S. Africa Offers to Free Black Leader Mandela if He Rejects Violence

President Pieter W. Botha offered Thursday to free Nelson Mandela, the jailed leader of the outlawed African National Congress, on condition that he completely reject violence in the struggle against South Africa’s apartheid policies of racial segregation.

“All that is required of him now is that he should unconditionally reject violence as a political instrument,” Botha told the South African Parliament in a dramatic gesture intended to underscore his government’s commitment to broad political reforms.

Whether Mandela, jailed since 1962 and a major symbol of black resistance to apartheid, will accept Botha’s offer of freedom is not certain.

He has already rejected an offer of freedom conditioned on his agreeing to live in Transkei, a nominally independent tribal homeland here, and he has told friends that he will not accept restrictions on his political activities or movements as a condition of release.

Mandela’s Proposal

But Mandela also told a visiting British politician, Lord Bethell, in an interview at Pollsmoor Prison here last month, that the African National Congress would give up its armed struggle if South Africa’s white minority regime agrees to negotiate with it.

“The armed struggle was forced on us by the government,” Mandela told Bethell, “and if they want us to give it up, the ball is in their court. They must legalize us, treat us like a political party and negotiate with us.”

Mandela’s attorney, Ismail Ayob, said Thursday in Johannesburg that he doubts that Mandela would put himself above the organization and accept freedom for himself, despite his 23 years in prison, without the legalization of the African National Congress, which was banned in 1960.

Mandela did imply during his meeting with Bethell, however, that the African National Congress would respond positively to new government overtures and is willing to give up its intermittent guerrilla attacks if the government will negotiate on the country’s future.

‘The Choice Is His’

Botha told Parliament that the government would require Mandela to make “a commitment that he will not make himself guilty of planning, instigating or committing acts of violence for the furtherance of political objectives, but will conduct himself in such a way that he will not again have to be arrested.

“The government is willing to consider Mr. Mandela’s release, but I am sure that Parliament will understand that we cannot do so if Mr. Mandela himself says that the moment he leaves prison he will continue with his commitment to violence. It is therefore not the South African government which now stands in the way of Mr. Mandela’s freedom. It is he himself. The choice is his.”

Botha, questioned by Helen Suzman, a member of the white liberal opposition Progressive Federal Party, later extended the offer to all long-imprisoned political captives here.

However, South Africa’s internal security laws, which make it a crime to advocate virtually any change in the political system, are both so sweeping and so strict that many nonviolent political activities could be construed by the police and courts as illegal. Yet, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, leader of the Progressive Federal Party, praised Botha’s offer as reflecting “a far more reasonable and tolerant attitude” by the government.

In Cape Town, senior government officials explained that the overture was made not only in response to international calls for Mandela’s release and out of a desire to stress the regime’s hope for political accommodation here, but also in recognition that Mandela’s recent statements reflected a significant move by the African National Congress.

Mandela, who will be 67 this year, was barred from politics from 1953 to 1961 for his activities as a leader of the African National Congress. He was jailed for five years in 1962 and, while serving that term, was tried on treason charges, convicted and sentenced in 1964 along with other congress leaders to life imprisonment.