WORLD, Page 66SOUTH AFRICATesting the WatersThough the temperature is not yet right, the white government andblack leaders are tiptoeing closer to negotiations over the fateof their country By Bruce W. Nelan
Outside the tan stucco shoe-box house in a dusty corner of
Soweto, bands of shouting youths draped the black, green and gold
banner of the outlawed African National Congress over the driveway.
Others hoisted a smaller version up a makeshift flagpole atop the
roof. Inside, Walter Sisulu, 77, the liberation organization's
former secretary-general, conferred by phone with the A.N.C.'s
exiled leaders in Lusaka, Zambia. Then he walked across the street
to an Anglican church that had been transformed into a meeting
hall. Hundreds of supporters were gathered there, celebrating
Sisulu's release from prison after serving more than 25 years of
a life sentence for sabotage and plotting to overthrow the white
government. As he and six other newly freed prisoners raised their
clenched fists and shouted "Amandla" (power), the crowd roared back
"Awethu" (is ours).
Banned since 1960, the A.N.C. vividly returned to the South
African political stage last week. By releasing several A.N.C.
leaders without restricting their activities, and by allowing their
celebrations to take place unhindered, the government seemed to
grant the group a sort of provisional legal status. The leaders
will appear at an A.N.C. rally in Soweto this Sunday, the first
such assembly to be permitted in 30 years. State President F.W. de
Klerk was beginning to make good on the promise he made at his
inauguration last month to ease tensions and move the country into
a new era of negotiations. His action signaled his potential
willingness to go even further -- to free Nelson Mandela, the
symbolic leader of black nationalism, and to sit down for talks
with the A.N.C., which for three decades has been dedicated to
toppling the government by "armed struggle."
Like his colleagues in the A.N.C. and the Mass Democratic
Movement, a coalition of antiapartheid organizations, Sisulu
believed the government's nascent benevolence had been forced on
it by domestic and international pressure as well as by its desire
to avoid further economic sanctions. While no one from the
government notified Sisulu's wife Albertina that he was to be
released, De Klerk found time to telephone British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher to tell her he was freeing a group of aging black
leaders as she had urged him to do. Thatcher took that news with
her to the Commonwealth conference in Kuala Lumpur last week, where
she opposed all proposals for additional sanctions. This
malleability was something new for Pretoria, however. "The classic
Afrikaner response is never to be seen to be giving in to foreign
pressure," says a Western diplomat. "De Klerk is showing much
greater sensitivity."
Of all the pressures exerted on South Africa from abroad,
perhaps the most sobering to Pretoria was the action of Western
bankers, who in 1985 halted all new loans and demanded repayment
of some $14 billion in short-term debt. South Africa has been
paying back the loans ever since, but the export of so much capital
has limited the country's economic growth. Last week the pressure
was eased significantly. The South African Reserve Bank announced
that it had negotiated a deal with its creditors to repay $1.5
billion through December 1993 and turn $6.5 billion into long-term
credits. Antiapartheid campaigners attacked the arrangement as a
sellout. "I deplore the collaboration of the banks with the evil
system prevailing in South Africa," said Anglican Archbishop
Desmond Tutu. "They give capitalism a bad name, and they close off
peaceful avenues for bringing about fundamental change."
In a series of earlier gestures to outside opinion, De Klerk
had ordered the police to stop using long plastic whips, called
sjamboks, and to allow mass protests in public if they were
peaceful. But those were changes in the enforcement of security
rules, not political reforms. The new President is setting the
stage for more substantive steps. On Saturday, for example, De
Klerk announced that the government could lift the 1986 state of
emergency and "unban" restricted organizations if they showed "by
word and deed" that such moves would not lead to political unrest.
De Klerk has also appointed Gerrit Viljoen, 63, to the post of
Minister of Constitutional Development, making him chief political
negotiator with the black majority. Viljoen, a former professor and
chairman of the secret Afrikaner society the Broederbond, said last
week that by releasing Sisulu and other A.N.C. officials, the
government was "testing the waters" to see if it could free Mandela
without causing uncontrollable demonstrations.
Viljoen provided a large opening toward negotiations with the
A.N.C. by rejiggering the ground rules on who could take part.
Previously, the government had insisted that no organization could
come to the table without renouncing the use of violence for
political ends, something the A.N.C. still refuses to do. Now, said
Viljoen, "we are trying to include as many people as possible,
provided there is no threat of violence to back up positions at the
negotiating table." This formula, dropping the demand for a formal
renunciation, clears the way for A.N.C. participation.
The government casts its invitation even wider. "We are
prepared to include in discussions all people working toward a
peaceful solution," Viljoen stressed. Thus the A.N.C. would not be
the government's sole negotiating partner -- a role it demands --
but would have to sit down with leaders of Pretoria-created black
"homelands" and possibly members of black municipal councils,
officials the A.N.C. calls "collaborators" with the apartheid
system. This plan could lead to either a dilution of the
organization's power at the bargaining table or the onus of failure
if it refuses to take part in talks that include other black
groups.
Cyril Ramaphosa, a leader of the Mass Democratic Movement, says
Viljoen's proposal would cause the A.N.C. to "lose ground" if it
were simply "one of many groups." Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi,
head of the 1.5 million-member Inkatha movement and an opponent of
the A.N.C.'s socialist orientation, responds, "I shudder to think
what would happen to South Africa if we all stood aside and allowed
only one black party to negotiate the country's future." To try to
hurdle this and other obstacles and preconditions, Viljoen suggests
preliminary "talks about talks."
Other, more radical activists of the Pan-Africanist Congress,
which is also banned, reject talks altogether. Jafta Masemola, a
P.A.C. leader released with Sisulu, said, "We cannot negotiate with
the usurpers of our land." While most black leaders agree that De
Klerk has set off in a new direction, they remain skeptical because
of the destination he has in mind. De Klerk's policy, fully
endorsed by the ruling National Party, is one of constitutionally
guaranteed "group rights" defined by race, including the right of
whites to veto legislation they might consider threatening, to live
in whites-only neighborhoods and to attend segregated schools.
"Ethnic and cultural differences exist," says Viljoen, "and should
be recognized in a new constitution."
At its core, the A.N.C. position is equally nonnegotiable,
calling for a swift transfer of state power from whites to blacks.
The exiled organization stands unwaveringly for one-person,
one-vote majority rule in a unitary state. Such an arrangement is
"unfair" and unacceptable, says De Klerk. "Afrikaners won't agree
to that until they are militarily defeated," says a senior diplomat
in Pretoria, "and the balance of power in the country right now
does not favor revolution."
Leaders of the domestic Mass Democratic Movement are in a
quandary: they tend to favor negotiations because the process might
lead to government concessions that are unforeseen now, but they
do not want to go to the table if their presence offers nothing but
a public relations success for De Klerk by making him look like a
peacemaker. Ramaphosa, head of the black National Union of
Mineworkers, concedes that the government does appear to be seeking
change. "One could say they are willing to usher in a new South
Africa," he says, "but some of us have serious doubts because they
are still talking about group rights. That to us is still
apartheid." Even so, black leaders do not want to pass up what
could be an opportunity. They understand that De Klerk is not
simply going to hand over the government and that a step-by-step
process is the only realistic approach. "But if we were to say that
publicly," one leader admits, "it would have a devastating effect
on our movement. It could demobilize our people."
After his release from prison, Sisulu said he had learned that
"pressure" was the only way to make South Africa change, and that
"the struggle in all its aspects" should continue. That remains the
consensus among black leaders, who say that protests, boycotts and
strikes will go on -- with the full blessing of Nelson Mandela --
and the A.N.C. will work to rebuild its organization inside South
Africa. If De Klerk is to get negotiations on track, he will have
to offer more concessions to prove that reconciliation rather than
