The Presidential Years

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South Africa's President Nelson Mandela has been warned by his predecessors to drop investigations into human rights abuses allegedly committed under apartheid. P-W Botha has told Mandela not to awaken " the tiger in the Afrikaaner" by proceeding with the "Truth Commission" probe. P-W Botha invited Nelson Mandela to his luxury seaside house near Cape Town on Tuesday to ask him to suspend all prosecutions for political crimes committed during the apartheid era.

...Mandela shrugged off the warning.

"We have now tasted freedom, and I can assure everybody that they are so determined to keep their independence, their freedom, that they would pick up ordinary stones and bring down bombers and crush military tanks. So determined they are."

APTV
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