THEPOLITICALTRANSITION
speech as a free man, Mandela called de Klerk a man of integrity-a
phrase that would come back to haunt him.l? Relations between them
began to sour as early as March 26, 1990, when police, in one of many
clashes with township residents, opened fire and killed eleven demonstra-
tors at Sebokeng, thirty miles south of johannesburg.e?
Mandela then
called off further meetings for a while, but on May 2, 3, and 4, about a
dozen ANCleaders met their government counterparts
for three days of
talks at the president's official residence near Cape Town. This was a
get-to-know session, which went some way toward easing their personal
relationships.P The government then canceled the state of emergency, re-
pealed the remaining apartheid laws, released most of its political prison-
ers, and allowed the exiles to return to South Africa with immunity from
prosecution. In response, after a heated debate in the ANCexecutive coun-
cil, Mandela announced that he was suspending the armed struggle on the
advice of none other than Joe Slovo, the former head of the military wing
of the ANc-the
white man who was the symbol of evil communism to
white South Africa. 22
But suspicions soon revived because there were loose cannons in both