Wife Expects Freedom for Mandela : South Africa: ‘This is the real stuff,’ she says after prison meeting to discuss arrangements for his release.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned nationalist leader Nelson R. Mandela, expressed confidence Monday that her husband will soon be released.

“I don’t think that we are talking about months any longer,” an exuberant Mandela told reporters after spending three hours with her husband at his prison house in Paarl near Cape Town.

“I am very hopeful now. This is the real stuff now,” she said.

Friends said they had never seen Mandela so positive about her husband’s freedom since he was sentenced in 1964 to life imprisonment for plotting to overthrow the white minority government.

She said neither she nor Mandela, 71, have been told when he would be freed. But they sense the day is fast approaching, she said.

Lawyer Dullah Omar, who accompanied Mandela to the prison house, told reporters that Mandela has asked to see his wife “because he wanted to discuss with her some preliminary arrangements relating to his release, in view of the general expectation that his release will be sooner rather than later.”

Winnie Mandela would not divulge what the arrangements were. But she said it was the first time they had discussed the subject in depth.

Asked how she felt, she broke into a broad smile and replied: “I think it is clear from my expression.”

Mandela’s release is widely regarded as the key to negotiations between the government and legitimate leaders of the disenfranchised black majority. Most black organizations, including the militant African National Congress, of which Mandela is a leader, have made his release a precondition for peace talks.

Reformist President Frederik W. de Klerk has released several of Mandela’s ANC colleagues in recent months and has indicated that the release of the world’s most famous political prisoner is also in the cards. The question became more compelling after the two men met for the first time on Dec. 13.

The ANC, meanwhile, has issued a statement that, while not deviating in content from existing policy, seems to present a more flexible image than in the past.

The statement marked the ANC’s 78th anniversary Monday. It said the organization is “committed to seizing any real opportunity that might emerge, genuinely to seek a political agreement for a speedy end of the apartheid system.”

The ANC said it will not be coerced into negotiations and cannot be expected to enter into such a process until it “enjoyed the same freedom to engage in political activity as did the (ruling) National Party.” The ANC has been banned in South Africa since 1960.