KEY POINTS:
It was a moment of political history too sensitive to be revealed for more than a decade. In the luxurious surroundings of an English country house, secret round-table talks took place in the late 1980s that were to bring about the dismantling of the apartheid system in South Africa.
In the seclusion of Mells Park in Somerset, southwest England, and unknown to all but a few invited guests, Thabo Mbeki, then a dissident member of the African National Congress and now President of his country, met representatives of the white regime he hated.
Work has just finished on a film that will tell the story of these meetings for the first time.
Endgame, a political thriller shot in England and South Africa, stars Hollywood actor William Hurt as Willie Esterhuyse, who represented P. W. Botha's Government, and award-winning British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as Mbeki.
The two opposing politicians, who remain friends to this day, formed a strong bond in these discussions that later enabled their country to move forward. The extraordinary friendship is at the centre of the new drama, which is produced by Britain's Channel 4 and will receive a theatrical release outside Britain next year.
The original idea behind Endgame, which also stars Timothy West and Derek Jacobi, came from a chance conversation between the executive producer, David Aukin, and Greg Dyke, the former BBC director-general.
"Greg told me he was trying to set up a documentary about it and I thought it would make a wonderful drama," said Aukin. "This film tells quite an amazing story. Most of the South Africans I have talked to had never heard of these talks, so secret were they kept.
"But it is more than history, it is really relevant today, because these negotiations have formed a template for these kind of talks around the world."
The meetings were initiated by the unlikely peace-broker of Consolidated Gold, a South African mining company considered to be one of the most reactionary at the time.
Aukin explains that the company's director of communications, Michael Young, played in the film by Jonny Lee Miller, and Consolidated's chairman agreed in private to arrange the meetings at the company's English country retreat.
"Both of them loathed apartheid, but they also thought it was in the interest of their company to find a peaceful resolution.
"The social strife in South Africa made it too difficult for public talks. There were elements on both sides with an interest in preventing talks."
The South African Government was also talking to the incarcerated Nelson Mandela, and both sets of negotiations were used as leverage on the other.
"It was all about getting them to see each other as human beings and not as terrorists on one side and gangsters on the other," said Aukin, who travelled to South Africa with screenwriter Paula Milne to meet Young and Mbeki during the research on the film.
Milne's script focuses on the emotional core of the growing relationship between Esterhuyse and Mbeki.
"Each one led on their side of the talks and they established a mutual respect pretty quickly," she said.
"Their relationship became the linchpin."
- OBSERVER
