1990

Groote Schuur Minute

First formal ANC–government talks open at Groote Schuur

Old enemies sat down at Groote Schuur — the former residence of white heads of government — to discuss how exiles could return and political prisoners could be released.

2 May 1990: talks about talks

Delegations representing South Africa's government and the African National Congress began their first formal meeting at Groote Schuur in Cape Town on 2 May 1990. The meeting ran for three days, through 4 May.

Nelson Mandela, then deputy president of the ANC, led its delegation; State President F. W. de Klerk led the government side. Their immediate task was to identify and remove obstacles to substantive political negotiations.

The agenda was machinery, not a constitution

Issues raised during the talks included political prisoners, indemnity for exiles, security legislation, the state of emergency, troops in townships, political violence and the ANC's armed struggle.

De Klerk's February 1990 unbanning of the ANC and other organisations, followed by Mandela's release, had made an open meeting possible. Both sides still needed to resolve these practical obstacles before constitutional negotiations could begin.

The Groote Schuur Minute

On 4 May the parties adopted the Groote Schuur Minute and committed themselves to a peaceful negotiating process. They created a joint working group on political offences, political prisoners and immunity, which was initially given until before 21 May 1990 to report.

The government also undertook to review security legislation and to work toward lifting the state of emergency. These were preliminary talks rather than the later multiparty constitutional negotiations, and apartheid did not end on 2 May.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 6 sources 2 audit passes Date corrected

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Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1990-05-02.