Sweeping Reforms in S. Africa : Apartheid: De Klerk lifts ban on the African National Congress and pledges to free Mandela soon. He urges the start of talks by black and white leaders.

In a landmark speech that shocked both black and white South Africans, President Frederik W. de Klerk on Friday lifted the 30-year ban on the African National Congress and other anti-apartheid groups, sharply scaled back the 3 1/2-year-old state of emergency and announced his “firm decision” to soon release jailed black nationalist Nelson R. Mandela.

De Klerk’s sweeping reform initiatives, the most sudden and significant peace offering to the black majority in decades, went most of the way toward reopening political expression in the country and meeting demands made by the African National Congress as conditions for black-white negotiations.

“The time for talking has arrived, and whoever still makes excuses does not really wish to talk,” De Klerk declared in a 45-minute address opening the South African Parliament. “The table is laid for sensible leaders to begin talking” about a new constitution, he said.

Members of the white, Indian and mixed-race Colored chambers of Parliament murmured loudly in surprise as De Klerk ticked off the steps he was taking to create a climate for negotiation with the voteless black majority, who outnumber whites 5 to 1.

As De Klerk spoke, several thousand demonstrators, including Mandela’s wife, Winnie, marched through the streets of downtown Cape Town to call for the resignation of Parliament, carrying placards reading: “Let the People Govern, Now!” Later, activists ran through the streets, cheering and carrying ANC banners, as police watched from the curbs, arms folded.

Anti-apartheid leaders were caught off guard by De Klerk’s speech.

“Today is very different from yesterday,” said Murphy Morobe, a spokesman for the United Democratic Front anti-apartheid coalition. “We do not know what the future holds.”

“It’s incredible,” Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize winner, told a news conference in Cape Town. “What he (De Klerk) said has taken my breath away. He has not met all of our preconditions, but he has gone a long way on the road.”

Andries Treurnicht, leader of the right-wing white Conservative Party, the official opposition in Parliament, said De Klerk’s speech was “shocking.” He challenged the president to call an election for white voters to see if they support what he called the government’s concessions to the black majority.

The ANC issued a statement from Stockholm, where its president, Oliver Tambo, is undergoing medical treatment, saying that while De Klerk’s actions “go a long way toward creating a climate conducive to negotiations, we are greatly concerned that . . . some political prisoners will not be released, that the state of emergency is not lifted in its entirety and that the practice of detention without trial will continue.”

It also demanded that Pretoria release Mandela “without further delay.”

The ANC’s internal South African ally, the UDF, while “conceding the boldness of some of the (government) steps,” demanded that the government meet the remaining ANC conditions for negotiations, which include releasing political prisoners and ending political trials.

In addition to legalizing the ANC, the primary guerrilla group fighting white minority-led rule, De Klerk also rescinded bans on the South African Communist Party, an ANC ally, and the Pan-Africanist Congress, a smaller guerrilla group.

The ANC, founded in 1912, was banned by executive order in 1960 after a police massacre of protesters in Sharpeville. Under Mandela’s direction, the ANC went underground and launched its armed struggle a year later. Most of its leaders were imprisoned or fled into exile in the 1960s.

De Klerk said activists in prison for being members of those organizations “will be identified and freed.” Later Friday, a terrorism trial of eight alleged ANC guerrillas in Pretoria was suspended because the defendants were charged with, among other things, being members of a banned organization.

But De Klerk stopped short of freeing political prisoners convicted of violent offenses, such as murder and terrorism, or of ordering those trials stopped.

De Klerk abolished several key provisions of the emergency regulations, which have broadly curtailed civil rights in the country since June, 1986, and lifted emergency restrictions on 33 groups, from the 2-million-member UDF to the right-wing White Liberation Movement.

Among the regulations rescinded were prohibitions on anti-apartheid political activity in schools and on news reporting of political unrest. But he said the rules would be amended to maintain government control over television pictures and photographs of unrest, which the government believes have been largely responsible for the success of South African sanctions campaigns in the United States and Europe.

De Klerk eliminated rules allowing police to restrict the activities of anti-apartheid activists and lifted such curbs on 374 people, including newspaper editor Zwelakhe Sisulu, lawyer Raymond Suttner and UDF secretary general Popo Molefe. The government has used those restrictions, which lawyers have been unable to challenge in court, to silence its critics by preventing them from attending political meetings or being quoted by journalists.

The president also amended emergency rules that have allowed police to detain about 30,000 activists without charge over varying periods of the past three years. He limited the period of detention to six months and granted detainees the right to legal representation and a medical practitioner of their choice. Only about a dozen activists are held in detention under emergency regulations, although human rights group say dozens more are being held under the authority of the Internal Security Act.

In his speech, De Klerk also announced plans to introduce legislation that will limit the imposition of the death penalty to extreme cases; broaden judicial discretion in capital cases, and grant an automatic right of appeal for those under death sentences. He declared a moratorium on executions while Parliament considers the death penalty legislation.

South Africa has one of the highest execution rates in the world. The Justice Ministry said there were 117 hangings in 1988, and 53 in 1989. The last hanging here occurred in November.

De Klerk, who took office in September on a promise to create “a new South Africa” in which whites and blacks would share power, gave his strongest indication yet that the release of the 71-year-old Mandela, who has served more than 27 years of a life sentence for sabotage, is imminent.

“The government has taken a firm decision to release Mr. Mandela unconditionally,” De Klerk said. “I am serious about bringing this matter to finality without delay.”

He added that the government would make a decision soon on the date of Mandela’s freedom, but said that concern for the ANC leader’s safety is one of the factors standing in the way of the release.

Mandela’s release has been cited by most black leaders in the country as the primary hurdle to their willingness to negotiate with the government. But one of the country’s most powerful moderate black leaders, Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, of the Inkatha movement, said after De Klerk’s speech Friday that he is prepared now to join the government at the negotiating table.

The ANC leadership in exile has been divided over how to respond to De Klerk’s initiatives, with some in the military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe, or Spear of the Nation, arguing for an increase in guerrilla warfare. Others, including Mandela, have indicated a guarded willingness to talk to the government if it removes obstacles to free political expression.

De Klerk said his moves “go to the heart of what black leaders, including Mr. Mandela, have been advancing over the years as their reason for resorting to violence. The justification for violence . . . no longer exists.

“Therefore, I repeat my invitation: Walk through the open door . . . and take your place at the negotiating table, together with the government and other leaders who have important power bases inside and outside of Parliament,” he said.

De Klerk’s speech triggered a surge in share prices at the Johannesburg Stock Exchange amid hopes that international pressure for sanctions and divestiture would begin to ease. But the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups urged foreign governments to maintain sanctions until the government takes irreversible steps toward ending apartheid.

“The sanctions campaign must be maintained and indeed intensified,” the UDF said in a statement read by publicity secretary Patrick Lekota. “To lift sanctions now would be to run the risk of aborting the process to democracy. If anything, De Klerk’s speech shows that all the pressure we have been calling for” has begun to work.

Anti-apartheid leaders noted Friday that, despite De Klerk’s moves, the pillars of apartheid remain in place. Among those laws are the Population Registration Act, which classifies all South Africans by race; the Group Areas Act, which maintains segregated residential areas, and the Land Act, which inhibits black ownership of property in most of the country.

“The policies of apartheid will continue to bedevil political relations in our country,” the UDF’s Lekota said. (The government has said apartheid legislation will be one of the issues to be debated in drawing up a new constitution.)

The UDF, a coalition of 750 anti-apartheid groups, also contested De Klerk’s claim that his actions have cleared the way for free political activity in South Africa. It noted that the emergency decree still empowers the government to restrict organizations and detain activists.

Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, in briefing foreign reporters on the president’s speech, said ANC leaders, including exiled president Tambo, could now return from exile without fear of arrest.

But activists disputed that, saying De Klerk’s speech had not gone far enough. “No indemnity has been given, no safe return has been guaranteed,” said attorney Dullah Omar, a leader of the UDF. “As the law stands at present, Oliver Tambo could be arrested by any policeman for terrorism.”

The president drew praise, though, from unexpected quarters.

“To the masses of our people, we say: Freedom is now in sight,” the UDF said in its statement.

And the UDF’s Molefe, released a month ago when his treason conviction was overturned on a technicality, told a rally Friday: “Of all the leaders of the National Party over the years, De Klerk has taken the most bold step and emerged as the most courageous. We commend him for that.”

SPEECH HIGHLIGHTS Here are highlights of South African President Frederik W. de Klerk’s speech Friday: Legalized African National Congress, outlawed since 1960. Said activist Nelson R. Mandela, imprisoned since 1962, will be freed soon. Lifted restrictions on over 60 other opposition groups. Said most prisoners jailed for belonging to these groups will be freed. Declared a moratorium on executions and proposed reserving capital punishment for only “extreme cases.” Scrapped many restrictions imposed during more than three years of a state of emergency. Limited state-of-emergency detentions to six months. Lifted many restrictions on the media but retained some unspecified controls over photographic and television coverage of unrest.

DE KLERK’S SPEECH: THE WORLD REACTS ‘I think when people move in the right direction, it is certainly time to review all policy. . . . I view it positively, and most people around the world will.’

PRESIDENT BUSH ‘We had expected that Mr. De Klerk might deliver something, but what he said has certainly taken my breath away. . . . We are probably seeing history in the making in South Africa.’

DESMOND M. TUTU, Anglican archbishop of Cape Town ‘A historic landmark. We believe in carrots as well as sticks and . . . they (South African government) should now have some of the former.’

MARGARET THATCHER, Prime minister of Britain ‘The staying power for me would be the ability of Mr. De Klerk to move very quickly now to do those things and to make them concrete.’

REV. ALLAN BOESAK, Activist and president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches ‘We want to warn Mr. de Klerk we are not going to accept a bone without any meat. . . . The unbanning of the ANC in the prevailing climate is simply a recipe for further problems.’

WINNIE MANDELA, Wife of Nelson R. Mandela ‘What I have heard so far sounded to me like celestial music, but I hope it is the beginning of a process which will lead to the end of apartheid.’

JAVIER PEREZ DE CUELLAR, U.N. secretary general

SOUTH AFRICA AT A GLANCE GOVERNMENT

Political power in South Africa rests with president and tricameral Parliament.

President serves as head of state and chief executive.

Parliament consists of:

House of Assembly (178 members, representing whites)

House of Representatives (85 members,representing Coloreds)

House of Delegates (45 members, representing Indians).

Blacks have no representation.

POPULATION(Racial/ethnic breakdown)

Total: 38,509,312* Black: 73.8% White: 14.3% Colored (mixed race): 9.1% Indian: 2.8% There are 10 so-called black homelands in South Africa, with total population of 18,225,775.

* As of July, 1989

Sources: World Factbook 1989; Europa World Year Book 1989

JOY IN STREETS--Blacks hail reforms. A10

REALIGNMENT--Major political shifts seen. A11

ANC TACTICS--Strategy past and present. A11