For African National Congress, Shultz Meeting Will Offer Immense Potential

For the African National Congress, the scheduled meeting in Washington on Wednesday between Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed black liberation movement, is a political breakthrough with immense potential in the group’s long struggle against South Africa’s white-led minority government.

The African National Congress sees the meeting as long-sought American recognition of its central role in any resolution of the conflict in South Africa and thus as a major boost in its standing at home and internationally.

“The significance should be very clear to white South Africans: They can no longer expect U.S. assistance to prop up minority rule,” Thabo Mbeki, one of the top officials of the African National Congress, said in an interview in Gaborone before leaving for the United States.

‘Lost Its Last Ally’

“Pretoria should know now that it not only has lost its last ally in perpetuating apartheid, but that Americans are enlisting in our struggle for a democratic, nonracial and just South Africa.”

Gone is the “delusion,” Mbeki said, that “there can be a settlement of the South African conflict without the ANC, that the regime in Pretoria can ‘reform’ its way out of its predicament, that we can be ignored or dealt with as a bunch of so-called terrorists. Not even the Reagan Administration believes such nonsense any longer, and that is why it wanted these talks with us.”

The significance of the Shultz-Tambo meeting has not been lost on Pretoria. The meeting gives U.S. recognition not only to the legitimacy of black grievances but also to the African National Congress as a major spokesman for the country’s black majority and, perhaps, as an eventual alternative to the present South African government.

Scathing Commentary

State-run Radio South Africa, in a commentary reflecting official thinking in Pretoria, denounced the talks in scathing terms as “subverting the aspirations of an entire people.”

An editor of the leading Afrikaans newspaper Beeld wrote that Washington has given the African National Congress “the opportunity of gaining respectability in the eyes of the Western world, an opportunity it has grabbed with both hands.”

A media campaign launched in Washington by 14 conservative Republican congressmen against the Shultz-Tambo meeting has been treated by pro-government newspapers in South Africa as an attempt to prevent the United States, as one editorial writer put it, from making “a historic blunder, one that could lose its last friends in Africa and greatly weaken its influence worldwide.”

Not since Congress overrode President Reagan’s veto and imposed economic sanctions on South Africa last fall has the government in Pretoria felt so vulnerable.

‘Best Friend, Worst Enemy’

“When you see your best friend sitting down with your worst enemy to discuss what to do about you, and you don’t even get an invitation, I think you have cause to be worried,” a senior South African official remarked in Cape Town earlier this month, asking not to be quoted by name.

“Whatever the American motivations might be, this sort of meddling will hurt us, all of us, black and white alike, because it will encourage the ANC to fight and not talk peace and compromise.”

Mbeki, who is accompanying Tambo as the African National Congress information director and a member of its national executive committee, said the group does see the Shultz-Tambo talks as an opportunity to help reshape U.S. policy in southern Africa.

He said the talks may present a chance to replace the Reagan Administration’s all-but-abandoned approach of “constructive engagement” with one more likely to bring a quick end to South Africa’s apartheid system of racial separation and minority white rule.

‘Policy is Discredited’

“We are going to the United States at a time when the American administration has no real policy in southern Africa,” Mbeki said. “Look, the secretary of state even needs public permission to use the words ‘constructive engagement’ at a press conference because that policy is so discredited, but there is nothing to replace it yet.” He continued:

“This is probably the best time in the six years of the Reagan Administration that the American public has the possibility to make a serious input into the formulation of U.S. policy for this region, and we will be talking with business, the churches, the black community, academics and others about what we think should be part of that policy.

“The American people are against apartheid, and Congress is ready to take action, further action.”

Two-Week Visit

Tambo’s two-week American trip, which is taking him to Los Angeles, New York and Chicago as well as Washington, is part of an increased African National Congress effort to bring the United States even more into the front line in the group’s fight to bring down the government of President Pieter W. Botha.

The immediate goal, as outlined by officials of the group at a conference in Botswana organized by the African-American Institute of New York, is to hasten the end of apartheid by isolating the South African government internationally and further undercutting it at home politically and economically.

Two steps toward this end will be persuading Americans of the “essential reasonableness” of the African National Congress and winning U.S. recognition that it is a legitimate player on the South African political scene.

“Our struggle won’t be won in Washington but at home, definitely at home,” another of the group’s officials said. “What happens in Washington and other capitals, however, can bring us that victory much sooner and avoid a lot of bloodshed that none of us wants.”

Beyond that, American assistance is wanted to help smooth the transition to majority rule in South Africa, to speed its economic development and to ensure its future security and stability, the group says.

Seeking U.S. Involvement

“One myth that we want to kill off,” Mbeki added, “is that we do not want the United States involved in southern Africa and that the ANC is involved in some clever conspiracy to put the Soviet Union in the best position in this region. This is definitely not so, not at all. We want the United States involved. And we want Americans to know that.”

Among the ingredients of a new U.S. policy for the region, Mbeki said, should be full implementation of the sanctions legislation enacted by Congress in October, further measures to increase the pressure, political backing and economic assistance for South Africa’s black neighbors and a leadership role in international efforts to end apartheid.

“The United States can become the leading anti-apartheid country in the world,” Mbeki said, “and that would make an enormous difference in how long apartheid lasts, the way it is brought to an end and what replaces it. We sense a willingness on the part of large and significant segments of the United States to grapple with this as an important question for the world.”

In international terms, he added, “it is important the United States be seen by countries like the United Kingdom, West Germany and Japan to have shifted and to be taking a strong and consistent anti-apartheid position and not acting timidly with U.S. companies finding clever ways to ‘disinvest’ without leaving.”

‘Frank, Tough Exchanges’

Mbeki nevertheless is expecting “some frank and even tough exchanges” in the Washington talks--and probably no immediate results.

Shultz and other Administration officials have repeatedly expressed U.S. opposition to the “armed struggle” of the African National Congress, particularly terrorist attacks against civilian targets, and have called on it to forgo violence.

They have also expressed concern over the South African Communist Party’s role in the top leadership and over the influence of the Soviet Union, which provides the group with most of its weapons. And they are worried that an African National Congress-dominated, post-apartheid government would not be democratic.

However, these are questions that Tambo has dealt with frequently in recent visits to London, Bonn and other capitals. Mbeki said that differences between the African National Congress and Washington have been narrowed with Tambo’s conciliatory call this month for early negotiations to end the conflict in South Africa and establish “a democratic society” to replace apartheid.

‘Seize Any Opportunity’

Speaking in Lusaka, Zambia, the group’s headquarters, on its 75th anniversary, Tambo said the African National Congress would “seize any opportunity” for negotiations with the government as long as they were based on acceptance of “the need for a democratic society.”

Addressing the Foreign Policy Assn. in New York on Thursday at the start of his U.S. visit, Tambo added: “There is one solution--let’s sit down and get out of this crisis. Why don’t we sit down and discuss the modalities of a cease-fire?”

(However, on Sunday, the day after arriving in Washington, Tambo told the congregation of the New Bethel Baptist Church in downtown Washington that his organization’s use of violence has been necessary in the face of “the violence of apartheid,” the United Press International reported. He also rejected accusations that the African National Congress is communist, saying it embraces members from across the political spectrum.)

Tambo in his anniversary speech also committed the group more fully and explicitly than before to a multi-party democracy with constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, including freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion and language and protection from arbitrary arrest and detention without trial.

Tambo also de-emphasized the group’s socialist orientation and instead stressed economic development to improve living standards of the country’s black majority.

Reassuring Whites

And the anti-apartheid leader, countering Pretoria’s charges that the organization hopes to embark on a mass terrorist campaign as the start of a full attempt to overthrow the government, sought to reassure whites that civilians will not become the targets of the group’s guerrillas even as they step up and spread their attacks.

“We must not allow whites to be misled by Botha’s railings against the ANC,” Tambo said in Lusaka. “They must not be hoodwinked into believing there remains a future for white minority rule in our country. We have a responsibility to them to save them from possible ruin.”

But he added that the African National Congress will continue to reject the political guarantees, such as a constitutional or legislative veto, for minority groups that many South African whites say are the only way they could accept majority rule.