ANC Hails Its Survival in Face of S. African Crackdown

The African National Congress, battered in the South African government’s crackdown on anti-apartheid groups over the past year and a half, declared Friday that its mere survival was a “strategic victory” that will become the basis ultimately for ending minority-white rule in Pretoria.

ANC President Oliver Tambo said in a major policy review that in its 76 years the ANC had “never known a campaign of repression as coldly calculated and systematic” as the one he said Pretoria had carried out under the state of emergency over the past 19 months.

“The enemy’s campaign of intense repression has tested the strength of our commitment to liberation, our determination and ability to fight on and the firmness of our adherence to the principal of the seizure of power by the people through struggle,” the ANC said. “We have come through that test as tempered steel.”

‘Bogus Negotiations’

The ANC called on its supporters to regroup and broaden their struggle against apartheid, aiming especially at thwarting the government’s counterinsurgency program and preventing what it called “bo-gus negotiations” proposed by Pretoria to discuss sharing political power among the country’s racial groups.

After three years of major gains, the ANC and its supporters had been hit hard, Tambo acknowledged, by the virtual ban on black political activities, the detention of many community leaders and the often successful police effort to track down ANC members.

“Yet, we have survived this determined offensive because we have sunk roots deep in the struggle for the overthrow of the apartheid regime. . . ,” Tambo said at a press conference here in a sober appraisal of where South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement now stands. “We have suffered reverses, but the enemy has failed in its objective--and that is a great victory for us.”

The strategy outlined by the ANC at its headquarters here Friday and in radio broadcasts to South Africa calls for concerted efforts to defeat the government’s counterinsurgency program under which joint police, military, government and business committees coordinate efforts to end civil unrest in the country and deal with black grievances in the hope that this will lead to political co-option of moderate blacks.

Another priority must be total black rejection of the proposed national council, which President Pieter W. Botha envisions as a forum in which blacks and whites can work out a system for sharing political power and draft a new constitution for the country.

Describing the government as uninterested in true negotiations and determined “to perpetuate the illegitimate rule by brute force,” the ANC told its supporters, “It is our common responsibility to make certain that this council never sees the light of day by campaigning to ensure that nobody serve out the country’s crisis.”

‘Create a Climate’

“We’ve said yes,” Tambo added, challenging the government again to “create a climate” for such talks. “The problem is not with us. Our historic task is to destroy apartheid. If we can do that through negotiations, we are ready. But the regime is not ready to make any substantial move for a negotiated settlement.”

A third ANC priority in the wake of the government crackdown should be the strengthening and reorganization of anti-apartheid forces inside the country, the ANC said, calling for “serious efforts to ensure that we recover from the reverses we have suffered as a result of extreme repression.”

And the ANC leadership pledged that the organization’s military wing, Spear of the Nation, would step up its armed attacks on government targets.

Decrying the murderous clashes between rival black groups around the South African city of Pietermaritzburg, the ANC urged renewed mediation efforts to end “this disastrous fratricidal strife.” At least 268 people were killed in the Pietermaritzburg area last year, and more than 40 have died so far this month.

“We have called on people to refrain from continuing the conflict,” Tambo said, charging the government with promoting the rivalry between members of the predominantly Zulu political movement Inkatha and supporters of the ANC and its allies, the United Democratic Front and the Congress of South African Trade Unions.

“If we fail, to that extent the enemy will have succeeded,” Tambo said.

But the ANC president sharply attacked Zulu chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the Inkatha president, accusing him of “invariably and deliberately” frustrating past mediation efforts.