S. Africans Test Freedoms; ANC Restates Stand

Activists silenced for years by government “listings” and emergency restrictions tested their voices Saturday as tens of thousands of blacks welcomed South Africa’s lifting of bans on political groups with peaceful marches in three cities.

At the same time, the African National Congress, the principal anti-apartheid organization legalized by President Frederik W. de Klerk on Friday, reiterated its oft-stated position that it will not unilaterally halt its guerrilla war against Pretoria.

To abandon the ANC’s armed struggle at this time is “out of the question,” ANC spokesman Pallo Jordan told reporters in Lusaka, Zambia, the group’s exile headquarters. “Any ceasing of hostilities will have to be negotiated and will arise out of a mutually binding cease-fire.”

Jordan added that the ANC will probably reduce its emphasis on guerrilla warfare and focus on other, political strategies for ending apartheid.

In Stockholm, the ANC leadership held its first meetings since 1960 as a legal organization and planned to discuss new strategies in light of De Klerk’s decision to free opposition groups to operate inside of this country.

For activists now free to speak publicly, it was a different life.

“This is a wonderful day,” said frail, 84-year-old Helen Joseph from her home in Johannesburg. Joseph’s name was among those of 110 activists, both living and dead, formally removed Saturday from the government’s list of people whose words and writings may not appear in South Africa. A leading force in resistance politics, she has been “listed,” as it is called, since 1962.

“I’m very excited about my freedom,” which amounted to emerging “out of the social twilight,” Joseph said. “But most of all, I’m excited about this victory of the people . . . and the return of all my friends and comrades from exile.”

In his actions Friday, De Klerk legalized the ANC, the Communist Party and 60 other anti-apartheid groups, lifted the ban on several hundred activists and rescinded parts of the state of emergency imposed in 1986. He also promised to unconditionally release Nelson R. Mandela, the 71-year-old ANC leader serving a life sentence imposed in 1964 for sabotage.

De Klerk’s moves, designed to create a climate for negotiations with black leaders on power-sharing in a new constitution, met nearly all the ANC’s conditions for negotiations with the white minority-led government.

Leading anti-apartheid groups, however, called on De Klerk to go further by lifting the state of emergency entirely, repealing laws that would allow the arrest of returning exiles and freeing all prisoners convicted of politically motivated crimes.

ANC leaders meeting in Stockholm said they are ready to discuss a mutual ending of violence with South African authorities.

“The armed struggle has always been a part of the struggle and it must continue,” ANC Secretary General Alfred Nzo told a rally of the Swedish anti-apartheid and ANC solidarity movements. “But the (Pretoria) regime and ourselves will have to sit down and agree on a cessation of violence on both parts.”

Walter Sisulu, a former ANC secretary who was released from prison last year, urged Sweden to maintain its economic embargo against South Africa.

“Until there are clear, visible signs that there is an end of apartheid, the (economic) pressure must continue,” he said.

Sisulu added that De Klerk must clarify the position of African nationalists wanted in South Africa on terrorism charges before the ANC can decide to return home from its exile headquarters in Lusaka.

Another ANC spokesman, David Kgabang, said that the Stockholm meeting, held at the invitation of the Swedish government, was an important regrouping of the leadership after decades of exile and imprisonment.

Among South Africans formally “de-listed” Saturday in the Government Gazette were Communist Party leader Joe Slovo and his wife, Ruth First, who was killed by a letter bomb in 1982. Leading figures in the ANC, including Albie Sachs, Reg September, Govan Mbeki and Harry Gwala also were removed from the list.

Listed persons may not be quoted in South Africa, and anyone found in possession of their writings is subject to criminal prosecution. Travel and speaking restrictions on about 200 other activists, imposed under emergency regulations, were also lifted.

“It has been a long time,” said Slovo, quoted in South African newspapers Saturday for the first time since the 1960s. “We all want to come home.” Slovo was in Stockholm on Saturday meeting with ANC leaders there.

Former South African newspaper editor Donald Woods, author of the autobiographical “Cry Freedom” which was made into a Richard Attenborough movie, was quoted in local newspapers for the first time in 12 years.

“President De Klerk has astonished me,” he said. “He has gone further than I thought.” Woods, former editor of the East London Daily Dispatch, fled South Africa with his wife and five children in the late 1970s after the death of his friend, black consciousness leader Steve Biko, in police custody.

About 8,000 people jammed into a stadium in Alexandra township in Johannesburg on Saturday and the crowd swelled as it marched to the police station to present a letter demanding improvements in the crowded township. Some carried hand-painted signs reading: “We Welcome the ANC.”

“Since (De Klerk’s announcement) yesterday we have been marching toward freedom,” trade union leader Moses Mayekiso said to cheers. Other speakers said that De Klerk’s concessions were an indication that economic sanctions imposed against Pretoria by the United States and other countries had worked.

Large crowds also marched in Port Elizabeth and Graaf-Reinet, a desert town 550 miles north of Cape Town. The 15,000 protesters in Graaf-Reinet presented the mayor with a letter complaining about the lack of electricity and plumbing in outlying black and mixed-race Colored townships.