the head of a transformed South Africa, the government moved him to a
comfortable house on the grounds of the Victor Verster prison near Paarl,
about forty miles from Cape Town, where he was treated as an honored
guest rather than a prisoner and could entertain visitors. Three months
later, Mandela sent President Botha a ten-page memorandum that went to
the heart of the matter. "I now consider it necessary in the national interest
for the African National Congress and the government to meet urgently to
negotiate an effective political settlement." Responding to the Coetsee
committee's demands, he said that armed struggle was "a legitimate form
of self-defense against a morally repugnant system of government"; coop-
eration with the Communist party was "strictly limited to the struggle
against racial oppression"; and "white South Africa will simply have to ac-
cept that there will never be peace and stability in the country until the
principle [of majority rule] is fully applied." Mandela also set out his pre-
conditions for the suspense of the armed struggle and the opening of formal
negotiations: the government should legalize the ANC, release political pris-
oners, end the state of emergency, and withdraw its troops from the town-