The idea itself was startling.

In Dec-ember 1989, according to author Martin Meredith, the idea led off discussions in a special meeting of cabinet members and other government officials: should the ban on liberation political organizations by lifted?

Within the opening months of the following year, the answer came. The ban against all liberation organizations, including the African National Congress, was lifted and Nelson Mandela was to be freed from prison.

President F.W. de Klerk, 25 years ago this week, Feb. 2, 1990 to be exact, announced before South Africa's parliament, in what was expected to be a routine speech to open the parliamentary session, liberation organizations were no longer banned. A host of other restrictions, including those on the media, fell away as well.

De Klerk kept the release of Mandela, the last activist to be imprisoned for life in the Rivonia trial of 1962, as his final flourish. Mandela, Meredith quoted de Klerk in his biography of the first black president of South Africa, was to be released "unconditionally" and "without delay."

In his autobiography "Long Walk to Freedom," Mandela described the moment as "breathtaking."

De Klerk, Meredith wrote, kept his own council on his move effectively beginning of the end of apartheid, "a brutal regime of oppression based on criteria of race alone" according to Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Nobel Committee, in his speech awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to de Klerk and Mandela in 1993.

De Klerk, Meredith wrote, had kept his intentions secret from many, including his own wife.

However, much was happening behind the scenes.

In his autobiography, Mandela told of earlier offers of release he rejected. Mandela and de Klerk met several times before the February announcement to discuss the future of South Africa. Mandela also had met with de Klerk's predecessor in office, P.W. Botha, a staunch supporter of apartheid. In the months leading up to the unprecedented announcement, the ANC presented proposals for a negotiated settlement, according to Meredith. Permission was given by de Klerk for a demonstration against police in Cape Town. In October 1989, four ANC members sentenced to life in prison were set free after 25 years. The tide was shifting.

And yet, no one was more surprised by his promised release than Mandela himself.

"When he came out of prison, many people feared he would turn out to have feet of clay," wrote Mandela's longtime friend and fellow Nobel laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, at Mandela's death in December 2013.

Mandela would go on to become the first black president of South Africa and, with de Klerk as deputy president, dismantle much of apartheid.

The first black president of the United States of America, marking Mandela's death in 2013, recalled his own first political action was to protest apartheid.

De Klerk, now 78, founder and chairman of the board of trustees of the F.W. de Klerk Foundation, acknowledged the significance of 1990 in comments about South Africa's past, present and future featured on the foundation website. Circumstances offered what de Klerk described as "a historic window of opportunity."

"We did not hesitate. We jumped through," de Klerk said.

In the quarter century since the announcement on the floor of parliament, South Africa has gone on to be what de Klerk terms a non-racial constitutional democracy.

In a world environment where news headlines trumpet stories of civil strife, political bickering, wanton human rights violations and catastrophic upheaval worldwide and at home, it is worth a moment to consider the value of what happened on a February day in 1990.

April Peterson

Editorial assistant

East Penn Press

Salisbury Press