Moderate Leaders Needed to Reach Peace, Kassebaum Says

Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum, chairwoman of a Senate subcommittee on Africa, said Wednesday that South Africa lacks moderate leaders to bring about a peaceful solution to its racial conflict.

The Kansas Republican told a luncheon honoring 84 South African women, “South Africa needs a miracle. It needs a miracle that can only come through bold leadership.”

She urged both blacks and whites to change their approaches in the conflict over apartheid, the system of forced racial segregation under which the black majority is denied a voice in national affairs.

Violence linked to the conflict has killed more than 2,100 people over the last two years, most of them blacks.

‘Suffocate Any Hope’

“If fear remains the primary force of white politics, South Africa will sink deeper and deeper into a paralysis that will suffocate any hope for the future,” the senator said.

Kassebaum arrived in South Africa from Mozambique on Tuesday and was to go to Botswana from here.

At a news conference, she said that moderate leadership “has to exist if there can be any peaceful change” in South Africa.

“It’s just whether there is anyone who can provide that leadership, which has to be extraordinarily bold and not without great risk,” she said. “I don’t believe it exists at the moment.”

She told the luncheon, “If South African blacks choose to go farther down the path of blowing up innocent men, women and children or burning alive those suspected of collaboration, then they will surrender the moral authority that must be the key force in ending apartheid.

“Hatred and anger can destroy a nation, but they cannot build a just and prosperous one.”

Urges Mandela’s Release

Kassebaum repeated a call for the release of Nelson Mandela, a leader of the banned African National Congress black guerrilla group. Mandela is serving a life sentence for a 1964 conviction of plotting sabotage and is regarded as having wide support among blacks.

At the news conference, Kassebaum declined to endorse specifically the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s recent suggestion that President Reagan meet leaders of the black states bordering South Africa.

But she said, “It is always useful to have a dialogue.”

Kassebaum said she hopes Reagan will extend and expand his year-old executive order imposing limited sanctions against South Africa, as that would “have a far stronger message here in South Africa” than sanctions legislation adopted by Congress with presidential opposition.