Release of Sisulu Is Viewed as a Turning Point - South Africa: Foes of apartheid say they expect older members of the rebel ANC to reassume the mantle of leadership.

Walter Sisulu’s impending return to his modest yellow-brick home here, after more than 25 years in prison with his close friend Nelson R. Mandela, has left anti-apartheid activists excited, if uncertain, about what they believe will be a turning point in the black liberation struggle in South Africa.

“The movement is in for a very significant period in its history,” said Murphy Morobe, publicity secretary of the United Democratic Front, the 2-million-member anti-apartheid coalition. “We’ll all be empowered by their presence in our midst.”

By unconditionally releasing Sisulu, 77, and a generation of other unrepentant guerrilla leaders of the African National Congress, the government also calls into question its 29-year ban on the ANC, many political analysts say.

Until now, the government has insisted that the ANC is South Africa’s greatest terrorist enemy.

But “these leaders are the ANC--nothing more, nothing less,” said Mark Swilling of the Center for Policy Studies at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. “And they will be talking on ANC platforms. This marks the beginning of the de facto unbanning of the ANC.”

Sisulu, a former ANC secretary general, key strategist and the second most powerful black leader in the country after Mandela, will likely consult with internal resistance leaders and apply for a passport to meet African National Congress leaders in exile soon after his release. He may eventually reassume the prominent position in the liberation struggle that prison has denied him.

But no one knows how high a political profile Sisulu and his colleagues, now in their 60s and 70s, will choose for themselves after their release, or how the government will react to public speeches and political organizing by these avowed ANC leaders.

ANC membership is still a serious criminal offense in South Africa, and the police still routinely break up anti-apartheid gatherings under the three-year-old state of emergency.

For example, the authorities used tear gas Friday evening to disperse about 20 young activists who had peacefully gathered to sing and dance outside Sisulu’s home in Soweto. A boy of about 8 was injured when a ricocheting tear-gas canister slashed his leg.

South Africa, and the nationalist struggle, have changed dramatically since Sisulu, Mandela and eight other leaders of the ANC’s then-fledgling armed struggle entered prison after their 1964 conviction for plotting sabotage.

In the 1950s, Sisulu and Mandela guided the ANC away from its polite petitioning for equal rights to a campaign of defiance, civil disobedience and, finally, sabotage. But in the intervening years a new generation of leaders has emerged, many of whom received their political education at the feet of Mandela and Sisulu in Robben Island and Pollsmoor prisons.

“These are old and tired people, and it would be unrealistic to expect them to automatically inherit genuine leadership positions,” said Robert Shrire, a professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town. “They’ll have to reach a compromise with the existing leadership.”

But many activists believe Sisulu and the others will naturally reassume the mantle of leadership, at least as elder statesmen with substantial influence on the course of the struggle.

“Walter never was a man who stood back and watched,” said Yusuf Cachalia, an Indian anti-apartheid leader who helped organize the 1952 Defiance Campaign with Sisulu. “He will be looked upon as a leader and will be able to step into the void he has left, despite his absence of 25 years.”

Sisulu is widely regarded as one of the ANC’s most effective grass-roots leaders. Although kept in relative isolation and denied visits from even his closest friends during his quarter century in jail, he is remembered as a wise, approachable and highly persuasive leader.

His family and friends say his commitment to the struggle, like that of the still-imprisoned Mandela, has only been strengthened by his years in prison.

“They are as united as ever on the goals of the struggle,” Mandela’s wife, Winnie, said Friday. “They stand where they stood on that 12th day of June, 1964,” when they were sentenced to life in prison.

When Sisulu and Mandela went to prison, they had been pressing for an end to the pass laws that denied blacks free movement and the sweeping apartheid laws that segregated everything from post office counters to movie theaters.

They were also seeking a modest form of political participation.

Today the “pass laws” are gone, many of the most egregious forms of so-called petty apartheid have been abolished and anti-apartheid activists are being asked by the government to begin talks about power sharing for the first time.

The liberation movement remains uncertain about how effective the released prisoners will be in a country where the authorities still hold broad emergency powers to clamp down on anti-apartheid activity. Several hundreds activists remain in prison on political charges, others languish in detention without trial, and at least 400 are under nighttime house arrest and restricted from talking to reporters or taking part in any political activity.

“We may just have to unban ourselves,” said Sisulu’s son, Zwelakhe, a 38-year-old newspaper editor who was restricted last year after two years in detention. A restriction order on Walter Sisulu’s wife, Albertina, 71, was lifted Friday.

“What we had hoped for was the release of these men into an environment where they could meet with the people, be briefed by the people and obtain a mandate from the people,” said Dr. Nthato Motlana, a confidant of Sisulu and Mandela in the 1950s and early 1960s. “If the people are still restricted, then that amounts to a restriction on the leaders.”

President Frederik W. de Klerk has left open the possibility that he may be forced to restrict Sisulu and the seven other freed leaders if they become a threat to public order. That could delay Mandela’s freedom, which government sources say could come early next year.

Sisulu and the others “are being used as bait while one leader (Mandela) is left behind,” Mandela’s wife said.

“Let’s face it,” the United Democratic Front’s Morobe said. “If the government doesn’t follow this up by unbanning the ANC and lifting restrictions on people, then they’ll just have to arrest them again. We’re still involved in a struggle, and they’re our leaders.”