how long the traditional authorities should survive.U
Truth and Reconciliation
As the first president of the new South Africa, Nelson Mandela made it
his highest priority to lay the foundations
of a united nation while re-
specting the cultures of its different racial and ethnic elements. He' was
particularly concerned with conciliating the most dangerous minority, the
Afrikaners, who had been close to wrecking the negotiations on the eve of
the 1994 election. For this purpose, he committed a series of highly publi-
cized symbolic acts. He visited in their homes ex-President Botha and the
widow of Hendrik Verwoerd, the principal architect of apartheid. He had
General Johan Willemse, the former Robben Island commander, to din-
ner. He even took lunch with Percy Yutar, who had prosecuted him and
got him sentenced to life imprisonment, and he joined the Sunday congre-
gation in an Afrikaner church. In his most successful gesture, he identified
with the South African rugby team, who were all Afrikaners except for
one Coloured man, by walking onto the field wearing the Springbok jer-
sey after South Africa won the World Cup against New Zealand; the
largely Afrikaner crowd cheered him wildly.32
Mandela
also set in motion an ambitious attempt to make South