Africans  within the framework of universally accepted democratic values.

From all this, we began to develop a clearer picture of how we wanted to make concrete our core vision of a united South Africa where everybody would have equal rights and opportunities – and within which our minorities would not be threatened or suppressed…

At the end of the December bosberaad  the whole cabinet (even its most conservative members) were ready for the quantum leap I had promised them when I became leader in February 1989.”  (Source:  “The Last Trek, A New Beginning”, p 161, FW de Klerk)