I really wanted to hunker down and ride it out.  But the insufferable propaganda around the death of Nelson Mandela is too much to ignore. Rather than deconstruct all of these ridiculous liberal CNN-isms and talking points, let’s just cut it down to brass tacks and stick to historical facts.
Apartheid as a political structure in South Africa was bad. Oppression under any guise is always wrong.
But with Apartheid you must step back to the geo-political map of 1976-1990 and evaluate the alternatives.
A bunch of stuff happened between the fall of the Shah of Iran and the collapse of the Berlin Wall / Soviet Empire which framed the backdrop for U.S. political discussion and eventual activity in South Africa.
Namely, for those of us who were actually engaged in the fight, the last big push of desperate Communist expansion was underway. 
Simultaneously at home, energy, specifically oil prices, and a lack of U.S. independence on it, led to massive gasoline prices at the pumps which was crippling our economy.  We were weak.
Not only were we weak economically, but our ability to influence global events was diminished as an exponential outcome of the Odd/Even every-other-day gas lines at our service stations.
The alternative to Apartheid in South Africa was the ANC (African National Congress).

The ANC was an espoused and committed political affiliate and beneficiary of Communist expansion. In short the ANC was trying to gain freedom, momentum and influence by alignment with Communists: Cuba-Castro et al, and Marxists, Libya-Kaddafi, who benefitted from Communists.
The Soviets were expanding through Afghanistan albeit with increasing frustration. Iran was returning to Islamist roots and Mullah influence, and Muamar Kaddafi was terroristically joined at the hip with the PLO’s Yasser Arafat. All of these aforementioned influences were operating to expand their own interests and either align with, or avoid, opportunistic Soviet dominance.
And so, into this mix jumped the ANC.
Back at home Jimmy Carter was supporting Arafat as a means to put pressure on Israel and eventually force Egypt and Israel to knock off their engagements and hence the Camp David Peace Accord, Carter’s only real accomplishment.
However, as single-minded Carter worked on that – the oil dependence and mid-east pressure brought our economy to a standstill.
Ergo Communists checker-jumped all over the place and Iran gave us the middle finger taking control of our embassy.
In the background another U.S. political figure had been formulating a strategy, albeit quietly.  A BIG PICTURE approach to defeat communist spread.
Ronald Reagan looked at the map from a root cause perspective instead of looking at, and/or focusing on, the symptoms.
Essentially Reagan’s approach was this: Defeat communism – everything else will fall into place.
That “everything else” included an unlimited expansion of freedom opportunity.
By the time Reagan took office he had spoken about U.S. military strength with such stark contrast, including SDI (Strategic Defense Initiatives) which put offensive capabilities in the back yard of the communists, that Iran knew to cut bait and get out of his crosshairs.
Hostages freed…. move along, move along.
Kaddafi became a second Mid-East person of immediate interest because he was the shit stirrer opportunist.  It was Kaddafi’s bomb makers who were terrorizing everyone.  (See Pan Am #103, Berlin Bombing, Provisional IRA training camps, PLO, Moro National etc)
Now, before everyone goes and tries the Kaddafi and Mandela were pals shtick, let me remind you what a racist Kaddafi was……  Three words: “La Belle Nightclub“.

In 1986 Libyan diplomats, acting at the specific instruction of Libyan leader Qaddafi, sent a bomb expert, Yasser Chraidi, from Tripoli to East Berlin.   Chraidi was a member of The Libyan People’s Bureau (LPB).   Driving a Volkswagen Golf bearing East German diplomatic license plates, Chraidi then left East Berlin and traveled through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin.

He constructed and hid his device in an apartment belonging to a Palestinian student.   On April 5th 1986 the bomb was delivered to an apartment belonging to Ali Chaana.   His wife, Verena Chaana, and her sister Andrea, took the bomb to Friedenau, a district in West Berlin, where they walked in to “La Belle”, a popular Black hip-hop style nightclub.  (link)

What’s that?   You didn’t know La Belle was a “Black Club” ?  Well you wouldn’t unless you were looking beyond the liberal headlines of the time.   You see the media loved to avoid that little factoid.  Kaddafi bombed a German nightclub almost exclusively patronized by blacks.
Kadaffi was as big a racist as ever existed – but that didn’t fit with the self hating anti-American, anti-Reagan, influenced media to talk about it.   So down the memory hole it went.
Back in South Africa Winnie Mandela was the operative force behind the ANC and their violent engagements.
Imprisoned husband, Nelson, was fed information through a communications pipeline which was as much filtered with propaganda as needed to keep the sentiment of Mandela’s communist sympathy alive.
It was a few months, some would say years, after his release, when Mandela grasped the geo-political landscape and was able to reconcile the disparity between what he thought / was told, and what was actually going on.
By the time Mandela was released communism was almost defeated entirely by Reagan’s original plan;  it took Mandela a while to realize that – he was rapidly questioning everyone about what was going on.  Communication to Mandela no longer filtered.

In prison Mandela thought Communism was equivalent to Western Democracy in scope and global strength.   Subsequently the alignment with the ANC, and his views therein, toward the Communists made sense.
From his perspective Communism could opportunistically be used to gain an end to Apartheid.
Back in the U.S. everyone essentially felt that Apartheid was wrong.   While speeches and  rally’s were held to rail against it, there was only one problem.   If sanctions were put into place to remove it the alternative to Apartheid was a communist ANC.
Against that consideration Apartheid was left unaddressed until communism could be defeated.
After the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, after the U.S. military was re-established as dominant, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and as Communism was retreating – only then was it actually safe to structurally leverage South Africa toward the elimination of  Apartheid.
THAT was when F.W De Clerk could be pressured;  because that inability of communism to take foothold was what allowed Mandela to moderate and use “reconciliation”.
If the ANC were able to use the Soviets to finance their ideological political cause reconciliation would have been impossible because there was no incentive for the ANC to moderate.
From the perspective of the West, the decline of Communist expansion is what allowed the structure of Apartheid to be removed safely.
Ultimately a South African constitution, which allowed for minority protections, would advance reconciliation and end Apartheid.
But before Communism was defeated it was too dangerous to just embolden the ANC who had already aligned their intents and purposes with a variety of communist enterprises and been quite terroristic toward those ends.
50+ Democrats and almost all Republicans during the mid-1980’s understood this “Bigger Picture” goal.   Only the hardline leftists, the professional grievance advocates, saw no value in waiting.  Unfortunately that also included a large segment of the U.S. media who, as typical leftists, were drawn to the emotional arguments and not the practical.
So when you see the modern left talking about how Reagan did nothing, and how congressman Dick Cheney voted against South African sanctions (they’ll leave out the 50+ Democrats) you understand there was a bigger picture that needed to be addressed prior to the dissolution of Apartheid.
De Clerk knew what pressure was soon coming from the West once the Soviets were defeated.   That’s why he began organizing the transition of power while Mandela was still in prison.   By the time Mandela was released both he and De Clerk knew that a communist ANC was antithetical to the future of South Africa.
This my friends is the correct context for what was taking place.
It was not the desire to keep Apartheid as a flawed and oppressive political structure in place – it was a necessary choice to remove the looming cloud of what might fill the void before it could be deconstructed.
Ronald Reagan is very much to be credited for Mandela’s release.  So too is Pope John Paul, the Catholic Church, multiple nations, the media and Bill Clinton.
If you read the Reagan Diaries you grasp how much this president wanted a free and democratic South Africa.  However, he knew he must first defeat the larger beast, the soviets, who would have loved to grasp for the opportunity of the geographic lifeboat that South Africa represented.