Unhappy Birthday

The world's most famous prisoner celebrated his 70th birthday last week in Pollsmoor Prison, outside Cape Town. Isolated from the other inmates, Nelson Mandela refused the government's offer of a special six-hour birthday visit from his family as a way of protesting the plight of thousands of black activists jailed in South Africa. Meanwhile, Pretoria ordered roadblocks around the prison and clamped down on tributes to Mandela, including outdoor meetings, a private tea party and a concert at the University of Cape Town, which ended with the arrival of riot police in gas masks.

To millions of his black countrymen and to millions of other people around the world, Mandela, who has been locked up for nearly 26 years, remains a potent figurehead in the struggle toward a postapartheid future in South Africa. Jailed in 1962 for leaving the country illegally and inciting unrest, the symbolic leader of the African National Congress was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for sabotage and plotting to overthrow the government. Since undergoing a prostate operation in November 1985, he has been held in Pollsmoor's hospital wing. Each year he is allowed 30 visits of 40 minutes ; apiece, and he may write and accept one letter a week. Although his wife Winnie collected 50,000 greetings on his behalf last week, Mandela received his limit of twelve birthday cards.

Mandela's continued imprisonment poses a dilemma for Pretoria, which fears that his release could set off widespread black unrest. "Humanitarian considerations must always be weighed against the possibility that civil uprising, violence and terrorism could follow," said Information Minister Stoffel van der Merwe. At least one progovernment voice disagreed. Asked Beeld, the country's largest Afrikaans-language daily: "Do we really want to imprint into our history that we let an old man die in jail while there was the opportunity to negotiate with him on the aspirations of his people?"