Afrikaner Group Voices Its Understanding for Rebels’ Anti-Apartheid Violence

The African National Congress won a surprising, although limited, understanding here Friday from a delegation of prominent white South Africans for its armed insurgency against the minority white government in Pretoria.

After two days of talks on the key issue of political violence, most members of the white delegation accepted the ANC’s arguments that it had little choice when it began its campaign of sabotage and guerrilla attacks in 1961 and would gain nothing by ending it unilaterally.

“We cannot but accept as historical reality the ANC’s commitment to armed struggle,” said Andre Du Toit, a political scientist, who summed up the closed-door discussion. “And we can see that it is impossible to ask the ANC to abandon the armed struggle unilaterally. . . , although it is prepared to enter into negotiations about the cessation of violence.”

But Mac Maharaj, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, while arguing the need to pursue the guerrilla campaign as “one aspect of a broader struggle” against apartheid, left open the possibility of an end to the armed insurgency as a step toward a negotiated settlement.

Questions Botha’s Intent

“Such an act could only be contemplated if it were argued that a suspension of the armed struggle would lead to certain results,” Maharaj said after Friday’s discussions, “but we are convinced that (President) P. W. Botha is still not prepared to negotiate a settlement. We could consider this only if (mediators) could show P. W. Botha wants a negotiated settlement.”

Although Du Toit stressed that the whites themselves are not advocating violence in the drive to end apartheid, he said most of the 50-member delegation accept the ANC’s argument that it is “politically and strategically impossible” to halt or suspend its attacks on government targets, even as a gesture to promote peaceful resolution of South Africa’s problems.

For the African National Congress, this was an important psychological breakthrough because the Pretoria government, supported until now by most white South Africans, has condemned the group for its use of violence, describing its members as terrorists.

The government, which has insisted that the ANC renounce violence as a precondition for participation in proposed constitutional negotiations on a new political system for the country, may find itself outflanked within the white community as a result of the talks here.

And the ANC has now argued its case that the government should take the first step toward ending political violence by committing itself to a negotiated resolution of the country’s future.

While Du Toit, a professor at the University of Cape Town, went further in public than other members of the delegation in accepting the ANC’s justification for its armed campaign, most said that he had fairly stated the majority view.

“Violence will remain a very, very difficult issue for us, but I don’t see it as an insurmountable obstacle to a resolution, a peaceful resolution of our problems,” a businessman in the white delegation said, asking not to be quoted by name. “And, once we accept the reality of this violence, we can discuss terms for halting it as the first item on the agenda.”

Du Toit, acknowledging that he was risking the wrath of the Pretoria government, said that most of the white participants had found “satisfactory” and “very impressive” the ANC’s justification of its armed insurgency and its explanation of efforts to avoid civilian casualties.

“The ANC postponed for a very long time its recourse to armed struggle and then has tried to limit it to sabotage and ‘hard targets,’ ” he said.

“We have to accept the reality of the armed struggle just as we have to accept the reality of state violence perpetrated for decades and perpetrated to an increasing extent under the present state of emergency.”

But Du Toit said the white delegation failed to get the assurances it sought that the ANC would repudiate attacks directed at “soft,” or civilian, targets and the “proliferation of uncontrolled violence” within the black community.

Maharaj said that the African National Congress believes that such violence “does not serve the interest of people in South Africa” fighting to change apartheid. He said that some attacks on civilians, both whites and blacks, stem from government or right-wing efforts to discredit or divide the anti-apartheid movement, but that others result from the poor training or political indiscipline of ANC supporters.

“While there can be a loss of civilian life in the cross-fire, the ANC is committed not to attack civilian targets,” Maharaj said.

The white delegation is composed of politicians, businessmen, clergy, academics, writers, journalists and student leaders drawn largely from the Afrikaner community, the descendants of Dutch, French and German settlers who have dominated the Pretoria government for four decades.

Talks Called Frank

The talks were described by the participants as by far the frankest that the ANC has yet had with white South Africans and perhaps even the start of “pre-negotiations” aimed at a peaceful resolution of the South African crisis.

“These have been some of the toughest debates I have ever been involved in on the whole question of armed struggle and violence as a political phenomenon,” said Frederick van Zyl Slabbert, chairman of the conference and former leader of South Africa’s Progressive Federal Party. “The debate was very tough, and the issues were clearly put, but frankly and openly without any fallback to posturing.”

Slabbert’s Institute for a Democratic Alternative in South Africa organized the conference with help from France and Senegal to bring Afrikaners together with the ANC, which had met earlier with smaller, mostly English-speaking delegations of whites.

The Afrikaners’ fears of “black domination” and the loss of their own identity as a small ethnic group with its own language, culture and history are now recognized by the ANC as a major obstacle to its fight for majority rule in South Africa.

About 60% of South Africa’s 5 million whites are Afrikaners. The country’s black population is more than 25 million; under apartheid, they are denied the right to participate in national politics. There are also minorities of Indians and mixed-race Coloreds, who have separate chambers in South Africa’s Parliament.

The two delegations will discuss ways to promote national reconciliation and the political and economic character of a post-apartheid South Africa before the conference ends on Sunday, a day later than planned.