Dilemma for Regime : Mandela Sent Back to Jail in S. Africa

With an ironic reluctance, the South African government returned Nelson Mandela, the black nationalist leader, to prison early Saturday, unable once again to persuade him to accept its terms for his freedom.

Mandela, 67, former president of the now-outlawed African National Congress, was taken at dawn Saturday from the Cape Town hospital where he has been recovering from prostate surgery performed Nov. 3 and returned to suburban Pollsmoor Prison, according to a Prisons Department spokesman in Pretoria.

The move ended nationwide speculation that Mandela was about to be released after 23 years in prison--and left the government of President Pieter W. Botha with the difficult task of explaining why he was not freed, as so many had expected, and when he will be.

‘Jailing Himself Now’

“Nelson Mandela is jailing himself now,” a senior government official commented in Pretoria later Saturday. “We have done almost everything we can to set him free except push him out the prison gate. Instead, he is setting terms for us, and we can’t meet them.”

Mandela’s continuing imprisonment has become a political dilemma of increasing magnitude for Botha’s minority white government:

--Keeping Mandela in jail, serving a life sentence for sabotage and other revolutionary activities, means ignoring the growing demands at home and abroad for his release. Such a strategy also runs the risk that he might die in prison, becoming an even greater martyr in the struggle against apartheid and unleashing even greater violence in the country’s black ghetto townships.

His release, on the other hand, would convince many South Africans, blacks and whites, that the government is serious about reform, about a political solution to the country’s growing violence, and this would in turn persuade foreign critics not to impose further economic sanctions.

While some liberal whites here go as far as to argue that only Mandela’s release could prevent the country from sliding into a racial civil war, the government’s more Machiavellian supporters express hope that blacks would be so taken up with their own intense rivalries that they would forget about their plans for revolution for some time.

--But releasing Mandela unconditionally, that is on his terms, really requires a government decision not just to declare an end to racial segregation here but to negotiate with a black coalition, led by Mandela with a legalized African National Congress as a major element on a constitutional formula for sharing political power. Were Mandela freed, even his black political rivals admit, almost all blacks would unite behind him, at least initially, for negotiations on a power-sharing formula.

“If we freed him without the intention of negotiating, we would have turned this ‘unrest situation’ into a civil war,” a member of Parliament from the liberal wing of Botha’s ruling National Party commented.

Compromise Needed

“What we urgently need to find is a compromise, and that initial agreement could, in fact, give us the impetus for negotiations on the basic questions this country faces.”

Other political analysts have come to see the question as the classic problem of “how to square the political circle.”

“Almost any terms the government would impose are, in their very nature, unacceptable to Mandela and the African National Congress,” said a senior newspaper editor who saw Botha recently, “and the insistence on no conditions is equally unacceptable to the government and its supporters. . . . What was a minor issue for so long has--as the unrest has grown and the pressure upon us from abroad increased--become a major one.

“Clearly, Mandela must be released--the future of the country depends on it--but, just as clearly, the government is not for everything that would logically follow from such a decision. Thus, we have all these efforts to release him but make sure he is not really free. A compromise will be found, I think, but it will come closer to Mandela’s terms than Botha’s.”

Mandela Rejects Offers

Five times over the past year and a half, according to well-placed government sources, Mandela has rejected a conditional state offer to free him and insisted instead on an unconditional release for himself and other long-term political prisoners.

This time Mandela said no to a reported offer to free him and send him into exile in Lusaka, Zambia, the headquarters now of the African National Congress. He was tempted because it would mean resuming the leadership of the anti-apartheid movement, although from abroad, but rejected the proposal “as a matter of principle,” according to sources close to the Mandela family.

“He cannot accept the right of Pretoria to impose whatever terms and conditions it wishes . . . because it simply has no right to rule,” one source said, summing up Mandela’s views.

“Nor did he see great and immediate gains, the kind that would bring apartheid to a quick end, if he went abroad to assume the African National Congress leadership. Finally, he felt that exile from his own country after so many, many years in prison was too large a price to pay for very little gain.”

Congress Backs Decision

Throughout these discussions, which kept Mandela in the hospital an additional two weeks as government emissaries came and went, the Mandela family was in touch with the African National Congress leadership in Lusaka, and when the decision was made at the end of last week to reject the offer, the Mandela family had the full backing of the congress.

Earlier this year, Mandela twice rejected an offer of freedom within South Africa because of Botha’s condition that he renounce the use of violence in the struggle against apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule.

This would have been a repudiation, Mandela explained, of all the young black guerrillas who followed him in taking up arms against the Pretoria regime over the past 25 years after nonviolent methods of protest failed to end apartheid. If violence were to be renounced, he continued, the government should do so first, for it had imposed apartheid and maintained that system through force of arms.

Last year, Mandela turned down two government proposals to release him into the custody of the nominally independent Xhosa tribal homeland of Transkei, whose president, Kaiser Matanzima, is a cousin. Mandela replied that he rejects the whole concept of tribal homelands, which are based on apartheid ideology, and that he considers himself a South African whose home is in Johannesburg.

A Difficult Decision

The decision to reject the most recent proposal, that of exile, was not so clear-cut, according to black political observers and friends of the Mandela family, because Mandela could do much by resuming the African National Congress presidency, now held by his former law partner, Oliver Tambo.

Invitations to meet with foreign heads of state, premiers and foreign ministers were certain, and the international prestige of the African National Congress would have been raised to new heights. At the same time, diplomatic pressure on Pretoria would have been intensified. A black “government in exile” could be formed to gain further international recognition.

Within the country, the impact would have been equally dramatic. Mandela’s leadership, albeit in exile, would probably be recognized by all blacks, and political rivals would be brought into a coalition led by the African National Congress. Black youths, who are already leaving now by the thousands to join black nationalist guerrilla groups abroad, would probably stream out of the country to follow Mandela, a man jailed years before they were born but who symbolizes for them the whole struggle against apartheid.

Harm to Campaign Seen

But the effect of exile, these sources said, might also be to slow the pace of the campaign to end apartheid, to distance its leaders from its daily turmoil, to seal the identity of the African National Congress as an “emigre group” whose energies are taken up in peripheral issues and organizational matters.

The decisive issue was, however, Mandela’s image as a leader of uncompromising dedication, not only continuing to sacrifice personal interests to those of his people but also refusing to compromise on matters of fundamental principles.

“All across the country, in the most remote villages you can imagine, you find kids named Nelson Mandela, because the people know they have a leader and he is Nelson Mandela, and he is in prison because he will not sell out the people,” says a black political commentator, who himself has ideological differences with Mandela. “Agree with his politics or not, you have to recognize his integrity, his dedication, the hope he inspires in people--and all that spells leadership, authentic black leadership.”