ANC Will Consider Safeguards for White Minority, Mandela Says : South Africa: He insists on full voting rights for blacks, saying compromises must not favor one group.

Nelson R. Mandela, submitting to dozens of interviews with television journalists from around the world, said Wednesday the African National Congress is willing to compromise and consider constitutional guarantees for South Africa’s white minority but will not budge on the issue of full black voting rights.

“Compromises must be made in respect to every issue, as long as that compromise is in the interest not only of one population group, but the country as whole,” the 71-year-old leader said as he sat in his back yard with an ANC flag behind him.

Mandela also said he hopes a settlement to the country’s long racial conflict can be reached before President Frederik W. de Klerk’s ruling National Party faces elections in 1994.

“I am convinced that, in discussions between the ANC and the government, we will be able to find a solution which will be accepted by everybody, black and white,” Mandela said.

However, he added that the direction of the liberation struggle, including any compromises, will be determined by the ANC leadership. It is meeting at its headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, to discuss Mandela’s future role and to develop a response to De Klerk’s initiatives. Mandela said he will be traveling to Lusaka soon.

The interviews were conducted at Mandela’s home, a four-room brick house surrounded by a tall fence in the Orlando West section of Soweto, where he spent the night Tuesday for the first time since he went to prison in 1962.

Tens of thousands of blacks and whites have made the pilgrimage to Mandela’s house since he was released Sunday after serving 27 years of a life sentence for sabotage. But things began to return to normal Wednesday, a day after he addressed 120,000 people welcoming him home at a soccer stadium.

Foreign television crews lined up outside the Mandela home for 10-minute interviews with the leader, who has become a unifying force among blacks during his years in prison, and Mandela repeated again and again the themes that he carried beyond the gates of Victor Verster Prison.

He defended the ANC guerrilla struggle, which he says should not be abandoned until the government stops using force against blacks. He said government installations are legitimate targets but added that “you can’t avoid people getting caught up in the cross-fire when two people are shooting at each other.”

“People must not only worry about casualties” caused by the ANC, he said. “They must worry about the series of casualties caused by the government over the decades.”

However, Mandela stressed the ANC’s commitment to peace and suggested that whites who want an end to confrontation “must support the government in its effort to reach a peaceful settlement.”

De Klerk, who released Mandela on Sunday, told ABC-TV’s “Nightline” on Tuesday that he is not bothered by Mandela’s continued support for the armed struggle.

“It’s a bit too early to judge” Mandela’s stand on the armed struggle, De Klerk said, because the reasons Mandela launched the ANC’s guerrilla war in 1960 are no longer valid.

“He said then that violence was justified” because all the avenues to peaceful political protest had been closed by the authorities, the president said. “That has changed.”

De Klerk has moved quickly in recent weeks to open up black political activity by lifting 30-year bans on the ANC and the South African Communist Party and rescinding restrictions on hundreds of anti-apartheid activists. The government wants to create a climate in which it can lure black leaders, such as Mandela, to the negotiating table to draw up a new constitution.

Government officials say they hope to have a new constitution with voting rights for blacks within five years. A government elected under that constitution, they say, is unlikely to be controlled by the ruling National Party.

Although both the ANC and the government say they want to give blacks the vote, they differ over what that future political system will look like. The ANC insists on a one-person, one-vote system with a universal voters’ roll. The government wants a system that protects the white minority.

“A simple majority-rule model is not the right system for South Africa,” De Klerk said on “Nightline.” “There must be equality, but checks and balances have to be built in.”

Mandela has sought to reassure many of South Africa’s 5 million whites who worry about living under a government controlled by 27 million blacks.

“We are aware of the fears of the whites of being dominated by blacks, and we are addressing that very seriously and very earnestly,” he said. And he added that because of De Klerk’s flexibility and integrity, “the possibility of a settlement is always there.”

Since his release, Mandela also has reiterated the ANC’s commitment to nationalizing mines, banks and other sectors of the economy, causing jitters in markets here and worrying overseas investors.

De Klerk said such a policy does not make sense, especially in light of the failure of state-controlled economies elsewhere in the world.

“That will kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” De Klerk said on “Nightline.” “What is needed is a sound economic policy.”

Government officials said that their decision to legalize the ANC does not mean they support its stand on nationalization.

The intent “was to shift the fight against that policy from the field of violence and suppressive measures to open political debate,” said Gerrit Viljoen, the government minister of constitutional development.