Mandela’s Tough Stance Stressed by Wife

Winnie Mandela, the wife of imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson R. Mandela, said here Wednesday that her husband believes the time has passed when South Africans of different races can settle their differences and chart the country’s future through discussions at a national convention.

Noting that the minority white government has for more than two decades rejected all calls for such a constitutional convention, she declared, “The only other aspect that can be discussed by the people of this country and the ruling Afrikaners is the handing over of power.”

The clear implication was that the 67-year-old Nelson Mandela, jailed in 1961 and serving a life sentence for sabotage and subversion, would not participate in a national convention called by the government, even if that were the price of his freedom, without major concessions in advance.

His wife’s declaration reflected the hard line taken at the group’s June conference in Zambia. It quickly dimmed the hopes of many people here--whites as well as blacks--that a power-sharing arrangement, ensuring a peaceful transition to some form of majority rule, could be negotiated at a convention at which the outlawed black nationalist organization would play a crucial role.

Meeting Sought

Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, leader of the liberal white opposition Progressive Federal Party, whose political program calls for a national convention, immediately announced that he will seek government permission for a meeting with the jailed Mandela.

Leaders of the major multiracial Christian churches, which also called earlier this week for such a convention to end the sustained unrest here, expressed concern that another forum for reconciliation has been lost.

In a separate development Wednesday, Nelson Mandela was quoted as saying that if he was released from prison, he would be jailed again within 24 hours because he sees “no alternative” to violent revolution, adding that there is “no room for peaceful struggle.”

Mandela made the comments Monday in an interview in prison with Cal Thomas, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times Syndicate, and columnist John Lofton of the Washington Times. Thomas is also an associate of the Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of the conservative Moral Majority. An article recounting the interview was released Wednesday.

The two columnists quoted the nationalist leader as saying that communism is preferable to apartheid because communism has no color bar and, under communism “everybody would be living better.”

South African President Pieter W. Botha has said he would consider releasing Mandela from prison if he “gives a commitment that he will not make himself guilty of planning, instigating or committing acts of violence for the furtherance of political objectives.”

But Mandela told Lofton and Thomas that he rejects this offer “outright” because “I didn’t come to prison because I wanted to.” He said the conditions that prevailed in the 1960s, when he was jailed, compelled him to go to prison. And, “as far as I can follow from political events, conditions are much the same now, if not worse.”

‘Precisely His Position’

According to the columnists’ report, “When asked if he is saying, explicitly, that he will not renounce violence and would again be jailed because he would do the same thing he was convicted of doing, (Mandela) says yes, this is precisely his position.”

On the question of divestiture and economic sanctions against South Africa, Lofton and Thomas said Mandela is “definitely” for this strategy “very strongly” because it has “agitated the powers that be.” Asked about whether blacks and other nonwhites would by hurt by divestiture, he is reported to have said: “We have to tighten our belts. There must be sacrifice for liberation.”

Winnie Mandela’s words to reporters Wednesday were tough and clearly intended to be the African National Congress’ answer to Botha’s speech last week, in which he promised negotiations with blacks on the country’s future but failed to meet even the most modest expectations of specific reforms in apartheid, the system of racial segregation and minority white rule.

With the news conference, her second in a week, Winnie Mandela boldly defied a government order barring her from political activity and banishing her to the remote town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State. As a result, she has emerged as a leading political spokesman for South Africa’s blacks, challenging the regime to jail her if it dares and rallying blacks to the African National Congress.

No Government Reaction

Government spokesmen made no immediate comment on her remarks but Justice Minister H.J. Coetsee said he has ordered the prisons department to enforce strictly regulations on family visits and legal conferences to ensure that Nelson Mandela makes no further statements from prison.

Winnie Mandela, who met with her husband last week at Pollsmoor Prison outside Cape Town, also sharply criticized the United States and Britain on Wednesday for not taking a tougher line with the Pretoria government. She urged them to impose economic sanctions on South Africa and to ostracize it from the international community in order to force an end to apartheid.

To underscore her point, she read a letter from her lawyer to the U.S. Consulate General here rejecting a $10,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to rebuild a clinic that was destroyed last week when her small Brandfort home was attacked with firebombs.

“The offer could well give the impression to the people of this country that (the Reagan) Administration is genuinely against the apartheid government here, and this is not so,” the letter said.

Winnie Mandela, 48, risked as much as six years in prison by violating the terms of the government ban--specifically, by coming to Johannesburg from Brandfort, by meeting with more than one person at a time (60 journalists, in fact) and by speaking for publication.

She was setting out the terms her husband and other leaders of the African National Congress have set for a political resolution of the deepening crisis here, and she began by dismissing the government’s promises of reform.

‘Disastrous Consequences’

“I believe (Botha’s speech last week) will have disastrous consequences for South Africa,” she said. “I believe he is totally committed to the tragic path which the National (Party) government has followed since the white electorate brought it to power in 1948. . . . The government is clearly still committed to the violent suppression of the legitimate aspirations of my people.”

But she did not totally foreclose compromise, including a constitutional convention, if political prisoners, among them her husband, are released, if exiles are permitted to return, if the African National Congress is allowed to operate legally again and, above all, if apartheid is abolished.

With such “free political activity allowed,” she continued, “the people then may decide who will govern” and whether a national convention is possible. Such a convention is now sought equally by liberal whites and moderate blacks and by such organizations as the United Democratic Front, the major alliance of anti-apartheid groups; the South African Council of Churches, and Inkatha, the Zulu political movement.