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This resource is hosted by the Nelson Mandela Foundation, but was compiled and authored by Padraig O’Malley. It is the product of almost two decades of research and includes analyses, chronologies, historical documents, and interviews from the apartheid and post-apartheid eras.

Chapter 16/[] 3/ extended note

With the unbanning of the political organizations, the release of Mandela, and the insistence of the likes of Harry Gwala & others in the ANC in Natal that Mandela not meet with IFP leader Chief Mangosutho Buthelezi, the relationship between the ANC and the IFP further deteriorated and the conflict spread from KwaZulu Natal to the townships sprawling across the Vaal Triangle in the Transvaal. Fierce competition between the two for political support degenerated into a vortex of violence between ANC aligned factions in the townships and IFP aligned factions in the hostels. This violence threatened to get out of control in the latter part of late 1990 and into 1991. Mandela accused the SA security forces of being involved in the violence on the side of the IFP and of actually fomenting it on occasion. He raised the issue with de Klerk on a number of occasions, each time more forcefully and even considered postponing the first meeting between the two sides. When the ANC suspended the armed struggle, making, of course, its resumption more difficult with unforeseeable consequences, the government rather than reciprocating on the question of releasing political prisoners dug in its heels on the issue. In Long Walk, Mandela's increasing disillusionment with De Klerk over what he perceived as de Klerk's lack of action on the violence contrasts with De Klerk's expressions of frustration in Long Trek over what he perceived as Mandela's preoccupation with it despite his (De Klerk's) best efforts to bring it under control.

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