Then he said, ‘Doctor, I want you to help me.’ I said ‘With what, sir?’ He said, ‘We must bring PW to the TRC. Every angle which I have approached has not worked. Are you willing to talk to him, to convince him to come to the TRC?’ And I answered, ‘No, Sir.’ And he asked, ‘Why?’
I explained, ‘Because PW would never come, but even if he did, take a leaf from your own personal history. I can tell you what will happen. Even if we convince him to come, you have been in a dock before, PW has never been. He’s in that dock and you find one or two of these clever advocates trying to irritate him. It’s not difficult to irritate PW, anybody can do it, and he starts shouting and cursing. What have you done? Leave the old man alone, just leave him. What do you want to achieve by, because that is going to happen, also through his own stubbornness, to humiliate him in public. It’s like yourself, Sir,’ – and that was I think the telling point – ‘you became a martyr world-wide, an icon, because we acted wrongly with you. Don’t create an icon and a martyr of PW. He has played his role, leave him in peace. If you handle him in such a way, with the television and so on, he will become a martyr for some right wing cause, leave it, just be quiet.’
He said ‘Well, perhaps that’s wisdom, but I am not able to convince my people.’ And then I said, ‘Well, Sir, I cannot convince your people, you’ll just have to bite the bullet, leave PW alone, don’t push him, it will take us nowhere. He has had two strokes and he is even more unpredictable now. So just leave the man.’