the question the sanity of anyone would have predicted that mr mondello and i would be joined in the severe of the by the will. of of us. before you today behind the. the two leaders are at olds and the tension in the country is at its highest. will an eagle bowden's. will disagree strongly all issues and we will soon fight the strenuous election plain against one of them. standing in the cement the spro crest which we have. all the three thousand people have died in the violence. since the beginning of this year mandela and diplomatic partners as much as rivals two characters representing a cruising campus engaged in unwilling to move to solutions of political and

personal doom that was poised to put an end to one of the most racist with the promise. seven kilometers west of cape town nelson mandela was a prisoner for eighteen years raised in a village in eastern south africa he founded the first black law from in the country appalled by the treatment of blacks and people of color he created the armed wing of the african national congress to fight against the apartheid regime

that i many people feel that it is useless and for a future for us to continue talking peace and nonviolence against the government was a block is only a savage attacks. and under defenseless people. in one thousand nine hundred sixty two mandela was arrested two years later he and his fellow accused were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage and conspiracy he was forty six years old. during his incarceration and social unrest spread and intensified among the black people who represented almost three quarters of the population in the state who responded with increasingly savage repression. in the one nine hundred eighty s. the country was subjected to the iron fist leadership of peter both are head of the national party regarded as a hard liner he was nonetheless aware that profound change was inevitable among his

most influential ministers was frederick vellum declare an ambitious afrikaner who entered politics in one thousand nine hundred seventy one f. w. as everyone called him came from an influential conservative family. one must remember that his father had been a very senior national party politician it being president of the senate his uncle had been prime minister so he was deeply. involved in the whole growth and development of the national party mr de klerk was perceived to be on the conservative side that he was predicting what group rights as it was call but i think to his credit almost always he was never in favor of a security solution for the country never in seventy one i

still embraced the concept of separateness which i believed idealistic could bring justice in the early eighty's. i came to the conclusion and not only me many of my colleagues around me that the concept of separateness is just institutionalizing in just as that it was our own and that we had to abandon the concept of a part they separate us. in the early eighty's nelson mandela returned to the mainland after two decades of brutal detention he was transferred to pollsmoor prison then in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight to more comfortable housing within the victim first the prison about one hundred kilometers from cape town. for mandela was no ordinary prisoner convinced that negotiation could bring an end

to apartheid he had begun secret meetings with government representatives notably we could see how the justice minister and neal barnard the head of the secret services. and so p.w. identified a team of which i was the head at the time they start in total secrecy negotiations with one below which in fact started in my nine hundred eighty eight until eventually they met some got fifty times or forty eight times every week for hours on end and nobody not is almost the archetype of an afrikaner nationalist mandela use that to get to know the minds of the africans the minds of the national party and by the time he came out he knew more or less what they were what they were thinking what was possible what wasn't possible he knew more or less how to treat them. both at home and

abroad calls for mandela's release grew louder and gained more support for his party the a.n.c. represented him as the symbol of the anti-apartheid struggle. and early one nine hundred eighty nine bhutto was weakened by a stroke shortly after a secret meeting with mandela he was forced to resign as party leader and later as president. i relented in august his former minister frederick de clercq age fifty three took over as president of the country his priority to end the deadlock crippling south africa. on december thirteenth one thousand nine hundred eighty nine mandela left the victor vasta prison for a few hours he was secretly taken to the center of keep time to detain heis the president's office for the first time the black leader and white president found

themselves face to face. i did not have high expectations of a first meeting with mr mandela and when i did have my first meeting i did not try to achieve much for both the him and me that first meeting was to get an understanding of each other to get a feel for the person sitting across the table to start with mandela was much taller than he expected and he was also very impressed by the president of this to mandela's aristocratic bearing because we must remember that that mandela was actually raised to be the prime minister of the paramount chief of the temple who's so he had natural and natural sense of authority very dignified a very charming after that first meeting there was the feeling that yes

we can do business with each other so i did expect that he would be positive. about the concept of negotiation but we both of voided talking about the real challenges and the real issues at that time it was a sizing up proceedings and so that was the beginning of of a long and sometimes very very rocky relationship. on february the second one thousand nine hundred ninety the eyes of thirty seven million south africans were turned towards cape town for the opening of parliament didn't declare it was about to pronounce his first general policy speech many were hoping he would commit the country to a new direction. it is time for us to break out of

the cycle of violence and to break through to peace and reconciliation the steps that have been decided on the following the prohibition of the african national congress the pan african as congress the south african communist party in a number of subsidiary organizations is being nice and people serving prison sentences merely because they were members of one of these organizations will be identified and released i think the clark when he took over as president in one thousand nine was faced with a choice he knew that the country's economy was in really deep trouble he knew we were almost facing a civil war inside the country and here suddenly the thing landed on his lap was he going to do more about it more oppression more police more military and

destroy the economy get into a civil war or was he going to be the sturrock a figure that ended the war. and i think the berlin wall helped him a lot because it was a strong argument to use to say we had to fight against the a.n.c. because they were communists but no communism is dead sanaa we can talk to them which made their message easier to accept by the white people however what is very crucial to make the point that this change. the clear speech was not simply the result of a free condom nationalism of his party and of de klerk suddenly becoming good guys and through the good heart deciding there must be a change it was the pressure from the struggle i wish to put it plainly that the government has taken a firm decision to release mr mandela unconditionally i'm serious

i'm serious about being this matter to finality without delay the speech i made on the second of february ninety ninety contained a package of measures of which the release not only of nelson mandela but also of all political prisoners was just a part i listed the state of emergency. i tried in that speech to add that is each and every excuse in the sea could offer not to come to the negotiation table and during that period we were the only communicators and town and they had all of the t.v. cameras they needed to use. how and when to release the iconic mandela this was the subject of the second confrontation between the two men one

week later at the president's office. i announced to him that he would be released on the eleventh of february. and the first reaction was it's too soon and i said why is it too soon he said we need more time to prepare insisted that this process cannot work without me i am the key to this thing so when you want to release me you release me at a time that suits me and my family because i have to manage the a.n.c. and it was one of the things of. your my prisoner you will do as i say and i said to him mr mandela you and i will negotiate about many things but you been in jail long enough you will be released on the eleventh of february let us discuss what time of the day and from where you will be in east.

on february eleventh one thousand nine hundred ninety eight five o'clock in the oftener there was great excitement at the victor festa prison everyone had been waiting for several hours to see nelson mandela released on men are with his wife when. after twenty seven years in jail a free seventy one year old man returned to his home in so wet oh determined to win freedom for his people. after four decades of conflict the adversaries met over three days and put ischia an official building in cape time in may nine hundred ninety the jailer and his former prisoner walked side by side presenting a court image l.

bound to be difficulties but these cautious optimism as well as faith and conviction that problems will be solved by negotiation. and i trust that these discussions will be another milestone on the road to a new and just self that i think it was. overwhelmingly framed. it was like people who paying together for the first time we didn't know each other but who wanted to meet each other. that was a that was a wonderful experience and was about the fact that. we suddenly realized the above signs that we had to work jointly and collectively. the way forward and the two responsibility rests on us nobody else could take that response and. you can imagine. with the background of the participants two sides that has

been fighting each other. and were. suddenly being. of course there's a measure of mistrust. we do know i'll call the district three s. when. we didn't know. but the point is we had to agree there's only one way to discover. that is to me. very striking feature. of the discussions. which we have heard. it during the last three days. has been that cordiality. we have had. discussions on sensitive not. in a spirit of conciliation and understanding. despite the signature

of a peace agreement four months later the relationship between de klerk and mandela was tainted by violence around the often lethal conflict had broken out in various regions of south africa particularly in causing confrontations erupted to between a.n.c. supporters from the closer ethnic group and supporters of the i f p the in qatar freedom party made up of zulus and led by monk to buthelezi. not just that is the places. to threaten the leaders the people those who get it through the beginning of every year all is going. oh. more people got killed in south africa between one thousand eight hundred nine and one thousand nine hundred four dunn were killed by a part of forces in the entire history of a part that there was a natural competition between the i have p n a n c u d f but it was

aided and abetted by the former military and police people called it the third force. the two big black groupings fighting and a third force egging them on and fomenting more violence leading police teats and intelligence chiefs including military intelligence we're working with elements of the put to lazy party and the soft course was how the came to use that label and to. and to accuse the clerk of the statistics. one hundred thank you and. the national party has got that dab agenda for the negotiations process on the one hand. a talk about

reform and change. that they still want to hold on to economic and political power he said you see you don't care about the life lives of blacks that tell us you have allowed that situation to develop and this is why these things have happened even after we had given you our commitment even when we have been doing that had to discipline our people and you behaved in this way because you don't care about black life i think the accusation that i didn't do enough was unfair and that was not based in fact from the moment that i started to have a suspicion and also in conjunction with all the allegations they were making i appointed judith to judicial commissions of inquiry the one commission of inquiry

came up and opened up a can of worms to show that yes they were elements in the security forces against my orders against the policy i've laid down who continued with politically this have rocked of underground activities that resulted in the dismissal or early retirement of a big number of very senior officers the credit cards the difficulty he had to walk a tightrope he couldn't just walk into the military camp and say. give up your arms the sea is taking over he had to tell.