After i had sent the August, 1986 statement to "The Arab League" via then-United Nations Assistant Secretary-General Goran Ohlin; six weeks later "that rag in Beirut" (as Ronald Reagan termed the Lebanese newspaper, Ash-Shiraa) disclosed the illegal arms sales to Iran; nothing further happened involving me until the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver at which then-Prime Minister of Canada Brian Mulroney and then-Prime Minister of Britain Margaret Thatcher failed to see eye to eye over Commonwealth policy on apartheid...and the Monday morning following that in host city, Vancouver, where i lived and where i was not contacted between August, 1986 and October, 1987 by Mulroney...i saw the reports of the October, 1987 stock market crash...i felt sure there were correlations.
When the South African second-in-command in its Foreign Affairs ministry contacted me on the basis of my SPECIAL DIPLOMATIC ADVISER TO THE U.S. PRESIDENT authority that following February--i pondered whether to try to push for the freedom of Nelson Mandela or respect that South Africans would be doing that. I decided to keep the pressure on the apartheid regime by spending about three-and-a-half months researching "Science Fiction", and ultimately sending a copy to my friend of now some 20 years, Desmond Tutu.
I appreciate that negotiations to secure Nelson Mandela's freedom were apparently going on during this period.
But as Nelson Mandela indicated during his September, 1998 visit to the United States and Canada by pointing out the death of an anti-apartheid activist even as apartheid was allegedly in its final days, with evil you never know for sure when it is defeated.
Perhaps it never is.
Perhaps the best those who want good for the world and her people can do is win battles and make sure everything isn't lost in the war.

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