Nelson and Winnie Mandela

By Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg

Put an inspirational leader in prison, and the movement he leads may turn into a crusade. That happened to Mahatma Gandhi in India and to Martin Luther King Jr. in the U.S. In 1986 the mantle of leadership settled heavily upon South Africa's most famous prisoner, Nelson Mandela. As the divided country of 5 million whites and 28 million non-whites slipped deeper into repression and confrontation, he emerged as never before as the spiritual head of the struggle against apartheid.

Mandela spent the year alone in a spacious cell on the third floor of a maximum-security wing at Pollsmoor prison, ten miles south of Cape Town. And although he has been behind bars since August 1962 for conspiracy and sabotage, his shadow fell with stark drama across the racial conflict that in the past year claimed 1,000 more lives.

The prisoner, now 68, no longer looks like even his most recent photograph, which was taken 20 years ago. Still an erect, broad-shouldered six-footer, he is much thinner, though he tells visitors that is because he wants to keep his weight down. His hair is gray, and his once round face has become elongated but is still unlined. A fitness fanatic all his life, Mandela rises at 3:30 each morning and begins the day with a vigorous two-hour workout.

To much of the outside world, Mandela's wife Winnie, 52, has become his surrogate and a symbol of the fight against South Africa's racial repression. Only 27 when her husband was sent to prison, Winnie has been banned, held in solitary confinement for months at a time, restricted and sent into domestic exile. During that time she has developed into a combative leader in her own right. Her public appearances regularly set off huge dancing demonstrations, and at the funerals of blacks killed in racial unrest, she is often carried on the shoulders of singing youths. Winnie claims she only "deputizes" for her husband, and says, "The Afrikaner has made me what I am. The Afrikaner has made each and every black politician in this land."

In September, when Archbishop Desmond Tutu was celebrating an outdoor eucharistic ceremony as part of his enthronement as head of the Anglican Church in southern Africa, Winnie's car pulled up outside the stadium in a Cape Town suburb. Hundreds of young supporters immediately rushed out of the stands to the parking lot, surrounded the car and began chanting, "Man-de-la, Man-de-la." Concluding that she would hopelessly disrupt the ceremony if she entered the stadium, she drove away.

Until last year no one, not even Nelson Mandela's family knew in detail his current stands on political issues, because he was forbidden to discuss them with his rare visitors. Then the South African government began seriously to consider releasing him as a "humanitarian" gesture, fearing he might die in prison and thereby touch off an uprising in the black townships. Some official might have remembered the warning of the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard: "The tyrant dies and his rule ends; the martyr dies and his rule begins."

After the government eased up on the number of visitors and the rules covering prison discussions, those who saw Mandela came away impressed, almost awed. Amazingly, he showed no sign of bitterness and was fully informed on both domestic and foreign affairs. He was a socialist, he said, not a Communist, and his goal was a nonracial, democratic South Africa. If the government would legalize the African National Congress that he once helped lead and open negotiations, the organization would call a "truce" in the armed struggle.

During the first half of 1986, Mandela had three visits from the seven- member Eminent Persons Group, which the Commonwealth countries sent to South Africa to try to advance a negotiated settlement. Mandela told the group that he was confident he could unify the rival black organizations and bring them into talks with the government. He stressed his commitment to a nonracial state that would provide security to whites and all minorities. Finally, he promised that once he was released, he and his ANC colleagues would tour the country's black townships, urging an end to violence and supporting negotiations.

Hope for a settlement, which had almost died, surged on news of the E.P.G.'s progress. But those efforts were quickly scuttled by the South African government, which demanded that the ANC renounce violence forever and attacked its bases in three neighboring countries. The E.P.G. soon concluded that "at present there is no genuine intention on the part of the South African government to dismantle apartheid." A glimmering hope for racial peace faded away.

Despite that failure, many South Africans and foreign observers regard Mandela as the only person who can prevent a race war in his country. "This man is the last hope for a negotiated solution between blacks and whites," says Helen Suzman, the strongest antiapartheid voice in white South Africa.

Winnie Mandela also believes her husband offers the government its last chance to negotiate with moderate black leaders and the radical young activists who frequently terrorize the townships. His is the "last generation of peaceful resistance," she says. "Among the younger generation, there is no room whatsoever for negotiations."

From the small red brick house in the black township of Soweto that has become the headquarters for her struggle, Winnie Mandela remains defiant and determined. "The black man does not have the word reform in his vocabulary," she says. "Blacks in this country are talking about the transition of power to the majority. The government will not release Mandela because he will negotiate only on a transfer of power. The Afrikaner is very far from accepting that."