Soviet support for the ANC did not cease until the collapse of the USSR. But these debates and the growing contacts with different circles of the South African public, as well as Soviet participation alongside the apartheid government, in the negotiations over Angola and Namibia, were noticed — painfully by the ANC and triumphantly by Pretoria. Pretoria was greatly reassured about Soviet goals in southern Africa, while the ANC feared it might lose its most powerful ally. These opposing reactions to the changes in the USSR definitely helped to bring both to the negotiating table. 

Mandela finally left prison in 1990. In his very first speech he advocated nationalisation. He was soon disabused by foreign bankers and for the rest of his presidency the word was not heard again. But the seeds of the decades of propaganda did not go away, and to a degree which most of the rest of the world does not appreciate, the struggle for the National Democratic Revolution — and a socialist South Africa — continues fiercely to this day.