The End of Apartheid: Diary of a Revolution. By Robin Renwick. Biteback; 184 pages; £16.99.

THIS is the chronicle of a diplomat who did more than any other to facilitate the transition from apartheid to democracy in South Africa. Robin (now Lord) Renwick had previously pulled off a similar feat by coaxing Southern Rhodesia into becoming Zimbabwe. He was Britain’s chief behind-the-scenes Foreign Office fixer for Margaret Thatcher and her foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, in the twists and turns of diplomacy culminating in the Lancaster House conference of 1979.

It was natural, therefore, that Thatcher should pick him to be Britain’s ambassador to South Africa in 1987, with the job of ensuring that Nelson Mandela was freed and his country set on an irreversible path to democracy. Lord Renwick’s diaries, which draw on many of the dispatches he sent to Whitehall and which have now been published under a special waiver to the 30-year secrecy rule, offer a string of insights into the tortuous process towards that miraculous outcome.

In particular, they seek “finally to rest the contention that Thatcher was ‘a friend of apartheid’ and called Nelson Mandela a ‘terrorist’ (which, as a matter of fact, she never did’)”, writes Lord Renwick, while conceding that the prime minister injudiciously called the African National Congress (ANC) a “typical terrorist organisation” after it had threatened to blow up British-owned businesses in South Africa as part of its liberation campaign. After meeting Thatcher in Downing Street months after his release, Mandela declared, “She is an enemy of apartheid.” He later freely admitted that his country had “much to be thankful to her for”.

Indeed, Lord Renwick’s crisp and candid record shows beyond dispute that Thatcher was the most effective of leaders outside South Africa in nudging the parties and their main leaders—Mandela and Frederik de Klerk (always known by his initials, F.W.)—towards the negotiations that led to South Africa’s freedom under a universal franchise in 1994. While the Americans were engrossed in overseeing the collapse of the Soviet Union, Thatcher, via her envoy, relentlessly bombarded first President P.W. Botha and then his successor, Mr de Klerk, with missives demanding that they free Mandela, unban the ANC, dismantle apartheid and let people choose their own government, while assuring them that she sought to end South Africa’s isolation as soon as possible.

In this respect she stuck to her view, which contributed to her reputation as soft on apartheid, that economic sanctions (as opposed to the arms and oil embargo which she endorsed) would not help end the regime. After Mr de Klerk began to negotiate with Mandela and the ANC, she continually advocated a gradual easing of sanctions, whereas the wider anti-apartheid movement argued for keeping and even intensifying them until the transition was complete.

Lord Renwick shows that Mandela, for his part, was often trapped between the demands of the ANC and his own instincts for encouraging more give-and-take as diplomacy and then formal talks proceeded. At times he felt forced to “engage in rhetoric and defend positions he did not really believe in”. Thatcher did, however, persuade him quietly to drop—or at least to edge away from—his initial demand, in keeping with long-standing ANC policy, for the economy’s nationalisation.

Lord Renwick’s own role in prodding the process along is well chronicled, not just by these extracts from his diaries which he selected himself. Among foreign diplomats in South Africa, he won unrivalled access to representatives of every ideological stripe and skin colour. At times South Africans attending meetings in the British embassy asked in frustration, puzzlement and envy why such events could not take place elsewhere in their country. He may have been the last British diplomat on the continent to have achieved such influence for the good.