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The prospect of further change that those concessions open up is one reason that Mandela's life -- and De Klerk's -- could be at risk. A South African newspaper, Vrye Weekblad, last week reported that it had uncovered a right- wing plot to murder Mandela, De Klerk and other figures. According to the paper, the plot was worked out by former Nazi Captain Heinrich Beissner, a regional head of the right-wing Afrikaner Resistance Movement. It called for Mandela to be shot by a sniper at Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Airport when he returned to South Africa on July 18. The Afrikaner group also allegedly planned to blow up power stations, assassinate Members of Parliament and poison the water supply to the black township of Soweto. Though the South African government did confirm that it had arrested eleven whites, it would say only that they were released after questioning.
Mandela is looking for more than courtesy when he meets with George Bush at the White House this week. Though Bush has never supported U.S. sanctions, his Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Herman Cohen, promised in an interview last week that the U.S. "will not act precipitously." But he also said that in the Administration's view, all the legal preconditions for lifting sanctions have been met, except for the release of all prisoners and lifting the state of emergency in the province of Natal. Many members of Congress reply that South Africa has not satisfied a condition spelled out in the sanctions law: substantial progress toward dismantling apartheid.
The betting is that Bush will not loosen sanctions now, in part as a gesture to black voters he is trying to lure to the G.O.P. Mandela's aim is to leave Washington with some sign that the Administration will not retreat from that grudging support. Continued U.S. sanctions would give Mandela a powerful hand to play when he and other A.N.C. officials eventually sit down to negotiations with the Pretoria government. It would also help Mandela when he arrives next week in Britain, where Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has been anxious to reward South Africa for the gestures De Klerk has made so far.
Meanwhile, the White House is angry at what it sees as an attempt by Democrats and civil rights groups to use Mandela's visit to pressure Bush to put aside his objections to the pending Civil Rights Act of 1990 -- or else force him to endure the embarrassment of vetoing it while Mandela is still in the U.S. The bill seeks to lessen the effect of several recent Supreme Court decisions that diluted existing federal affirmative-action and antidiscrimination law. In particular, the rulings made it harder for victims of discrimination to prove bias and bring lawsuits for redress in court. Bush has insisted that he will veto the bill if it is not amended to correct provisions that he says could have the effect of requiring employers to adopt racial quotas in hiring.
At a White House meeting with G.O.P. lawmakers last week, chief of staff John Sununu worried out loud that the bill could be brought for a vote soon in the Senate. "The White House is apoplectic about the bill coming up while Mandela is in town," says one participant in the talks. Soon after, the Senate decided to take a preliminary vote on the bill just 20 minutes before Mandela appears to address a joint session of Congress.