CAPE TOWN: After 27 and half years in prison, Nelson Mandela finally won his freedom Feb 11 and promptly urged his supporters at home and abroad to increase their pressure against the white minority Government that had just released him.

“We have waited to long for our freedom,” Mr. Mandela told a cheering crowd from a balcony of Cape Town’s old City Hall. “We can wait no longer.”

“Now is the time to intensify the struggle on all fronts,” he said. “To relax our efforts now would be a mistake which generations to come will not be able to forgive.”

Telephone Talk With Bush

In Washington, President Bush rejoiced over the release of Mr. Mandela, spoke to him by telephone and invited the anti-apartheid leader to visit the White House.

Mr. Mandela’s 20 minute speech, which he prepared before leaving prison today, constituted his first remarks in public since before he was sentenced in June 1964 to life imprisonment for conspiracy to overthrow the Government and engage in sabotage.

He asked the international community not to lift its sanctions against South Africa, despite the recent changes introduced by President F.W. de Klerk, which culminated in Mr. Mandela’s release.

Erect and Vigorous Bearing

“To lift sanctions now would be to run the risk of aborting the process toward ending apartheid,” he said.

Mr. Mandela’s voice sounded firm and his words as eloquently militant as when he defended violence as the ultimate recourse at his political trial in 1964. Though he looked all of his 71 years and was grayer than artists renditions over the years had depicted, he walked out of Victor Verster prison exect and vigorous.

More important, Mr. Mandela gave no evidence that his militant opposition to apartheid had been tempered by more than 10,000 days he spends in confinement. But he also said nothing that would have surprised the Government had he said it during his years of incarceration. Indeed, there appeared to be nothing in Mr. Mandela’s initial remarks after his release to give the Government much consolation or encouragement.

Prime Minister VP Singh invited Nelson Mandela to visit India and said his release proved the futility of repression and apartheid.

In a message to Mandela, the Indian prime minister stressed that India’s support to his cause had been and would remain staunch and unwavering. “We will continue to contribute to your struggle for apartheid free, non-racial and united South Africa,” VP Singh said,

Premier Singh said many other political prisoners who were still captive could not be forgotten in this moment of happiness. Their release now became even more pressing, he emphasized.

The prime minister described Mandela as a symbol of the aspirations of the downtrodden, exploited and oppressed people of the world.

“Your people will need your invaluable experience, your indomitable courage and your foresight in the coming days in the search for a non-violent way to the dismantlement of apartheid,” Premier Singh said in his message.

“The quarter century of your imprisonment has proved to the world, no less than to your erstwhile captors, the futility of repression and the hollowness of the system and ideology of apartheid,” he emphasized.

Singh said, “Let Mandela’s release herald the beginning of negotiations in South Africa with the true representatives of the people.

“All our strength and pressure must be directed towards the complete dismantlement of apartheid. Let Mr. Mandela’s release be a harbinger of new, united, democratic and non-racial South Africa,” he said.

Describing Mandela as the “symbol of the freedom of Man,” Singh said he had already set up a national committee to celebrate Mandela’s release.

Major political parties also joined the prime minister in hailing Mandela’s release.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 16, 1990