NELSON MANDELA & F.W. DE KLERK

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then both men, despite private disappointments over details, energetically sold this plan to their people. The exact nature of what Mandela and De Klerk together have achieved may not be clear for many years. The nation they share has an explosive history of racial, ethnic and tribal violence. Can an infant democracy heal the searing wounds of past injustices and bind up all the diverse people of South Africa? Sometimes against their wills, instincts and self-interests, Mandela and De Klerk have nevertheless made that question their nation's most urgent concern. And both deny they deserve much individual credit for what they have done so far. ''I think it would have been possible for others to do the same,'' says De Klerk. Mandela argues that his success was really the triumph of the A.N.C.: ''I don't think there is much history can say about me. I just want to be remembered as part of that collective.'' Both are too modest. If the chain of events they have set in motion leads to the conclusion they both want, then the future will write of them -- as it will of Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin if their vision is realized -- that these were leaders who seized their days and actually dared to lead.

In mid-December TIME'S Jim Gaines, Joelle Attinger and Scott Macleod met separately with De Klerk and Mandela and asked them about common issues. Excerpts from the two interviews: