When the Minister for Foreign Affairs, David Andrews, arrived in Johannesburg from the Euro-Med conference in Palermo last week, he had a few minutes to read the faxes from Iveagh House with extracts from that morning's Dublin papers before racing off to meet Nelson Mandela. It meant he was able to report that the Irish Times poll showed strong support for pro-Agreement candidates in the coming Northern Ireland election. It was very good news indeed, said the South African president. The two men, above, later met the press in the garden of the president's Pretoria residence. The Irish Ambassador to South Africa, Eamon O Tuathail, and the South African ambassador to Dublin, Pierre Dietrichsen, are in the background.