Pressures have begun to mount in South Africa for the ANC-led government to persuade the authorities in neighbouring Mozambique to charge or release Mr Robert McBride.
Mr McBride is a descendant of Irish volunteer John McBride who fought for the Boers in the AngloBoer war a century ago.
Mr McBride, a former ANC guerrilla, was sentenced to death for his role in a car-bomb explosion in the mid-1980s.
Later reprieved and then freed under an amnesty agreement, he has been held in solitary confinement in Mozambique for more than 70 days.
He was arrested in Mozambique on suspicion of gun running early in March.
Despite repeated attempts by his lawyers to bring an end to his suspension in legal limbo, he has been neither charged nor released.
His wife Paula told The Irish Times that the judge assigned to case, Mr Carlos Caetano, undertook to decide whether or not to charge him by last Monday.
But Mrs McBride said the deadline came and went without a decision.
The past few days have seen the emergence of a Free McBride Campaign led by the lawyer, Mr Aubrey Lekwane.
It has held placard demonstrations at the Mozambican Consulate-General and Parliament, where memoranda were handed to consular officials, and South Africa's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The memorandum given to the Foreign Affairs Ministry - where Mr McBride was a senior official at the time of his arrest - notes that there are ties between Mr McBride's arrest and the now discredited Meiring report alleging he was part of a coup aimed at toppling President Mandela's government.
Noting that the man arrested with Mr McBride in Mozambique, Mr Vusi Mbatha, was the prime source of the Meiring report - which led to the resignation of Defence Forces Chief Mr George Meiring - the memorandum says: "The fact that the provisional charge sheets rely primarily on Mbatha's statements suggests foul play."
The Free McBride Campaign and press inquiries have elicited an explanatory statement from the newly-created Government Communications and Information Service.
The statement stresses that South Africa recognises Mozambique as a sovereign country and will, therefore, not interfere in the judicial process in that country. It adds, however, that it is hopeful that the Mozambican authorities will bring the case to "a resolution soon, based on their own independent findings."