Word: mandelas
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...races. Less than three weeks before the rioting at Crossroads, the government had pledged to suspend, and reassess, its policy of forcibly resettling blacks. A week before the sudden arrest of the opposition leaders, attention was focused on Executive President P.W. Botha's offer to release Nelson Mandela, 67, the nation's best-known political prisoner, and to recognize Mandela's outlawed, militant African National Congress on condition that the A.N.C. lay down its arms. But the eruptions last week suggested that peaceful negotiations between South Africa's white rulers and their black opponents may still be a distant prospect...
Four days later, Botha told parliament that the government would be prepared to consider releasing Mandela--provided the black leader promised not to "plan, instigate or commit acts of violence for the furtherance of his political objectives." Said Botha: "It is therefore not the South African government which now stands in the way of Mr. Mandela's freedom. It is himself...
After receiving Mandela's rejection last week, Botha closed the door on the issue. "My government's and my attitude on this matter flows on the one hand from a concern for men who have spent a long time in prison," he said. "On the other hand, we cannot order their release if they remain committed to violence, sabotage and terrorism." Critics questioned Botha's motives, suggesting that he had acted to get into the open the issue of the A.N.C.'s advocacy of violent change. Asked the Rand Daily Mail: "Was it a ploy, couched in such terms that...
...Mandela question aside, the South African government appears to be intent on some easing of restrictions against the country's 27 million nonwhites. Forced resettlement of black communities from "white" land to black homeland areas is to be halted, and central business districts in many white towns are to be opened to all racial groups. Last week the government agreed even to investigate, for possible repeal, two of the pillars of apartheid: the sets of laws forbidding mixed-race marriages and sexual relations across racial lines...
...such liberalizing measures are welcome steps away from apartheid, they are clearly insufficient for Mandela, who cried rhetorically from his cell last week, "What freedom am I being offered when I must ask permission to live in an urban area? What freedom am I being offered when I need a stamp in my pass to seek work...