S. Africa Frees Chairman of Outlawed ANC

The South African government Thursday freed Govan Mbeki, the 77-year-old chairman of the outlawed African National Congress, who had been imprisoned with other ANC leaders for nearly a quarter-century for attempting to overthrow minority white rule here.

Mbeki’s release was widely seen as both a step toward freeing other political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, the ANC president, and part of a major government initiative to develop a dialogue with the nation’s black majority on a new political system for the country.

Urges Talks With ANC

Mbeki, sentenced to life in prison along with Mandela for a campaign of bomb attacks and sabotage that began the ANC’s armed insurgency, immediately urged the government to pursue negotiations with the ANC and to legalize it.

“We all belong to South Africa, and South Africa belongs to all of us,” he told a press conference in the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, where he was released. “With this as a premise, it should not be difficult to find solutions. . . . I would expect that negotiations with the ANC are desirable, as no solution in this country can be arrived at by keeping it out.”

But Mbeki said he will not participate in a new “national council” proposed by President Pieter W. Botha as a forum for such negotiations, and he dismissed other government reforms as failing to solve the country’s prolonged crisis.

“I do not think that, along the lines that have been followed so far, a solution is within reach,” Mbeki said.

The ANC is committed to ending the racial separation and minority rule of apartheid and establishing a new political system based on the principle of one person, one vote.

After it was outlawed in 1961, following almost 50 years of nonviolent protest, the African National Congress launched its armed insurgency under Mandela’s leadership, saying that its goals appeared to be achievable only through the overthrow of the government. But in the last two years, ANC leaders have spoken again of a negotiated resolution of the country’s problems if this were certain to bring a democratic system no longer based on race.

Mbeki, fit, trim and intellectually agile despite his age and 24 years in prison, could play a key role in what the government and the ANC both see as a “period of pre-negotiation,” as a senior official in Pretoria describes the present situation.

Could Strengthen Leadership

In the view of political analysts here, Mbeki could bring stronger, more mature leadership to the anti-apartheid movement in the country, tighten its links to the ANC’s headquarters in exile in Lusaka, Zambia, and possibly encourage other blacks to participate in discussions on the country’s political future.

The government undoubtedly hoped that his release would improve its image. But Mbeki, who met with Mandela for an hour Thursday before his release, said officials also expected that “I would play my part, especially if my other comrades joined me in playing a part to the benefit of our country.”

But his present plans, he said, are to rejoin his wife and find a house in New Brighton, a black township outside Port Elizabeth, where he lived before his arrest.

The government gave no reason for its action, referring only to Botha’s statement to Parliament in August that, in a change of policy, security prisoners would no longer be required to renounce violence as a condition for their release and would now be considered for release on the same basis, including advanced age and poor health, as other prisoners.

A ‘Listed Person’

Mbeki said the government has imposed no conditions on his release, although a government official reminded newsmen that after his brief Port Elizabeth press conference he could not, as a “listed person,” be legally quoted in South Africa.

And Mbeki immediately declared that he had changed none of his basic views during his 24 years in prison.

“The ideas for which I went to jail, and for which the ANC stands, I still embrace,” he said. “I am still a member of the South African Communist Party, and I still embrace Marxist views.”

He did hedge a bit on the issue of violence. “I couldn’t give you a direct answer on that,” he said. “Violence comes as a result of things. It is something determined by circumstances.”

Blacks had turned to violence, he said, as they sought “a force against force,” implying that the ANC’s armed struggle might be ended if negotiations offered a better chance. But he said he will continue to support that low-level insurgency as long as the ANC sees it as necessary.

Trained Activists in Prison

Mbeki, a tough-minded intellectual renowned as the ANC’s best political organizer at the time of his arrest in 1963, spent virtually his entire time in prison on Robben Island, a penal colony off Cape Town, and with Mandela and other ANC leaders transformed it into a virtual university that has now trained two generations of black activists.

The significance of Mbeki’s release is further enhanced by the position of one of his sons, Thabo, as the ANC’s information director in Lusaka--and as one of the organization’s emerging leaders.

The government Thursday also freed four other black nationalists, who like Mbeki were serving long sentences after being convicted of sabotage or terrorism, in what H. J. Coetsee, the justice minister, described as the start of a “continuous process” of releasing security prisoners who have served a major part of their sentences.

Freed as well were two whites, both former policemen and members of a neo-fascist group, the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. They had been sentenced in 1983 to 15 years in prison for planning to sabotage multiracial hotels, to blow up offices of the multiracial President’s Council and to assassinate black political leaders.

Three of the freed black prisoners belong to the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, an ANC rival that conducted a campaign of terror against whites in the early 1960s. The other is an ANC cadre also jailed on terrorism charges.

Was Second Defendant Freed

Mbeki was the second of eight defendants who have been freed after being sentenced to life in the 1964 sabotage trial in which Mandela was also convicted. The government had previously released Denis Goldberg, a white Communist Party official, who signed a pledge renouncing violence in 1985 and now works at the ANC office in London.

Mbeki’s release, expected since August, was thus interpreted as an experiment by the government to see whether such major political figures could be freed without adding to the continuing civil unrest here.

Mbeki, who met Mandela over breakfast Thursday at Pollsmoor Prison outside Cape Town, said he was confident that “in the course of time he will also be out.”

“I think at some stage those in authority must consider releasing people,” Mbeki said, referring to past government statements that such elderly prisoners should be freed on humanitarian grounds. “I am confident my release has brought Mr. Mandela’s release closer.”

Similar calls came from anti-apartheid movements inside the country, ANC headquarters in Zambia, and the American and British governments.

“If the government wants to do something dramatic to influence an intractable situation, it should release all our leaders,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in Cape Town. “This would bring about a tremendous change in the mood in the country.”

Called Hero to Blacks

Mbeki might have been considered a criminal by the government, Tutu added, “but in the eyes of the black community he is a man who has paid a very high price for something they would all like to see--their freedom.” He said that “for black people, he is a hero, and we are very proud of him. Champagne corks will be popping.”

Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the influential Zulu leader who has refused to participate in government talks on the country’s future until jailed black leaders have been freed, said Mbeki’s release “will not in itself be sufficient to give the president the credibility he so desperately needs” for those negotiations. But he said the move “could have vast implications for South African politics” as a step toward such discussions.

In Lusaka, the ANC leadership hailed Mbeki, still regarded as the organization’s national chairman, as “unbroken and unbowed, a living legend in the minds of our people.” It described his release as “an important event in the long and bitter struggle of our people, a victory for democratic forces throughout South Africa and the international community who have fought relentlessly for the unconditional release of our leaders and all political detainees in South Africa.”

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman in Pretoria said the release was “a positive move on the part of the South African government, and we hope that it will be seen in that light by all South Africans.” She said, “We urge all parties to use this opportunity to create a climate for dialogue leading to a peaceful resolution of South Africa’s political crisis.”

Andries Treurnicht, leader of the opposition Conservative Party, criticized the government for not insisting that Mbeki renounce violence as a condition for his release. “The government has moved away from its stated policy,” he said. “This is dangerous. If the government is consistent, they are then moving toward the release of Mandela.”