The blaze of trumpets heralding the opening session of Parliament in Cape Town had barely died down when State President P.W. Botha unveiled an improbable proposal. Said he: "If I were to release Mr. Nelson Mandela on humanitarian grounds, could Captain Wynand du Toit, Andrei Sakharov and Anatoli Shcharansky not also be released on humanitarian grounds?"
With that highly rhetorical offer, Botha announced that his government might be prepared to end the 23-year imprisonment of Mandela, the leading figure in the outlawed African National Congress, the country's most popular black political organization. Botha's price: the release by Angola of a South...
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