Pretoria Calculates Gain in a Release of Mandela

The release from prison of the African National Congress leader Govan Mbeki earlier this month signals a giant leap toward one of the unthinkables in South Africa: Nelson Mandela moving around freely in his homeland. While millions of Africans believe that this will bring about their deliverance from apartheid, many whites fear that freeing Mandela will fatally destabilize white rule.

Before his release Mbeki formed one of the “Big Three” of the ANC leadership in prison. Together with Mandela and Walter Sisulu, Mbeki was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 for a leading role in a sabotage campaign aimed at overthrowing the state. With the ANC banned and driven into exile, and with most of the leaders of the internal popular opposition currently in jail or forced underground, black nationalists have come to pin all their hopes on the release of the jailed triumvirate, especially on Mandela.

The government has been extremely wary of releasing Mandela. President P.W. Botha is known to have said privately that this would occur only over his dead body. Yet letting Mandela and his colleagues die in jail as martyrs is now considered as equally untenable.

At first Botha attempted to politically emasculate Mandela, Sisulu and Mbeki by insisting that they renounce violence as a precondition for their release. Unbowed, they refused rather than split the ANC.

As a result Botha has been forced to waive his own preconditions. His strategy now clearly is to make the release of Mandela the final act in a controlled process that starts with setting the 77-year-old Mbeki free, to be followed after a reasonable interval by the release of Sisulu.

Provided no serious upheaval takes place, the release of Mandela could be risked early next year. The event may well turn out to be a less spectacular affair than universally anticipated. The state of emergency will almost certainly still be in place, which imposes severe curbs on public meetings or political reporting. Mandela will be free, but his voice will hardly echo across the land.

One thing is certain: The freeing of the political prisoners would not have started had Pretoria not calculated that this will not weaken the state, but in fact strengthen it. In all, the government attempts to achieve three results with the release.

First, it wants to signal to the world that it considers the black uprising, which started in September, 1984, quelled. In government circles the anxiety and gloom of 1985 and 1986 have been replaced by renewed confidence in the state’s ability to withstand everything thrown against it.

Tom Lodge, a widely respected analyst of the black nationalist opposition, recently remarked: “When it comes to coercion the state’s resources are still far greater than those which can be marshaled by the forces of popular resistance. There is no stalemate, and the state can still tear apart the body of organized political activity.”

Second, freeing Mbeki marks the beginning of a new government approach toward finding some political accommodation of Africans. Since 1983 the government has fruitlessly sought to develop a minimally acceptable constitutional structure in which moderate African leaders would participate. However, all significant African leaders have rejected participation in national structures until Mandela and the other jailed leaders are freed.

Far from abandoning its quest for greater legitimacy internally and abroad, the South African state’s new attempt represents a far more serious effort to achieve just that. The release of Mandela would clear the way for Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, acknowledged leader of the 7-million-strong Zulu group, to enter into negotiations and to accept an offer to serve in the cabinet.

With Buthelezi and some other Africans in the cabinet, the South African government can embark on a concerted diplomatic drive (Buthelezi may well be foreign minister) to project its indubitable multi-racial image abroad. Even more important, it will have established the necessary political base for rapidly drawing more Africans (especially Zulus) into the understaffed army and police force. For good reason the ANC-supporting popular opposition fears nothing more than a white-Zulu alliance. Tough action against dissidents by black security forces accountable to an increasingly black executive can hardly be branded as racial oppression--and ultimately this, and not oppression in itself, is the world’s charge against South Africa.

Third, the government intends using the release of political prisoners as an instrument to split and marginalize the ANC. Freed political leaders like Mbeki will face major pressure to mediate fairly in intra-black conflicts. Particularly vicious are those between Buthelezi’s mass movement, Inkatha, and the ANC’s internal ally, the United Democratic Front; that antagonism has been the cause of 150 deaths this year.

Any attempt at mediation by released ANC leaders will inevitably create major tensions in the ANC abroad. Like all exiled liberation organizations, the ANC fears nothing as much as internal political deals that could marginalize them. Inevitably, Mbeki and other freed political leaders will be damned if they try to mediate, and damned if they don’t. They can choose to join the ANC in exile--and face the prospect of fading into obscurity.

For the ANC, difficult decisions lie ahead. The “people’s war” that it proclaimed at the beginning of 1985 has been crushed for the time being. Participation in government structures may well provide the only available opportunity for establishing a new base. Equally painful choices confront Mandela and Sisulu in prison or outside it.