S. Africa Seeking Talks With Outlawed Group : Shift Seen as Move to Resolve Crisis, but Wary African National Congress Takes a Tough Line

The South African government, seeking to begin negotiations with the nation’s black leaders on a new political system for the country, has secretly approached the outlawed African National Congress through intermediaries three times in the last two months with offers to open talks with it.

The government’s bid for talks with the ANC contrasts sharply with its harsh and frequent denunciation of the group as a band of terrorists and reverses its previous refusal even to give the 75-year-old organization any political recognition. It is potentially the most significant move yet toward a negotiated resolution of the South African crisis.

But the African National Congress, suspicious of the government’s motives, is taking a tough line, insisting that President Pieter W. Botha first clarify the terms for the proposed talks and also that he demonstrate his sincerity, perhaps by releasing political prisoners.

Spurns Secret Talks

Oliver Tambo, the group’s president, told a major international anti-apartheid conference here Thursday that the ANC would not join any negotiations that it had not helped shape and that it would not negotiate in secret.

“When and if the time comes that the apartheid regime feels compelled to talk to the ANC, it will have to come to us openly and not in secret,” Tambo said. “We who represent the majority of the people of our country, the victims of the apartheid system, would have to ensure that these masses know what the racists are saying and to ensure that these millions participate in any activities designed to shape their destiny.”

The African National Congress insists, Tambo said, that any negotiations must from the outset be aimed at “the transfer of power to the people through a system of one person, one vote in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa.”

Although Tambo firmly rejected the government’s proposed national council as a negotiating forum and called its various other overtures a “maneuver in defense of the apartheid system,” he and other ANC officials left open the possibility of talks if, as one official commented, “we were convinced that there was real willingness on the other side for genuine negotiations. . . . Please, let them convince us.”

The Pretoria government has twice offered to send senior Cabinet members to meet with ANC leaders for preliminary talks, according to highly placed sources at the conference here who spoke on condition that they not be further identified.

But the ANC asked the government through the first intermediary--a member of the delegation of liberal whites whom the ANC met in Dakar, Senegal, two months ago--to propose an agenda for the meeting, to say which ministers would come and to agree that the discussions would not be kept secret.

So far, there has been no government response to the ANC’s requests, the sources said, although the intermediary, recruited by South Africa’s shadowy National Intelligence Service before the Dakar conference, conveyed the questions to the government on his return home.

Met ANC Member in Botswana

The second approach came from a senior South African security policeman and a military intelligence officer who met with an ANC member living in exile in neighboring Botswana, the sources said.

“They were very direct and said that the government wanted to make contact and was ready to send a top minister,” one source said, “but the questions raised earlier were still not answered.”

Last month, South Africa’s director of constitutional development, Kobus Jordaan, a key figure in the government’s exploratory discussions with black leaders, went to Lusaka, Zambia, where the ANC has its headquarters, to meet President Kenneth D. Kaunda. He also sought to meet with ANC officials, according to these sources.

“If the ANC is willing to meet me, I am interested in meeting them,” he reportedly told the local representative of the giant South African mining and industrial conglomerate Anglo American Corp., who passed the message to the ANC.

Wanted Clarification

But the African National Congress, uncertain what Jordaan wanted to discuss, refused to see him without clarification. Jordaan said in a statement in Cape Town this week that he had, in fact, gone to Zambia, where he was a missionary for 16 years, in his “private capacity” and had talked with Kaunda only briefly at a church dedication.

Stoffel van der Merwe, who as vice minister of constitutional development and information is the government’s principal negotiator, said in an interview in Johannesburg last week when questioned about such contacts that there might have been such approaches to the ANC but that he was not necessarily informed about them.

While reluctant to discuss such a sensitive topic on the record, Van der Merwe said that “special envoys” might become necessary in the future to begin a dialogue with the ANC. However, he said he felt there were already enough contacts between people living inside South Africa and the ANC to keep the organization well informed on government policy and to open channels of communication with it.

Conservatives May Object

Disclosure of the government’s approaches to the ANC, which launched an “armed struggle” of sabotage, guerrilla attacks and urban terrorism after being outlawed in 1960, is certain to bring sharp criticism from the opposition Conservative Party and perhaps even from some of Botha’s ruling National Party.

Misgivings about negotiations also run deep within the ANC.

Tambo accused the minority white-led government in Pretoria of launching “a wide-ranging propaganda campaign whose aim is to give racial tyranny a new face and thus to divert attention away from the ugly reality of the continuing system of apartheid.”

“To hide this reality and shift the focus of our offensive away from the objective of our advance towards people’s power through struggle, the racist regime has been making all manner of noises about the issue of negotiations,” Tambo told the opening session of a conference here on the detention and torture of children in South Africa.

“At the same time, it hopes to give sufficient grounds for its international allies to be able to claim that the basis for negotiations exists and thus to try to undermine and destroy the campaign for sanctions.

“The fact of the matter is that the Botha regime is not interested in any genuine negotiation that would lead to the transfer of power to the people through a system of one person, one vote in a united, democratic and non-racial South Africa.”

Sees Ulterior Motive

The African National Congress sees all the government’s overtures as intended to ease international pressure on it to end apartheid and accept majority rule, according to highly placed political sources at the conference here.

The group, in fact, expects a British initiative, supported by the United States, West Germany and perhaps other members of the European Communities, to reduce international pressure on Pretoria, one of the conference participants commented, “in the guise of encouraging negotiations--negotiations that are not taking place and are not very likely.”

What the ANC is watching for, sources here said, are concrete government moves, particularly the release of imprisoned ANC leaders, including Nelson Mandela, an unconditional invitation to exiles to return and the legalization of the organization itself.

Such moves, even if taken individually, would change the whole political situation in the country, the ANC believes, and would lay the base of confidence needed for negotiations.

A premature meeting, particularly if arranged by the government and initially kept secret, could cause political problems for the ANC within its own ranks and among its supporters in South Africa and abroad.

Would Raise Questions

“It would raise a million and one questions,” one highly placed participant in the conference commented. “Why are there meetings while so much of the leadership is still in prison, while so many are in jail and while others are being hanged?” he asked, requesting that he not be quoted by name. “People inside the country would ask whether the comrades in Lusaka are tired of the struggle. And military cadres would ask if there were talks, what has happened to the armed struggle.”

An equally important issue, these sources said, is the inclusion in any negotiations of anti-apartheid groups inside the country, particularly the United Democratic Front, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the South African Youth Congress and church groups such as the South African Council of Churches and the Southern African Catholic Bishops Conference.

While the African National Congress regards itself as the leader of the “national democratic struggle,” it is unwilling to act without the involvement and support of other groups, recognizing that any agreement reached with the government would be rejected without such broad support.

‘Unity . . . Is Fundamental’

“The unity of all democratic and anti-racist forces . . . is fundamental to the victory we all seek,” Tambo told the 350 delegates to the conference. “Consequently, we all have a common obligation to guard that unity.”

The ANC is also concerned, these sources said, that negotiations begun under international pressure would become prolonged and inconclusive, much like the talks on independence for Namibia, the former German colony of South-West Africa that Pretoria continues to administer in defiance of U.N. resolutions.

“South Africa must be transformed into a united, democratic and non-racial nation and a force for peace and progress in our region and continent,” Tambo told the conference. “That will only come about through struggle carried out in our country and supported by the world community.

“The Botha regime is not a force for change but the principal obstacle to fundamental change. Our strategic objective must therefore continue to be to intensify the offensive, to defeat this regime and to ensure the transfer of power to the people.”