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Whatever the government's cause for hesitation, Mandela has none. Newspapers last week published the text of a document he had delivered to the government prior to his tea with Botha last July. In it he urged both the A.N.C. and the government to "meet urgently to negotiate an effective political settlement." But he also made it clear exactly where he stood. "White South Africa," he wrote, "must accept the plain fact that the A.N.C. will not suspend, to say nothing of abandoning, the armed struggle until the government agrees to negotiate" with recognized black leaders. In addition, wrote Mandela, white South Africans will have to "accept that there will never be peace and stability in this country" until the principle of majority rule is accepted. The distance between these demands and De Klerk's offer to negotiate a division of political power could be too great for even Nelson Mandela to bridge.
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