A spectacular attempt to release Mandela from prison under the Apartheid regime¹

ABSTRACT

During the period when the ANC operative Nelson Mandela was incarcerated, there were not only verbal calls from other countries for the release of the world’s best-known political prisoner; at the very latest since Mikhail Gorbatchev proposed an end to the Cold War in the Soviet Union, there was at least one definite and direct attempt to release him. One of the conceptionally most advanced plans was that of the East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel. Having been appointed by the GDR’s head of state, Erich Honecker, as Personal Representative for Humanitarian Affairs, he had already arbitrated the exchange of roughly 150 captured spies from 23 countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain; he had also organised the release of tens of thousands of prisoners. The plan was to exchange Nelson Mandela for the Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, or to include him in a large-scale international exchange of political prisoners and agents. It was for this reason that Wolfgang Vogel visited South Africa in March 1986, one of only a few GDR citizens to do so, to effect the release of Mandela – and failed.

KEYWORDS:

• Nelson Mandela
• Apartheid
• South Africa
• GDR
• attorney at law
• secret Mission
• Cold War in Africa

Speculations around the release of Nelson Mandela

In academic literature, in the meanwhile large number of available books and essays pertaining to the life and accomplishments of Nelson Mandela, even in the autobiography of this South African struggle hero himself,¹ no mention is made – with one exception: in a couple of lines, to wit, in a relatively short German-language biography of Mandela from the mid-1990s, penned by the non-fiction author and historian Albrecht Hagemann² – of an attempt to exchange the world’s most high-profile political prisoner of the 1970s and 1980s.³ Due to a lack of reliable information, this fact is only touched upon very briefly in a book on the relations of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) with the Apartheid regime.⁴ In South African historiography this incident appears to be completely unknown. Everything was done in secret and has, to this day, not attracted any public attention in South Africa.

It comes as no surprise, then, that ignorance was prevalent and erroneous notions held, even in the print media of the time, about this coup which would surely have caused a world-wide sensation if it could have been pulled off. Be that as it may, this fact featured nonetheless, to a certain extent and for a short period of time, in a number of German newspaper articles – with a slightly more realistic background, if nothing else – after the fall of the Berlin Wall.⁵ Due to other issues pertaining to the ‘organiser’ of this liberation attempt, the GDR lawyer Wolfgang Vogel (1925–2008), the efforts of the latter to secure the freedom of Nelson Mandela were pushed into the background during the post-reunification period in Germany and political changes within the former GDR. Instead, he was accused of human trafficking on a grand scale, an accusation which soon proved to be legally untenable.

During the late 1980s, at the time of the attempt to free Mandela from the prison of the Apartheid regime, West German newspapers made mention of it now and again or, more correctly, they engaged in speculations, while the East German media companies remained completely silent on the matter.

Back then, when ‘this matter’ was topical, it was only a weekly newspaper in Hamburg, Die Zeit, which published a slightly more reputable account of an elaborate exchange of agents on an international scale; in doing so, however, it also relied mostly on rumours as its source, which stated that Nelson Mandela, together with a South African army captain who had been captured in Angola, was involved in a large-scale international exchange of political prisoners and agents across the ‘Iron Curtain’.

Pieter Willem Botha (1916–2006), president of the Apartheid state at that time, had declared in late January 1986 that he would be prepared, on humanitarian grounds, to consider the release of Mandela who had by then been imprisoned for more than twenty years, in return for the release of the above-mentioned army officer and two specifically mentioned Soviet regime critics. The article in Die Zeit goes on to state that Mandela’s wife Winnie rejected Botha’s proposal on the grounds that her husband did not wish to be put on a level with a white South African criminal.⁶

Upon a realistic assessment of these speculations, the specific issue of this matter was actually the attempt to exchange Nelson Mandela (1918–2013), incarcerated by the Apartheid regime of South Africa, for Andrei D. Sakharov (1921–1989), a nuclear physicist, Nobel peace laureate and civil rights activist in the Soviet Union in those days. Even though the secret service of the GDR had no dealings with him directly, it had nonetheless gathered a vast assortment of cuttings from Western newspapers,⁷ so that the Stasi was well informed on the image the world had of Sakharov.

In early 1986, a few days after the above-mentioned report had appeared in Die Zeit, a couple of other West German organs of print media began speculating on the involvement of Soviet regime critics and that of Nelson Mandela in the meanwhile talked-about international exchange, ranging from ‘undesirable’ citizens in both cases, right up to spies on both sides of the ideological boundaries. This was only one of many similar actions that had been initiated in the past. It was only in early 1986 that a successful exchange could be executed. Several agents were released from various countries in the East and West due to the arbitration of Wolfgang Vogel, an East Berlin lawyer. As a result, an idea was reinforced which may be summarised in the following slogan: ‘Freedom for Sakharov in exchange for freedom for Mandela.’

Later Vogel admitted in a letter that his primary concern had been for the release of Sakharov. ‘Appropriate advances’⁸ had been made with regards to this objective, during which the possibility of an exchange with Mandela had apparently also been contemplated; he had therefore established appropriate contacts.⁹

When a more extensive article speculated on this matter in Der Spiegel in February 1986, it could be gathered from its content that an attempt had been made to contact the wife of the incarcerated Mandela in order to prevail upon her to take a stand. Having been approached by an inquisitive journalist concerning the possibilities of the release of her husband, Winnie Mandela, the wife of this South African struggle hero, purportedly replied: ‘That can still take months.’¹⁰

A number of Western journalists back then claimed to have knowledge of negotiations, lasting for several months between the South African government and the East German lawyer Wolfgang Vogel at the behest of Gorbatchev, with the objective of exchanging Mandela for the Soviet regime opponent, who was under house arrest. This was, as we now know, not the case. Statements made at that time to the effect that attempts at an exchange failed ‘due to the obstinacy of the Boers’ are equally off the mark, according to the current level of knowledge. However, an article in Der Spiegel three and a half years later, which deals rather more comprehensively with the possibility of a Mandela-Sakharov exchange, states more correctly: ‘Gorbatchev found a better way of solving the Sakharov problem: He rehabilitated the nuclear physicist in his own country, an act which contributed decisively towards his international standing.’¹¹ After this move, an equivalent for an exchange for the South African struggle hero, Nelson Mandela, was indeed no longer available.

In retrospect, all the rumours and speculations of the mid-1980s in this regard remained nothing but newspaper hoaxes that didn’t even feature in the South African print media.

Traces of Vogel’s visit to South Africa

The actual facts surrounding the attempt to exchange Nelson Mandela for a Soviet regime critic were only uncovered in 1997 when Norbert F. Pötzl, a journalist from Hamburg, published a book about the GDR lawyer Wolfgang Vogel and, in doing so, the latter’s attempt to bring about the Mandela/Sakharov exchange.¹²

It is actually only Wolfgang Vogel who could provide reliable information on the activities that interest us here, as well as on other Cold War actions that have hitherto not been made public. But since he is no longer alive, Norbert Pötzl and Vogel’s widow constitute the only living historical sources who are able to provide information on this East German lawyer’s trip to South Africa. Mrs Vogel had accompanied her husband, to wit, and Pötzl had talked at length with the lawyer on this matter. The latter had moreover provided his biographer with an insight into his otherwise not accessible literary estate.

Not much but nonetheless in some instances pertinent information could also be found in the archives of the Federal Commissioner for Documents of the State Security Service of the former GDR (BStU). Of course the GDR’s Ministry of State Security (MfS) – commonly referred to as the ‘Stasi’ – or, at the very least, a number of key individuals within the secret service of the GDR were well-informed about this ambitious coup proposed by Wolfgang Vogel who had, on a number of occasions after German reunification, been denounced by young, career-obsessed West German judges and attorneys as being a ‘human trafficker’. What is interesting in this regard is the fact that the documents that would be able to provide more detailed information on this matter can apparently not be accessed in the BStU offices; this probably holds true for almost all the files that could provide interesting information on Vogel’s activities pertaining to the Mandela case and his trip to South Africa. They have been stamped with the BStU-stamp which reads: ‘VS-vertraulich. Amtlich geheimgehalten’ (Restricted Information – Confidential. Official Secret Document).

The lawyer and his biographer

Wolfgang Vogel was surrounded by myth during the time of the Cold War. He acted and negotiated between the two political blocs. He was a cross-border commuter who had earned the trust of politicians at the highest level on both sides, especially in the two German states. His operations were largely conducted in secret; discretion was his trade mark.

It is therefore all the more important that this lawyer, who operated in the shadows of world politics, granted a journalist who was writing his biography access to his private archive material after the reunification of Germany, and which Norbert Pötzl augmented with personal testimonies as well as evaluations of other archive material. In the account of his life, Vogel himself supplied comprehensive information about his activities across state- and social boundaries, as far as he was permitted to do so under his oath of professional secrecy. In his book entitled Basar der Spione, the Spiegel journalist and author Pötzl has rendered an in-depth and highly detailed account of the life and work of Wolfgang Vogel which, while keeping his critical distance, is nonetheless characterised by respect and fairness in dealing with some of Vogel’s spectacular cases. In his acknowledgements at the end of the book he stresses that the relationship between him and the lawyer had been one of openness and trust, and that he had ‘made all the material at his disposal available’ to him in a ‘gritty and uncensored’ manner. He emphasises: ‘Wolfgang Vogel counter-checked the manuscript as to its factual accuracy, but at no point did he even attempt to influence the contents.’¹³

Norbert Pötzl subsequently penned a comprehensive biography of Wolfgang Vogel to follow on his first book; it does not only focus on the lawyer’s political activities as was the case in his previous book, but is rather dedicated to Vogel’s life-time achievements.¹⁴ Even though many new facets of Wolfgang Vogel’s life and work are being dealt with in this book, the author was nevertheless not able to provide any significant new information on the proposed Mandela exchange and Vogel’s visit to South Africa. He could only substantiate certain details in this regard. Both these books, biographical in nature, constitute the fundamental source material for this essay, seeing that – as already indicated – no further reliable information on this subject is available.

It is for this reason that these books by Pötzl need to be discussed in greater detail, especially his first book, as it contains a number of important facts, albeit without precise bibliographical references in most instances, upon which the deliberations that follow need to be based. In his second book, and in compliance with scientific standards, the author has identified the source of some of his statements and conclusions in footnotes, which was not consistently the case in his first book.

In both books Norbert Pötzl proves commandingly that Vogel was an arbitrator, highly regarded in the East as well as the West, who, by being consistently discreet, smuggled individuals in both directions through the Iron Curtain who would otherwise have spent many more years in prison. It began in 1962 when he managed to effect an exchange on the Glienicke Bridge – the bridge linking West Berlin with Potsdam – of the Soviet agent Rudolf Abel (1903–1971), who had been convicted in the USA, for an espionage aviator from the USA, Francis Gary Powers (1929–1977), who had been shot down over Siberia.

The activities of this lawyer, whose services were gladly employed by politicians on both sides of the border, spanned all of 30 years, during which he organised the exchange of roughly 150 spies imprisoned in 23 states. He was moreover instrumental in the facilitation to redeem 33,755 prisoners who had been incarcerated in the GDR for having committed political offences, and helped about 250,000 GDR citizens to emigrate to the West. That is to say, Vogel organised and oversaw a process by which GDR citizens who had violated the laws of the GDR, and also those who wished to emigrate, were released from GDR custody by the Federal Republic of Germany in exchange for money or goods.¹⁵

Even though Wolfgang Vogel operated primarily within German borders he nonetheless also worked, as has been indicated, to serve the interests of his clients worldwide. Pötzl describes at some length the difficulty on both sides during the Cold War in finding a candidate to act as mediator between the two worlds of mutually hostile political and military blocs. The East Berlin lawyer Wolfgang Vogel seemed to be the only suitable person: ‘What was needed was a suitable arbitrator, who would be equally accepted and recognised by the East and the West, to organise the mutual return of incarcerated scouts. A person needed to be found who, through his charismatic, warm personality and diplomatic skill, would be able to build bridges between the two hostile blocs. And this person would have to hold a profession whose merits enjoyed a high level of trust due to mutually acknowledged statutory provisions and professional standards.’¹⁶

Vogel’s experiences with South Africa

How exactly did the attempt to exchange two civil rights activists from two antagonistically opposed social systems come about, bearing in mind that the activist from the South was much more well-known worldwide?

When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow he attempted, amongst others, to forge new paths in humanitarian terms. In early July 1986, during a dinner speech on the occasion of the visit to Moscow of the French President Francois Mitterrand (1916–1996), Gorbatchev indicated that the Soviet Union would ‘also be willing to cooperate on an international level with regards to humanitarian issues’.¹⁷ This statement presumably prompted the GDR head of state and leader of the SED party, Erich Honecker (1912–1994), to make an attempt to permanently go down in history as solidary labour leader and humanitarian do-gooder in the annals of the Resistance to Apartheid. It is common knowledge that Honecker had already lost his grip on reality at that time; he didn’t even notice when, a few months later, hundreds of thousands of citizens of ‘his’ country turned away from the policies he had profoundly influenced, and turned their backs on the GDR.

In the mid-1980s, while he was still firmly in the saddle, he believed he could put the icing on the cake of what was an amicable, even solidary involvement on the part of the GDR, appreciated the world over, in the liberation organisations in Southern Africa i.e. the ANC and SWAPO.¹⁸ His negotiator in this rather difficult matter was to be the GDR lawyer Wolfgang Vogel, who acted as ‘Personal Representative for Humanitarian Affairs’ on behalf of the GDR head of state and leader of the SED party. Even if it may be assumed that Vogel was not commissioned directly by Honecker to look into a possible release of Mandela and set in motion the most favourable scenario, it would nonetheless be highly unlikely that Vogel would have embarked on such a politically charged trip without informing his head of state.

Due to his activities as a lawyer Wolfgang Vogel had, during the preceding years, gathered some experience in dealing with Apartheid-era South Africa; however, he had never been there before. An example: The Soviet Lieutenant Colonel Alexej Mikhailovich Koslov was arrested by the South Africans in the early 1980s. The West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) had tipped off the intelligence agency of the Apartheid regime that a man, pretending to be a businessman and travelling to the Cape on a German passport under the name of Erich Albert Swenson, was in actual fact a Soviet KGB officer. The South African intelligence agency subsequently established that Alexej M. Koslov was collaborating with the ANC underground or, as Pötzl puts it in a rather sensationalist way, ‘he organised the assistance provided by the KGB to the resistance- and liberation movement in the entire Southern African region.’¹⁹ The self-presentation of this spy probably offers more credibility, when he states that he had been instructed to reconnoitre the nuclear programme of the Apartheid regime.²⁰ Koslov was eventually exchanged for a number of BND agents who had been incarcerated in the GDR, an act that would lead to political disputes in the Federal Republic of Germany.²¹

In other instances, too, Vogel had collaborated with South African government- or intelligence agencies of the Apartheid state, or had at least maintained occasional contact. Thus, in July 1969, he arbitrated the exchange of the KGB spy Juri N. Loginov, who had been arrested two years before,²² for ten employees of West German intelligence agencies.²³

In 1976, after a young Israeli pilot of a two-seater aircraft had been shot down over Mozambique, Wolfgang Vogel came into that picture too. After complicated negotiations with the relevant institutions, that is to say with authorised individuals from the USA, South Africa, Israel, the GDR, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Soviet Union, Mozambique and Swaziland, the Israeli pilot was, due to Wolfgang Vogel’s legal involvement, eventually released in exchange for Western agents who had been seized in the Eastern bloc.

Apart from the above-mentioned agent exchanges, Wolfgang Vogel is said to have arbitrated in a number of other exchange cases in Southern Africa about which far less is known.

So, without having a direct mandate – neither from Honecker nor Stasi minister Erich Mielke (1907–2000) as is sometimes assumed –, Vogel himself had come up with the idea to get Nelson Mandela, the South African civil rights activist under the Apartheid regime, out of prison. This was, as has been previously stated, as a result of his deliberations concerning a possible return of the Soviet civil rights activist and Nobel Peace laureate Andrei Sakharov, who was in exile in Gorki. Maybe the fact that his Western negotiating partners had repeatedly enquired as to whether he could not do something for Sakharov had ultimately prompted him to give the historian Albrecht Hagemann the above-cited reply.

The Soviets reacted negatively, however, when Vogel broached this subject via his channels in the MfS. Sakharov was apparently not available for an exchange. It is possible that the Moscow Kremlin had, during its discussions and prior to Vogel’s enquiry, reflected on revoking the dissident’s exile. An exchange was probably not seriously ‘worked on’. However, Wolfgang Vogel may nonetheless have been inspired by intelligence he received of strategy games or parts thereof via the various channels. Even if such a vague piece of information from Moscow may have been interpreted by Vogel as constituting a request, he nevertheless had no mandate where Mandela was concerned. Neither the Soviets nor the leadership of the GDR had officially employed him in this regard. The only conclusion that can be drawn is that he was guided by his own desire to do something good. All those ‘cases’ of prisoner exchanges and so-called family reunifications he had successfully solved, his globally successful operations which made him personally known – even if in some cases only by name – to the most prominent politicians, his privileges in the GDR that can be described as being unique, his personal acquaintance and friendships with high- and highest-level politicians in both parts of Germany, the gratitude expressed to him and the veneration bestowed on him by those whom he was able to help, and, over and above that, a successfully run law practice and personal character traits may have led to the circumstance that he eventually overestimated his abilities – at least as far as the ‘case’ central to this essay is concerned. The exchange of the world’s most famous political prisoner at that time seemed to him as being both a necessary and worthwhile endeavour. However, this recognised mediator in delicate issues seems to not have properly assessed his influence, intuition and negotiating skills. However, his involvement in this regard was hardly prompted due to a lack of sympathy for Nelson Mandela and his struggle to abolish the inhuman Apartheid system of South Africa. Even when it became apparent that the exchange could not be realised as he had hoped, he continued to at least entertain the proposition of freeing the resistance fighter who had been imprisoned by the Apartheid regime since 1963. In the autumn of 1989, to wit, when the end of the GDR was approaching fast and Wolfgang Vogel was also caught up in the whirlwind of events, he drafted a letter which, unverifiable in more detail, was probably addressed to the successor(s) of his former head of state, Erich Honecker, stating that he still had ‘very sensitive and complicated mandates to fulfil’, referring specifically to South Africa.²⁴

The exchange attempt in South Africa

The GDR head of state and party leader, Erich Honecker, whom Vogel had presumably at least informed of his plans in 1986, allowed his emissary for humanitarian issues to carry on. After all, in the event of a successful execution of the plan he would be covered in glory, since his ‘personal representative’, as his confidant in political matters and where the exchange of agents and the redeeming of prisoners was concerned, was known to otherwise operate in the shadows.

Wolfgang Vogel’s visit to South Africa with the objective to determine the possible prospects of a prisoner exchange was probably inspired by a local US diplomat by the name of Richard Barkley, who was on friendly terms with Vogel. Barkley had held a high-ranking embassy post in Bonn and was appointed in 1985 as Deputy Head of Mission of the United States diplomatic representation in Pretoria, which was housed in a building that looked more like a giant bunker than an embassy.

Even though it was not mentioned officially, it is nevertheless unlikely that US intelligence services in the capital of South Africa had not been informed that a well-known lawyer from East Berlin had entered the Apartheid state with a diplomatic passport, with the intention of conducting negotiations with government representatives.

However, Norbert Pötzl reports that Vogel had been ‘introduced’ to South Africa by another acquaintance.²⁵ This person was an old acquaintance of Vogel’s, to wit, by the name of Shabtai Kalmanovich (1947–2009), who had made a small fortune and gained some political influence in the South African bantustan of Bophuthatswana. Kalmanovich’s company had constructed low-cost houses, various administration buildings and a sports stadium for several million dollars in this ‘homeland’. On 14 March 1986 this rather dodgy double agent and businessman, who was murdered 23 years later, welcomed Mr and Mrs Vogel at the airport in Johannesburg. Kalmanovich was also accompanied by a man or woman named Tova, who was, according to the signature on a telex sent to Dr. Vogel in Berlin dated 13.03.1986, ‘secretary to mr. kalmanovich’. This individual had sent a message to Wolfgang Vogel; seeing that the latter was not proficient in English, the message had been translated into German. Copies of both these documents (the original as well as the translation) found their way to the MfS.²⁶ It contains the information for Vogel that the visas for Mr and Mrs Vogel had been issued and that their passports were in the possession of ‘the authorized representative of the republic of bohuthatswana’, i.e. Mr. Shabtai Kalmanovich. The wired message informed the Vogels that Kalmanovich would await their arrival at Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg and subsequently fly them to Sun City in a private plane.

By way of a political discussion partner, Kalmanovich had managed to engage a delegate of the ruling National Party.²⁷ In May 2015 Mrs Vogel told the author of this article that the delegate and/or politician of the ruling National Party was introduced to them as an adviser and friend of the South African head of state, Pieter Willem Botha. She said that his name was Hendrick van Zyl.²⁸ And a South African lawyer had apparently also been present. Mrs Vogel was unable to recall whether any minutes were recorded during the discussions. These discussions were intense, interspersed with a number of telephone conversations conducted by the South African hosts. According to the contemporary witness, Mandela’s release was not the only issue on the table; several cases of South African military officers who were held captive in Angola – most notably Wynand du Toit²⁹ – along with a number of spies, as well as several Angolans who had been captured in Namibia or South Africa were also discussed. The latter were to be included in a possible exchange.

The only written document that exists of the encounter would probably be a report of several pages, drawn up by Vogel upon his return for his contact in the MfS.³⁰ It could not be determined whether this report was destroyed in the course of the dissolution of the MfS, or whether it is kept, for incomprehensible reasons, locked up at the BStU.

Among the few papers that were released for the writing of this article by the authorities of the BStU under ‘VS-Schutz aufgehoben’ (Restricted Information protection cancelled) is a timetable for the trip:

14.3.: 11h00 leave office

13h00 Tegel – Frankfurt

17h25 Flight SA 253 Frankfurt – Johannesburg, stopover Central Africa (15 hours)

15.3.: Johannesburg and Pretoria (Mrs Mandela, attorneys)

16.3.: “

17.3.: Prison, then spouse and attorneys again

Expected time of return flight around 20h00 via Central Africa – Frankfurt – Tegel

18.3.: Around 13h00 office.³¹

One of Wolfgang Vogel’s South African discussion partners had a large farm in the vicinity of the entertainment venue Sun City; the Vogels had received a surprising invitation to the farm, something which did not really fit into the tight and meticulously planned time schedule. The visitors from the eastern part of Germany appeared to be deeply impressed by this visit, the nature, people and climate. From a rational point of view the East Berlin lawyer was really only concerned about sounding out the South African government as to the conditions under which it would be prepared to release its prominent prisoner. In doing so, he was keenly aware of the fact that a direct Mandela-Sakharov exchange would hardly be considered, as this would probably be rejected by both Gorbatchev and Botha. Hence the most likely option – one which he had in all probability given thorough consideration – would be a joint exchange of several spies and/or political detainees from both sides of the frontlines for the release of both these prisoners. These were the tactics he had decided on during the discussions.

During Wolfgang Vogel’s three-day sojourn in South Africa – which was declared as being private – he received the news that, in the event of the release of the South African freedom fighter, the latter should under no circumstances leave the country. This was supposedly conveyed to him by Winnie Mandela, former wife of Nelson Mandela, whom Vogel had visited in her house.³² Mandela himself takes a negative view of this proposed way of attaining his freedom, as becomes apparent in his autobiography that was published later. One of his daughters, too, expresses similar sentiments in a public statement made in February 1985.³³

Helga Vogel confirms at least that Vogel went to see Winnie Mandela together with a South African companion after they had returned from Sun City. She did not attend that meeting herself but rather waited in Kalmanovich’s office.³⁴ Vogel’s visit with Mandela’s wife is also in accord with the timetable that was sent to the Vogels. However, no mention is made of Vogel’s visit in the rather detailed biography on Winnie Mandela.³⁵

The Pretoria government, for its part, had stipulated as an absolute prerequisite for any discussions whatsoever on the freedom fighter’s release to be that Mandela renounce the armed struggle and, following his release, immediately leave the country. This was rigorously refused by Nelson Mandela, however, as was accurately reflected in the newspaper reports cited at the beginning of this article. Consequently, the self-imposed mission of the East German lawyer ended before it had even begun.

Since the entire undertaking had therefore failed, Vogel was unexpectedly refused permission to visit the famous freedom fighter in prison, the prospect of which had been presented to him, and provisions for a visit made in his schedule.³⁶ Pötzl sums up the situation: Vogel had ‘left in a hurry without having sounded out the prospects for realisation.’³⁷

To say that Wolfgang Vogel went to South Africa completely unprepared is not entirely true, however. A sheet of paper, kept in the BStU in Berlin, provides information on his preparation. Dated 6 March 1986, it lists seven points under the heading ‘Mandela’, originating, according to personal information from Norbert Pötzl, from a letter written by the US Ambassador to the GDR, Francis J. Meehan, who was on friendly terms with the Vogels. Attached to his letter were two supplements, one of which had been captioned ‘Mandela’, and which the US Embassy had presumably already translated into German.³⁸

The ‘Mandela’-paper reads as follows

1. We have no exact conception regarding the position of the South African government on Mandela’s release.

2. The South African government is evidently contemplating Mandela’s release, and it would appear that it is looking for a propitious context for the decision to release him.

3. The South African government has mentioned both the issue of Sakharov’s release as well as the return from Angola of Captain du Toit, a member of its armed forces.

4. Are the Soviets in direct contact with the South African government with regards to these matters?

5. Are you raising the Mandela issue because you envisage a possible role that the USA could play in the bilateral release of Sakharov and Mandela? If so, what role do you propose?

6. Is Moscow engaging with the MPLA in Luanda to effect Du Toit’s return? Such a restitution to the South African government could possibly have a bearing on the latter’s approach.

7. As far as we are concerned, we support the release of Mandela, just as we support the release of Sakharov – on humanitarian grounds. The South African government knows our position in this regard.³⁹

Further attempts

After Wolfgang Vogel’s failed initiative, several other attempts were made by foreign countries to have Mandela released ‘ahead of schedule’, i.e. before the official termination of the Apartheid system; the chief of the South African intelligence service of that time makes mention of them in his autobiography.⁴⁰ What is not known about these attempts, however, is whether they were to take place with the exchange of political prisoners. The equivalents proffered for a release remain obscure.

One such attempt was undertaken by the German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in the late 1980 s, when practically everybody could already foresee the demise of the Apartheid regime. There exist, with one exception, no authoritative published details on this attempt to free Mandela. In 2012, Robert von Lucius, a former correspondent of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and South Africa insider, reports on this matter in an article: ‘In 1988, Kohl corresponded with Botha in an endeavour to effect Mandela’s early release from prison. The facilitator and letter carrier was a person – neither politician nor official –, respected by both Kohl and Botha, who continues to set great value upon remaining anonymous as to the role he played. The ambassador knew about this undertaking, but not his foreign minister … In what constituted the most important initiative – had it been successful – of Germany’s South Africa policy in those years, the operations of the German Chancellery bypassed the Foreign Office. And it was almost successful. The fact that it failed had to do with the fickle personality of President Botha … In 1988 Mandela’s release was imminent, it was a matter of weeks, when Botha changed his mind again …’⁴¹

Looking back on Vogel’s efforts to free Mandela and putting them in their historical context, this was but a small step down the broad and unending road of world history. If, however, Vogel’s mission had been crowned with success, it could have signalled in a spectacular fashion how, with good political sense and humanitarian conviction, boundaries can be overcome and prison bars shattered.

This was the task that the lawyer Wolfgang Vogel had committed himself to. Even though his South African mission concerning the release of Nelson Mandela was ultimately unsuccessful, this endeavour was yet another indication to the Apartheid regime that the front of international forces fighting for Mandela’s freedom and, yes, for Apartheid to be abolished was increasingly gaining strength.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prof. Dr. DR. Ulrich van der Heyden

Prof. Dr. Dr. Ulrich van der Heyden is a Historian and political scientist at Humboldt University, Berlin. Also, he is a Visiting-Professor at University  of South Africa, Pretoria.

Notes

¹ Nelson Mandela, Der lange Weg zur Freiheit (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994). (Engl. Long Walk to Freedom).

² Albrecht Hagemann, Nelson Mandela (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1995), 108.

³ Initial research findings were presented by the author of this essay to a newspaper article. Cf. Ulrich van der Heyden, “Vogels Flug nach Johannesburg,” Neues Deutschland, October 24/25, 2015.

⁴ Cf. Ulrich van der Heyden, Zwischen Solidarität und Wirtschaftsinteressen. Die „geheimen„“ Beziehungen der DDR zum südafrikanischen Apartheidregime, (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2005), 69.

⁵ Cf. in particular Andreas Förster, “Anwalt Vogel plante Tausch der Störenfriede,” Berliner Zeitung, November 7,1994.

⁶ Cf. Joachim Nawrocki, “Häftlings-Austausch,” Die Zeit, Nr. 7, February 7, 1986.

⁷ Cf. BStU: MfS, ZAIG, No. 11866: ‘Sacharow’.

⁸ Quoted in a letter from Wolfgang Vogel to Albrecht Hagemann, “Nelson Mandela …” loc. cit.

⁹ This view was shared by Vogel’s widow during a telephone interview dated May 13, 2015.

¹⁰ Quoted in: “Eine erfolgreiche, komplizierte Operation,” Der Spiegel, No. 8, February 17, 1986.

¹¹ Unterhändler, “Weniger als nichts,” Der Spiegel, No. 40, October 2, 1989. – „Gorbatschow löste das Problem Sacharow auf bessere Weise: Er rehabilitierte den Atomphysiker im eigenen Lande, eine Tat, die sein Ansehen weltweit entscheidend beförderte.“

¹² Norbert F. Pötzl, Basar der Spione. Die geheimen Missionen des DDR-Unterhändlers Wolfgang Vogel (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1997). The complete paperback edition, published by Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, München 1999, is used as reference here.

¹³ Ibid., 532f. – “Wolfgang Vogel hat das Manuskript auf sachliche Richtigkeit gegengelesen, aber zu keinem Zeitpunkt auch nur versucht, auf den Inhalt Einfluß zu nehmen.”

¹⁴ Norbert F. Pötzl, Mission Freiheit – Wolfgang Vogel. Anwalt der deutsch-deutschen Geschichte (München: Heyne, 2014).

¹⁵ Cf. Norbert F. Pötzl, Basar der Spione …, loc. cit., 12f. The literature that exists in this regard is quite extensive and of varying quality; no citations have therefore been included here. The subject literature listed by Pötzl in his book Mission Freiheit provides some useful information.

¹⁶ Norbert F.Pötzl, Basar der Spione …, loc. cit., 83. – “Es bedurfte … eines geeigneten Vermittlers, der im Osten wie im Westen gleichermaßen Anerkennung und Akzeptanz finden würde, um die wechselseitige Heimkehr der eingelochten Späher organisieren zu können. Es mußte eine Persönlichkeit gefunden werden, die durch menschliche Ausstrahlung und diplomatisches Geschick Brücken zwischen den verfeindeten Blöcken schlagen konnte. Und der Gesuchte mußte mit den Vorzügen eines Berufsstandes auftreten können, der aufgrund beiderseits anerkannter gesetzlicher Vorschriften und Standesregeln einen Vertrauensbonus besaß.”

¹⁷ Quoted in Andreas Förster, Anwalt Vogel …, loc. cit. – “… auch zu einer internationalen Zusammenarbeit im Bereich der humanitären Probleme (bereit sei).”

¹⁸ Cf. Ulrich van der Heyden, GDR Development Policy in Africa. Doctrine and Strategies between Illusions and Reality 1960–1990. The example (South) Africa (Münster: Lit-Verlag, 2013).

¹⁹ Norbert F. Pötzl, Basar der Spione …, loc. cit., 276. – “… er die KGB-Hilfe für die Widerstands- und Befreiungsorganisation im gesamten südlichen Afrika organisierte.”

²⁰ Cf. Irina Filatova and Apollon Davidson, The Hidden Thread. Russia and South Africa in the Soviet Era (Johannesburg/Cape Town: Ball Publishing, 2013), 256–258 and 428f.

²¹ Cf. Punkt und Komma, Der Spiegel, No. 8, March 21, 1983; and Via Caritas, Ibid., No. 12, March 19, 1984.

²² Cf. for instance “Sowjetspion dem Henker ausgeliefert. Das sonderbare Tauschgeschäft mit dem russischen Agenten Juri Loginow,” Könische Rundschau, September 7, 1969.

²³ Cf. Norbert F. Pötzl, Basar der Spione …, loc. cit., 219f. See also the report of Undersecretary Rehlinger to the Federal Minister for All-German Affairs and Bonn Herbert Wehner, July 14, 1969, in: Elke-Ursel Hammer, Michael Hollmann and Eberhard Kuhrt, eds, „Besondere Bemühungen“ der Bundesregierung 1962 bis 1969. Häftlingsfreikauf, Familienzusammenführung, Agentenaustausch, vol. 1 (München:Oldenbourg, 2012), 633f. On this topic, cf. also Eric Gujer, Kampf an neuen Fronten. Wie sich der BND dem Terrorismus stellt (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2006), 79.

²⁴ BStU: MfS, ZKG, No. 9634, vol. 4 (no date).

²⁵ The observations that follow below are based on the statements made by Pötzl, Norbert: Basar der Spione …, loc. cit., 442–444.

²⁶ BStU: MfS-ZKG, No. 9635, Sheet 21f.

²⁷ Pötzl does indeed state in his second book on Vogel that the lawyer from Berlin held discussions with a South African undersecretary and a lawyer, and that the latter repeatedly spoke with President Botha on the telephone during the talks. Cf. Norbert F. Pötzl, Mission Freiheit …, loc. cit., 402.

²⁸ These statements are vague. Mrs Vogel may also have confused names and capacities. One of the two individuals may have been Frederik Jacobus van Zyl who, apart from running his own law practice, also lectured Private Law at various South African universities. Cf. Who’s Who of Southern Africa, 68th ed. (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball, 1985), 539.

²⁹ In 2015, du Toit committed the story of his capture and ultimate release to paper, without any reference being made to Vogel. Cf. Wynand du Toit, Judasbok. Verraad ter Wille van Oorlewing (2015), n.p.

³⁰ Telephonically conducted interview with Mrs Vogel dated May 13, 2015.

³¹ BStU: MfS, ZKG, No. 9635, sheet 23. –

14.3.: 11.00 Uhr ab Büro

13.00 Uhr Tegel – Frankfurt

17.25 Uhr Linie SA 253 Frankfurt – Johannesburg, Zwischenlandung Zentralafrika (15 Stunden)

15.3.: Johannesburg und Pretoria (Fr. Mandela, Anwälte)

16.3.: “

17.3.: Gefängnis, danach nochmals Ehefrau und Anwälte

Rückflug voraussichtlich gegen 20.00 Uhr über Zentralafrika – Frankfurt – Tegel

18.3.: Gegen 13.00 Uhr Büro.

³² Cf. Norbert F. Pötzl, Mission Freiheit …, loc. cit., 403.

³³ Cf. Nelson Mandela, Der lange Weg …, loc. cit., 699f.

³⁴ Telephone Interview, May 13, 2015.

³⁵ Cf. Anné Mariè du Preez Bezdrob, Winnie Mandela. A life (Cape Town: Zebra Press, 2004).

³⁶ Pötzl’s reports of Vogel’s South African visit are for the most part based on conversations he had with the lawyer and his wife. As a result, some inaccuracies have found their way into the account. Thus the National Party is referred to as the Boer Party, and the assumption made that Mandela was still incarcerated on Robben Island at that time, when he was in fact already in a mainland prison.

³⁷ Norbert F. Pötzl, Mission Freiheit …, loc. cit. 443. – “… überstürzt aufgebrochen, ohne die Realisierungschancen wirklich ausgelotet zu haben.”

³⁸ Letter from Francis J. Meehan to Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Vogel, March 6, 1986 (privately owned copy).

³⁹ BStU: MfS, ZKG, No. 9635, Sheet 20. –

1. Wir haben keine genaue Vorstellung von der Position der südafrikanischen Regierung hinsichtlich der Freilassung Mandelas.

2. Die südafrikanische Regierung erwägt offenkundig die Freilassung Mandelas, und es scheint, daß sie einen günstigen Kontext für die Entscheidung, ihn freizulassen, sucht.

3. Die südafrikanische Regierung hat sowohl die Frage der Freilassung Sacharows als auch die Rückkehr des Hauptmanns Du Toit, eines Angehörigen ihrer Streitkräfte, aus Angola, erwähnt.

4. Stehen die Sowjets zu diesen Fragen in direktem Kontakt mit der südafrikanischen Regierung?

5. Werfen Sie die Angelegenheit Mandela auf, weil Sie eine Rolle sehen, die die USA bei einer gegenseitigen Freilassung von Sacharow und Mandela spielen könnten? Wenn ja, was für eine Rolle schlagen Sie vor?

6. Betreibt Moskau bei der MPLA in Luanda die Rückgabe Du Toits? Eine Rückgabe an die südafrikanische Regierung könnte diese in ihrer Haltung beeinflussen.

Was uns betrifft, so unterstützen wir die Freilassung Mandelas, so wie wir auch die Freilassung Sacharows unterstützen – aus humanitären Gründen. Die südafrikanische Regierung kennt unsere Position.

⁴⁰ Cf. Niël Barnard, Secret Revolution. Memoirs of a Spy Boss (Cape Town: Tafelberg, 2015), 188–191.

⁴¹ Robert von Lucius, “Die deutsche Politik gegenüber Südafrika,” in Deutsche Afrikapolitik. Akteure und Konzepte, ed. Deutsche Afrika Stiftung (Berlin: DAS-Series, booklet 82, 2012), 45. – „1988 bemühte sich Kohl in einem Briefwechsel mit Botha um eine vorzeitige Freilassung Mandelas aus der Haft. Vermittler und Briefträger war eine von Kohl wie auch von Botha respektierte Persönlichkeit – weder Politiker noch Beamter-, der weiterhin Wert darauf legt, dass seine Rolle nicht bekannt wird. Von dieser Bemühung wusste bis heute zwar der Botschafter, nicht aber sein Außenminister … Das Bundeskanzleramt operierte in der, wäre sie erfolgreich gewesen, wichtigsten Aktion der deutschen Südafrikapolitik jener Jahre vorbei am Auswärtigen Amt. Und fast wäre sie gelungen. Dass sie scheiterte, hing zusammen mit der unsteten Persönlichkeit des Präsidenten Botha … Die Freilassung Mandelas stand 1988 kurz bevor, es ging um Wochen, als Botha seine Meinung wieder änderte …“