Politics 88 : Jackson Takes Attack on South Africa to Capital : Asks Aid to Mozambique in Wake of Reports That 100,000 Were Killed

While Pennsylvania voters were giving the Rev. Jesse Jackson a drubbing in the presidential primary Tuesday, Jackson was already long gone.

Rather than press the flesh with Pennsylvania voters, Jackson spent the morning here condemning South Africa and urging support for Mozambique in the wake of a State Department report that South African-backed guerrillas may have killed up to 100,000 civilians there in the past two years.

It was diplomacy on the fly, conducted in meetings with congressmen, African ambassadors and U.S. diplomats. It was vintage Jackson but it was also a side of the candidate that had been far less evident when his presidential prospects seemed more promising.

Clear Signs of Trouble

In Pennsylvania there have been clear signs of trouble. Crowds have been small and undemonstrative and hints by campaign officials that Jackson be considered for the vice presidency have proved distracting, leading campaign aides to project a sense of resignation. But the tough going appears to have encouraged Jackson simply to return to familiar ground, the advocacy of issues with which he has long been associated.

On Sunday he overruled advisers to hold a rally for striking paper workers in Lock Haven, Pa., a region aides said he had no chance to win.

On Monday he spoke out passionately but imprecisely about terrorism, finally taking a position at variance with longtime U.S. policy, saying his Administration might grant concessions to terrorists to win the release of U.S. hostages.

On Tuesday he focused on South Africa, condemning it yet again as a state sponsor of terrorism and calling for military aid to the front-line states on its borders--concerns that Jackson feels deeply but voters seem to care little about.

The purpose, Jackson said at a briefing on Capitol Hill, was to “broaden the definition” of a U.S. foreign policy that “does not include many parts of the world.”

‘Thought It Was Important’

“I don’t think he was doing it for votes or delegates,” Jackson’s campaign manager, Gerald F. Austin, told reporters later. “I think he was doing it because he thought it was important.”

Jackson had expected to lose Pennsylvania, as was clear at a rally in Philadelphia’s Civic Center on Monday night when he told a sparse and undemonstrative crowd of 1,000: “This campaign will be determined in California and New Jersey. We had to stop in Pennsylvania on the way.”

That tone of sobriety was reiterated by Austin, who suggested that for Jackson to finish the primary season with more delegates than Dukakis he would have to “blow him out” in California and New Jersey by nearly a 3-1 margin.

But Austin also said he regretted having suggested last week that Jackson should be considered for the vice presidency, a comment that was seconded by the campaign chairman, California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Jackson “wasn’t happy” with the comments, Austin said. “He said we shouldn’t be talking about those things. We should be taking about Pennsylvania. He was right.”

Does Not Take Time Off

Austin and most other senior campaign officials also advised Jackson to take time off during the sure-to-be fruitless Pennsylvania campaign. Jackson declined to do so.

At his meetings on Capitol Hill and in the State Department on Tuesday, Jackson denounced the reported killings in Mozambique as “some of the worst atrocities known in the latter part of this century,” called on Congress to send a fact-finding mission to Mozambique and reiterated his belief that the United States should send military aid to the front-line states to allow them to defend themselves against South Africa.

Making an argument he knew would be futile, Jackson also reiterated at the State Department his belief that the reported killings represented “state-supported terrorism” and that South Africa should be condemned by the Administration as a terrorist state.

Chester A. Crocker, assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, would say only that “any continuing patterns of involvement” by South Africa in Mozambique would violate an accord signed two years ago between the two counties and thus ought to come to an end.

Jackson even announced that he would travel “at some point soon” to Mozambique--though not, he said, before the final primaries on June 7.