Word: mandela
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Overshadowing everything else by far is the problem of framing a new constitution that would finally empower blacks to vote, hold office and share in governing the nation. Major differences remain, but De Klerk's government and Mandela's A.N.C. have already agreed on some important ideas. The document, for example, must contain a bill of rights and set up a two-chamber legislature with some form of proportional representation. De Klerk reportedly told British Prime Minister John Major on a visit to London early in May that a constitution could be in effect and elections held...
Some U.S. experts fear that De Klerk is endangering this time-table by "backsliding," seeking tactical advantage by playing black leaders such as Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi off against each other. But Mandela voices faith in De Klerk's sincerity, and De Klerk reportedly told Major that he recognizes that the future of South Africa can be settled only between his government and the A.N.C...
Shortly after his release from prison 15 months ago, as photographers nagged him to hold his impatient wife tenderly for one more picture, Nelson Mandela took Winnie's hands and pressed them into his. "She'll do it for me," he said. "I'm the only one who can control her." That episode illustrated the deep bond uniting South Africa's two most prominent antiapartheid activists and the anchored strength it has given to their turbulent lives...
Ever since they married in 1958, Nelson and Winnie Mandela have maintained an extraordinarily close union under the most trying conditions. A potentially fractious match to begin with -- he a formidable, eloquent, revolutionary lawyer; she a fiery, militant social worker 16 years his junior -- the Mandelas have survived 27 years of separation dictated by Pretoria's imprisonment of Nelson for sabotage and conspiracy to overthrow the government by force...
...speech encouraging blacks to seek freedom "with our boxes of matches and our necklaces" -- a reference to a grisly form of execution carried out by lighting gasoline-filled tires around the necks of suspected government collaborators. She surrounded herself with a group of young bodyguard thugs known as the Mandela United Football Team who took it upon themselves to terrorize opponents -- real or imagined -- in the black township of Soweto. Increasingly imperious, Winnie was denounced in 1989 by other black leaders for having "violated human rights . . . in the name of the struggle against apartheid." She visited Nelson in prison shortly...