U.S. to S. Africa: Talk to Mandela : Pretoria Urged to Include Rebels in Negotiations

The United States is pressing South Africa’s white minority government to open negotiations with the country’s black leaders, including imprisoned African National Congress chief Nelson Mandela, on the country’s political future, U.S. officials said here Monday.

Such political discussions must become South Africa’s top priority, and the outcome of these talks with black leaders must be a new political system in which blacks participate fully on an equal basis with whites if a bloody revolution is to be averted, the Reagan Administration has told President Pieter W. Botha, in unusually frank diplomatic contacts.

Although the United States has urged Botha before, publicly and privately, to release Mandela and other political prisoners, it is now going significantly further in calling for the inclusion of Mandela--and by implication of the outlawed African National Congress--in the negotiations.

“No political dialogue is possible when key members are detained or in jail, specifically Mandela,” a U.S. official said, requesting that he not be quoted by name. “Nelson Mandela is regarded by many South African blacks as a major political spokesman. His attitude to the dialogue is crucial. As long as he is kept out, others won’t join.”

The Botha government continues to insist, however, that Mandela will not be freed until he renounces violence in the struggle against apartheid, something he has refused to do unless the government first disavows the apartheid system itself.

Imprisoned in 1961, Mandela, now 67, is under a life sentence for sabotage. Despite his long isolation, he remains a figure of great respect to many South African blacks.

Pretoria has also declared that it will not negotiate with the African National Congress, outlawed in 1960, as long as it continues its violent struggle and has Communists in its leadership.

Nevertheless, top South African businessmen met in Zambia late last week with officials of the guerrilla group--an effort to see what common ground there is between them on the country’s future.

The United States believes that the Botha government should drop all these conditions, American officials said, because “neither side can ask the other to renounce part of its political program as a precondition (of the talks),” as one aide put it. The official made it clear that Washington is convinced that discussions must be started soon if violence is to be halted.

‘Active Engagement’

This high-profile American stance, part of Reagan’s new approach of “active engagement” toward South Africa, is a striking shift from the quiet diplomacy of the “constructive engagement” policy of the last four years, which allowed the South African government to proceed with gradual reforms at its own pace without great U.S. pressure.

On his return to Pretoria after three months in the United States, where he was recalled for “consultations,” American Ambassador Herman W. Nickel said South Africa has passed the point where government statements--even a declaration of its intention to end racial separation--can bring peace.

“Things have to be seen to be done,” he told a reporter at that time, pointing out that blacks were cynical about the latest pledges of reform because so many promises of change have been broken in the past.

Meanwhile, South African strife continued Monday. Two black youths were killed at Tembisa, a black township east of Johannesburg, when a passenger in an ambulance fired on a group of more than 50 people attacking it, police reported. Another youth died in Soweto, Johannesburg’s sprawling black sister city, after being shot in the head last Friday, when police tried to disperse students at his school.

Rumor Spurs Incident

Several thousand high school students went on a rampage Monday afternoon in Soweto after a rumor spread that Mandela had died in prison. Despite efforts by police to disperse the stone-throwing youths, several trucks were burned and bus service was halted to much of Soweto, forcing workers to walk home from the outskirts of the township.

Mandela’s family denied that the black nationalist leader, who faces surgery for an enlarged prostate gland and cysts on his liver and kidneys, had died.

Three black men were stoned to death in Soweto in separate incidents over the weekend, and a fourth man was shot in one of them, but police said they were not certain of the motives.

In Colored (mixed-race) townships outside Cape Town, flaming barricades made from tires, wrecked autos and construction material were erected across dozens of highways and side roads in a new upsurge of unrest there. Police, attacked with firebombs as they tried to clear the roads, were reported using shotguns and rifles to disperse the crowds. Hospitals reported receiving more than 10 wounded youths.

In one incident outside Cape Town, a chemical tank truck, filled with 4,500 gallons of solvent, was stopped by black youths and set afire on the airport highway. Flames lit the skyline for almost two hours.

Reopening of Schools

Police in Cape Town are preparing for a major confrontation today, when Colored political activists mobilize students, teachers and parents in an attempt to reopen some of the 464 schools closed by the government for 10 days in an attempt to end unrest. Brigadier C.A. Swart, the new police commissioner there, warned Monday that the police will react with “all the force at our disposal” to quell the unrest.

Opponents of military conscription will begin three-week fasts in Cape Town’s Anglican and Roman Catholic cathedrals today to protest the use of the army in the country’s black and Colored townships and to demand an end to the draft.

A soldier was killed Monday when the armored car he was riding in tipped over; four soldiers have been killed in such accidents in the last six months.

Further unrest was reported from 10 other cities and towns around the country--including Durban, Port Elizabeth and one of the black townships outside Pretoria.