Word: mandelas
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...this the new South Africa promised by the unbanning of the African National Congress and the release of Nelson Mandela? As the A.N.C. prepared for its first meeting with the government of President F.W. de Klerk -- an April 11 session has already been called off by the A.N.C. in protest at the Sebokeng shootings -- the spiral of violence was forcing Mandela to face a sober reality: that he may have wielded more moral authority as the world's most famous prisoner than he does as a political leader in his second month of freedom...
Locked away in jail, where he could not speak publicly or even have his picture published, Mandela was an ethereal inspiration to continued resistance against apartheid. To some South African blacks, however, Mandela out of prison has become an irrelevant figurehead, a dignified gentleman with utopian socialist ideas that have little to do with their daily lives...
...Mandela's calls for discipline in the urban black townships have been met by continuing terror from the young warlords who exert life-and-death power in those hopeless precincts. His appeal for children to return to school after a sporadic six-year boycott has been widely ignored. And his plea for the combatants in Natal to "take your guns, your knives and your pangas and throw them into the sea" was answered by even bloodier fighting in the rolling Zululand valleys...
When Nelson Mandela was released from prison, he said, "We call on the international community to continue the campaign to isolate the apartheid regime...Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts. To relax now would be a mistake which generations to come will not be able to forgive...
Baker bore the scolding with a blank expression. Then both men emphasized the positive. Mandela characterized their discussions as "dominated by the spirit of friendship." Baker hailed Mandela's courage as "something the world has taken note...