S. Africa Finds Raids Against Rebels Hard to Justify in Terms of Results

As South Africa counts the mounting political costs of its attacks against African National Congress facilities in three neighboring countries this week, it is finding the raids difficult to justify in terms of the immediate results.

The outlawed guerrilla group, far from being intimidated by the bold, long-distance strikes at its guerrilla bases, offices and residences, declared Wednesday that it will arm more blacks and launch a new campaign to “bring the ruling class to its knees.”

South Africa’s black neighbors--including Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe, which were hit in the Monday raids--are taking the attacks as a warning to strengthen their defenses and to increase their help to the African National Congress in its fight to end the apartheid system.

And foreign nations, which had placed high hopes on President Pieter W. Botha’s promises of far-reaching reforms and on proposals earlier this month for breakthrough negotiations between the government and the rebels, are again talking about imposing sanctions on South Africa.

In Washington, for instance, 44 members of Congress on Wednesday sponsored a bill calling for new economic sanctions against South Africa, including a ban on new investments.

Against this, the government can only show that it demolished the rebels’ office and principal residence in Zimbabwe’s capital of Harare and shot up rooms that guerrillas are believed to have used in Gaborone, Botswana. In Zambia, South African commandos and planes attacked a U.N. refugee camp that they apparently mistook for an ANC compound nearby.

None of the three people killed or the dozen wounded in the raids were reported to be South African, let alone officials or guerrillas of the African National Congress.

“Militarily, the gains are piffling or irrelevant,” Ken Owen, the editor of the Johannesburg financial newspaper Business Day wrote Wednesday. Owen expressed widely heard doubts about the wisdom of the raids and suggested that the government had become “rudderless” under Botha.

“Politically and economically, the costs of this may well be ruinous,” he wrote. Explaining the government’s reasoning, Louis Nel, the deputy minister of information, insisted at a briefing here Wednesday that the raids were intended to send the rebels “a clear message that we can reach them wherever they are” and to disrupt key infiltration routes into South Africa for use by guerrillas.

The South African commandos were convinced, Nel added, that they had killed “at least two” rebel officials in Harare, although Zimbabwe was believed to be hiding this for propaganda purposes. The raiders also thought they had wounded, perhaps fatally, other rebel personnel at Gaborone.

Botha, addressing the Indian House of Delegates of South Africa’s three-chamber Parliament in Cape Town, went further and declared an intention to destroy the ANC in an all-out campaign against the 74-year-old movement.

“We will continue to strike against ANC base facilities in foreign countries in accord with our legal right,” he said. “South Africa has the capacity and the will to break the ANC. We have only delivered the first installment. If necessary, we will strike again.”

The African National Congress’ reply was to call Wednesday for broadened attacks on the regime in a “death-defying” campaign.

Oliver Tambo, the guerrilla group’s president, said in radio broadcasts from headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia: “Let us intensify our armed activities at all levels. More and more of our people must be armed.”

To his critics, Botha’s declaration in Parliament was taken as evidence that he intends to dictate the scope and pace of political reform here and will never negotiate with Tambo’s group, although it appears to independent observers to command more support among the country’s black majority than any other.

Other critics, here and abroad, commented that the Commonwealth peace mission, which had been attempting to bring the government into negotiations with the rebel group and end the violence, was all but dead as a result of the raids. Some speculated that this had been Botha’s intention in ordering the attacks while the Commonwealth’s seven-member “group of eminent persons” was in southern Africa.

“I am very doubtful any dialogue will bring us to a meaningful solution now,” Zambia’s President Kenneth D. Kaunda said in Lusaka on Wednesday. “I believe the signals that we ought to take from what has happened are that the South Africans are not ready for . . . any meaningful talks.”

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha said, nevertheless, that the government is willing to continue its discussions with the Commonwealth group, drawn from Britain and six other countries and including such major figures as former Nigerian head of state Olusegun Obasanjo and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser. But ranking Commonwealth diplomats here said that the group is now more likely to propose sanctions against South Africa next month.

Assessing these setbacks, some political analysts have looked for deeper explanations of the raids and suggested that the “message for the ANC” was also intended for right-wing white extremists, whose attacks on Botha’s National Party for its gradual reforms have won increasing support in recent months.

‘Afrikaner Tribal Leader’

“Weighing all the facts, it is hard to escape the conclusion that President Botha, in accepting personal responsibility (for the raids), stands revealed as a hawk among hawks and as an Afrikaner nationalist tribal leader whose main concern is the solidarity and supremacy of the tribe,” Cape Town’s liberal Cape Times said in an editorial Wednesday.

“No convincing military rationale has been offered. It is now plain that the raids were designed to mollify the restive right wing of the National Party, which cannot understand why the ‘unrest’ has still not been brought under control by the police and is inclined to attribute all such problems to communists across the borders.”

Prof. John Barratt, director of the South African Institute of International Relations, said the increasing insecurity of the country’s outnumbered whites made such actions more widely popular than critics would believe.

“All opinion polls indicate overwhelming support for this kind of action among whites,” Barratt said, “so there may be some political gain for the government among whites, not just the increased antagonism among blacks.”

The raids have been applauded by most of the Afrikaans- language press as necessary to ensure the country’s security, and government supporters defended them strongly in the emergency debates in Parliament.

Yet another element, according to those who know the 70-year-old president well, may be Botha’s own personality--particularly his hot temper and stubbornness when he feels he is being pushed into a course of action.

The Commonwealth proposal could have been seen by Botha as an attempt to force him into unwanted actions. As offered in Lusaka last week, it called for legalization of the ANC, release of its imprisoned patriarch Nelson Mandela, the return of other, exiled leaders and members, and a cease-fire between the guerrilla organization and the government as the basis for negotiations on the country’s future.

“If P.W.’s pushed too hard, he pushes back even harder,” a National Party associate of the president for many years said, “and that is a factor that must never be overlooked. . . . P.W. Botha is not a man to be pressurized.”