Mandela Pledges ANC Action on Unrest in Townships

Nelson R. Mandela, facing pressure to end the growing black unrest in South Africa’s townships, returned home Saturday after a three-week foreign journey and promised that his organization would devise a strategy to deal with the problem and “go into action” soon.

But Mandela, 71-year-old deputy president of the African National Congress, blamed the government for the escalating unrest, which has broken out sporadically over a variety of issues and claimed 300 lives in the past month in nominally independent ethnic homelands as well as in South African urban townships.

“Those who are worried about violence must talk to the government (and urge it) to create conditions where peaceful forms of agitation are possible,” Mandela, flanked by his wife, Winnie, and colleague, Walter Sisulu, told a news conference. He added that the trouble “indicates the rejection by the masses of the people” of the government’s policy of apartheid and its system of so-called independent homelands for blacks.

Since Mandela left the country Feb. 27 for a trip to Zambia, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ethiopia and Sweden, the autocratic leader of the Ciskei homeland has been toppled by a popular military coup that prompted celebrations and two days of rioting. A few days later, rioting in the homeland of Bophuthatswana erupted during a march calling for the territory to be reintegrated into South Africa in time for Bophuthatswanans to participate in the talks for a new South African constitution.

Violence also has rocked black townships near Johannesburg. Warring black taxi drivers in Katlehong have caused thousands to flee that township, and three people died Thursday night when rumors swept the township of Sebokeng that armed black attackers were poised to invade.

Mandela, who was appointed deputy president of the ANC during his stop in Zambia, returned to South Africa from Sweden, where he spent a week thanking the Stockholm government, the ANC’s most generous overseas supporter, and meeting with ailing ANC President Oliver R. Tambo. He was escorted from his airport news conference here to a daylong concert by South African artists held in his honor.

This week, Mandela is scheduled to attend independence celebrations in Namibia, which formally ends 75 years of South African colonial rule Wednesday.

During the week, Secretary of State James A. Baker III is scheduled to meet Mandela in Namibia and then call on South Africa President Frederik W. de Klerk in Cape Town. Mandela acknowledged that the ANC had tried to discourage Baker from visiting South Africa and that Mandela had refused to see him here.

“If the secretary of state wants to see me, of course I’ll see him,” Mandela said Saturday. “But I will not see him in South Africa.”

“A high-profile visit” to South Africa “can result in a lot of confusion,” Mandela said. “It would suggest that President De Klerk has done something positive, something fundamental that requires the world to review sanctions.” The ANC has welcomed De Klerk’s initiatives but says they fall short of creating a climate for negotiations.

Mandela also said Saturday that the ANC has chosen him to lead its delegation for the first official meetings with De Klerk and his white minority-led government in Cape Town on April 11.

He declined to discuss what might be on the agenda. But he reiterated the ANC’s position that its preconditions for negotiation--amnesty for returning exiles, release of political prisoners and ending the state of emergency--”are the minimum conditions” for ANC participation in government-sponsored talks on a new constitution that would give the black majority a vote in national affairs.

The escalating unrest has complicated those talks by giving the government a reason to retain its powers to quell violence under the state of emergency. That violence, in which a white motorist was killed Thursday night near Sebokeng township, also has hampered the ANC’s attempts to reassure whites that a black majority government would be orderly and fair.