While anti-apartheid figures in South Africa welcome Brutus's return, some warn that he will have to adjust to a substantially different set of circumstances.

But Judge Hugo said today that although Mr. Malan and other top generals were involved in planning the military operations against anti-apartheid figures, they had no idea these would include assassinations.

A discussion between the Government and Mr. Mandela, however tenuous, has alarmed some of his supporters, including his wife, Winnie, herself a prominent anti-apartheid figure.

There was widespread approval for the renaming this year of Johannesburg's airport after Oliver Tambo, a leading anti-apartheid figure and former African National Congress president.

The prosecution charged that his death was part of a wider conspiracy to kill anti-apartheid figures, including Mr. Mandela.

Two Periods of Detention Like many leading anti-apartheid figures, Mr. Ramaphosa has two periods of detention, amounting to 18 months, behind him.

The judicial commission concludedthat some police and military figures had attacked anti-apartheid figures, but that there was no evidence of death squads operated by the Government.

Leaders of the black and mixed-race churches, including some of the country's most prominent anti-apartheid figures, said the condemnation had not gone far enough.

A controversy has flared around Winnie Mandela, the anti-apartheid figure, over allegations that her bodyguards abducted and harmed four young men in a black township.

Defense lawyers said they lacked sufficient time to study an additional charge of conspiracy that prosecutors filed last week, alleging unspecified persecution of anti-apartheid figures.