An expert from a interview conducted by TIME: “I told him that I totally rejected that. I referred to an article which was written in Die Burger, which is an Afrikaner newspaper—the mouthpiece of the National Party in the Cape—in which the editor said that the concept of groups rights was conceived as an attempt to bring apartheid in through the back door. And I said to Mr. de Klerk that if your own paper says that, then you can imagine what we say.”

He then paused.

“I was then tremendously impressed because he immediately said, ‘Well, my aim here is no different than yours…If you don’t want the concept of group rights, I will remove it.’”

And then Mandela added, “The result of that meeting was that I was able to write to our people to say, ‘I have met de Klerk and I think that he is the type of leader we can conclude an agreement with.'"

Nelson Mandela acted as the mediator between the native population of South Africa and their colonizer. Mandela asked the questions of What can we do? and rather than work independent, he chose to work with his enemy. They acknowledged the challenge that faced them together and strived to find a solution while holding the other to a standard and level of excellence and integrity.