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He still however, had to oversee the ending of the apartheid era, and save South Africa from a threatened civil war. It was now that he showed the true extent of his political skill. When negotiating with his old enemy, the Afrikaner National Party, he amazed them by showing that he had studied Afrikaner history. He knew that Afrikaners had suffered at the hands of the British in the past, and asked why they couldn’t understand that black South Africans were suffering in the same way. But at the same time he could be very, very tough, refusing to compromise when the National Party tried to make him disband his guerrilla fighters.
These were dangerous days for South Africa, with violent clashes between ANC supporters and members of Zulu Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party, and there were threats of even more serious disturbances as white extremists threatened to stage a rebellion rather than see an end to apartheid. When the former guerrilla fighter Chris Hani, the second most popular politician in the country, was murdered by a white extremist, it seemed that the country could be torn apart by race riots. Mandela defused the situation by explaining how the assassin had been caught thanks to the actions of a white woman – an Afrikaner.
Nelson Mandela prevailed, and on April 27 1994, South Africa held its first truly democratic election. As President, Mandela now did all he could to reconcile the different races in the new ‘Rainbow Nation’. He delighted Afrikaners by wearing a Springbok shirt at a rugby match – the Afrikaners’ favourite sport – and even businessmen fell under his spell as he persuaded them to invest in the new South Africa. The story continues...
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