In a 2013 interview from Al Jazeera, long-time South African Foreign Minister, Pik Botha claims that he long lobbied for the release of the future President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela who spent 27 years in prison.
I remember in 1982 I submitted a memorandum to the cabinet prepared by my department [...] to the effect that was that Mandela ought to be released
Some of Pik Botha's claims are a bit fanciful now and I wouldn't be surprised if this one also may be.
Has this claim been verified?
EDIT
I found these sources but they simply point to a draft speech for President PW Botha in August 1985 rather than an actual position paper on releasing Mandela and other ANC leaders.
https://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/the-rubicon-revisited
https://mg.co.za/article/2012-10-26-00-the-day-apartheid-started-dying/
Apparently a 1982 stroke and subsequent March 1985 cerebral rupture reduced the president's "inhibition to outbursts of temper" and he had his staff and to some degree also his cabinet in a state of fear: the president enjoyed strong support through the National Party and accordingly could prevail on even a dangerous policy against the will of several cabinet members.
The slowdown in investment flow into South Africa in these times had the Finance Minister de Plessis fearing meltdown of their economy - which was heavily dependent on a mining sector that needed substantial advance investment, mainly from foreign banks. Du Plessis confided the perilous economic state to Foreign Minister Pik Botha. Pik Botha's officials prepared a draft of an address by President Botha which promised future constitutional change, a unified state with no Bantustans and inclusion of black population representatives in a transition cabinet. Pik Botha toured EU diplomatic capitals giving advance notice of the president's upcoming speech in the hope that this would free up the flow of EU bank investment to ZA - and perhaps to some extent also create an ambiance of positive expectation within the diplomatic community in Pretoria to "encourage" the president to make the leap.
But PW Botha angrily rejected the prepared draft speech (which included a line about ZA 'crossing the Rubicon') and prepared one of his own - a commitment to a hardline policy that only consolidated distrust among international investors and hastened the end of the apartheid government.
I haven't been able to find a copy of Pik Botha's Rubicon speech any more than the report on releasing Mandela. But this is all separate from an analysis of benefits and risks to releasing Mandela from the point of view of the domestic scene within ZA in the 1980s - the reason posited by Pik Botha in the Al-Jazeera interview for making the proposal in the first place.
