Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop who fought South Africa's apartheid regime, and R.F. ("Pik") Botha, who was Foreign Minister of that government for 17 years, have both left public life. Before leaving they talked with TIME European editor Christopher Redman, contributor Christopher Ogden and correspondent Peter Hawthorne.

TUTU: "FREEDOM IS SUCH FUN"

TIME: Did you play a providential role in South African history?

Tutu: Whilst agreeing that there is something called free will in which you choose, there is a sense also in which we are chosen. You are grabbed by the scruff of the neck. At a certain point in your life, things that have happened look almost like tragedies, and then a little later you see, yes, they had a reason. They should have happened. Things hang together in a wonderful way, and you say, "Thank you, God."

TIME: Did you ever think the situation in South Africa was hopeless?

Tutu: There were times when you held on by the skin of your teeth. When there were massacres in the townships and fighting in KwaZulu-Natal and right-wing bombs on the eve of the elections, you began to think there was a curse on our people. It was clearly touch and go. And I really think we were just a hairbreadth away from the bloodbath. Although one believed that one day apartheid was going to collapse, when it happened apartheid caved in, imploded, so quickly that it took me by surprise. And look where we are now. Why were we so crazy for so long when freedom is such fun?

TIME: For many years you were regarded by whites in your own church as a troublesome, even traitorous priest. How did you live with that?

Tutu: I inherited one of my mother's greatest weaknesses, which was that she liked to be liked. I love to be loved. The greatest pain I had to endure was being the universal ogre for many whites in this country. When I campaigned abroad for sanctions against South Africa, I was dirt here. But despite that, we won. And the people who vilified me and what I stood for are now hailing Nelson Mandela as their leader. He walks out onto a rugby field in Johannesburg, and the 75% white crowd is yelling, "Nelson! Nelson!"

TIME: Can South Africa continue to be a success story?

Tutu: I have to invoke God again. We are going to succeed because God wants us to succeed, and for a very simple reason. Everything pointed to our being a demonstrable disaster. That is what we should have been. So here we are. And even with the level of crime and violence we have, we're still the flavor of the month. It has the qualities of a dream. Only one word can describe it, and that is a miracle. Here we have a head of state who was a terrorist one day and the next probably the most admired man in the world.

TIME: But will things be the same after Mandela?

Tutu: It's dangerous in a democracy for anyone to be put on a pedestal. Obviously, the people who come after him will not be Mandelas. He is one of the first to say the victory was won not by one man and not by one party alone but by all the people. But I'm not worried about the leadership of the future. One of the reasons we are where we are is that South Africa, unlike many other countries in the Third World, has always had a vigorous and strong civil society--the religious communities, the civil rights organizations. We have a constitutional court and a bill of rights. The depth of quality leadership here is quite remarkable.

TIME: The crime problem here is particularly serious. How can this be solved?

Tutu: Let us be fair and calm about this. A lot of crime is suddenly becoming very visible because it is hitting white people. What a lot of white people took as a normal scenario in the black areas is now touching them. I'm not gloating, because I love them. But it's a good thing that we are awakening to some of the problems that this country has had for a long time. They were not regarded as important because the victims were not regarded as significant. Although I don't go around using apartheid as a scapegoat for everything, a great deal of this is due to the legacy of apartheid, including social turmoil caused by the high unemployment and a political police force that was more concerned with enforcing apartheid than acting against crime. We need to develop community policing so the police force is seen as a friend.

TIME: If things go sour, do you think the world will care about South Africa?

Tutu: One of the reasons I believe we succeeded is that I don't know one single country in the world that's been prayed for as much as this country. We've been special in the world. Little old ladies in Oxford, England, and Oakland, California, have prayed for us and continue to pray for us. I am overwhelmingly African in the fact that I owe all that I am to others. So it isn't being spuriously modest for me to say my victory is our victory. And when we say we won, it isn't a figure of speech. Our cause has been a cause that has held center stage. People tend to see in South African a reflection at times of their own societies. All freedom-loving people care for us, and they will continue to care.

BOTHA: "YOU CAN'T HIDE"

TIME: What was the personal high point of your career?

Botha: That was the Dec. 22, 1988, agreement paving the way for the implementation of U.N. Resolution 435 and the independence of Namibia. It was the key to the subsequent events that led to the release of [Nelson] Mandela and the major changes we have witnessed in this part of the world during the past six years.

TIME: If changes had not occurred in the Soviet Union and elsewhere, would Mandela still be in prison?

Botha: It's difficult to know. But I believe that from the day F.W. de Klerk took over [as President in 1989], we would in any case have released Mandela. Perhaps not so early.

TIME: When did you realize the country had to change?

Botha: There is this perception that we suddenly changed. But for years there was an internal debate in this country. In 1974 I said in the U.N. Security Council that I couldn't defend discrimination based on the color of a person's skin. That caused a furor back home. And in 1986 I said South Africa might one day have a black President. Again a furor. I almost started a new party--the National Democratic Party. But then the message came from thousands of people: "Hang in there. Don't go."

TIME: Can South Africa avoid the political and economic upheavals that have hit so much of Africa?

Botha: Yes, it can. South Africa is the only African country south of the Sahara that has developed its own internal structures, banks, universities. We have also made scientific and medical achievements and developed technologies over the years. These are all South African, tailored to South African requirements.

TIME: What is the future of the National Party now that it is no longer in the government of national unity?

Botha: The party can continue with its mission to gather a majority of people and become the majority government party behind the same norms, standards, principles and objectives that you find in the world's industrialized societies. The National Party must change its name and go all out to get black support.

TIME: What role can South Africa play in the rest of Africa? Botha: We do not have the resources in South Africa to play a major role in preventing the disintegration of a large part of Africa south of the Sahara. But we do have expertise and technologies tailored to Africa's demands and circumstances. I have a vision, for instance, of a hydroelectric-power station at Inga on the Zaire River. It could be the biggest in the world. South Africa could become an anchor buyer in a southern African power grid, which is literally light at the end of the tunnel.

TIME: Sub-Saharan Africa has a huge propensity for disaster. Can South Africa escape this fate?

Botha: If this fate is unavoidable, then a huge part of this earth will become your headache. I can't imagine an American or a European living in affluence, with only 10% of the world's people consuming more than half the world's natural resources. The world is getting smaller. You can't hide the atrocities, the degeneration, the plights, the sadness and the tragedies of millions of people. Morality is no longer a question of time and place.

TIME: Is the African National Congress acquiring the political skills needed to guide this country into the future?

Botha: After two years, I can certainly say the caliber of argument in the Cabinet is high. It's as good as you'll get in any country in the world. In Parliament there's more tension, more emotion, and there you see dissent and intolerance to a degree that I hope will be reduced.

TIME: Does South Africa have time to make the necessary changes?

Botha: Some years ago, I had 40 minutes to tell Jimmy Carter my vision of the future in which apartheid would disappear. I was asked the same question: Do you have the time? Will the locomotive of history not crash before your dreams are realized? My reply was to ask whether anybody could have predicted a year before his election that Carter would become President. In the field of man-made activities, you can stop a locomotive. You can gain time, and you can even turn it back. Henry Kissinger once said to me, "Do you ever have the feeling of being on the right track moving in the wrong direction?" We are on the right track, but not yet going in the right direction. We can head in the right direction only if we have the support of the major industrialized countries. Even if there is no moral consideration, they must be persuaded that we will become a bigger headache for them if we go the wrong way.