De Klerk Schedules Talks With ANC for April 11

President Frederik W. de Klerk forged ahead with his reform program Friday, setting April 11 for historic talks with the African National Congress and unveiling plans to privatize state assets to help finance a $1.1-billion black development fund.

After a month of domestic turmoil that has left more than 200 dead and scores wounded, De Klerk announced that he would meet Nelson Mandela and other senior ANC leaders to discuss obstacles standing in the way of formal power-sharing negotiations.

A simultaneous announcement came from the ANC’s headquarters in exile in Lusaka saying Mandela, as ANC deputy president, would lead the delegation to Cape Town.

The preliminary talks will be the first between the ANC leadership and a South African head of state since the National Party won power in 1948 and established the discriminatory laws known as apartheid to protect minority white interests.

Leaders from the ANC’s exile headquarters in Zambia are expected to take part. The organization was banned from 1960 until last month, and many ANC leaders will be making their first trip to South Africa since heading into exile more than 25 years ago.

De Klerk legalized the ANC and more than 60 other anti-apartheid groups Feb. 2. Nine days later he freed Mandela, who had been imprisoned for more than 27 years for helping to launch the ANC sabotage campaign.

Mandela was in Sweden Friday, wrapping up a weeklong visit during which he saw ANC President Oliver Tambo, who is recovering from a stroke. He was not available for immediate comment but was due to address a rally later Friday. He was expected to return to South Africa over the weekend.

Mandela recently was elected the ANC’s deputy president, which makes him effective leader of the organization while the 72-year-old Tambo recuperates.

De Klerk says he wants to negotiate a new constitution that will bring blacks into the national government. However, he opposes the one-man, one-vote system that the ANC and other leading anti-apartheid groups favor.

De Klerk envisions some mechanism that will allow whites to maintain veto power on major policy decisions.

The ANC has said it will meet with the De Klerk government, but will not open formal talks on a new constitution until the president lifts the state of emergency and releases all political prisoners.

De Klerk also announced Friday an additional allocation of $385 million to a special $769-million black development fund announced Wednesday in the annual budget that sharply boosted spending on black education.

The additional financing, De Klerk said, would come from privatization of state assets and had “nothing at all” to do with the forthcoming meeting with the ANC, which has maintained its nearly 40-year-old call for nationalization of key industries.

The assets were not identified, but the government has previously announced plans to sell off the state-run South African Airways, the power company Eskom, the railways and other transport services.

Of the fund, one-third will be administered by the government, the remainder as a trust “outside the direct ambit of the government so that private sector and other institutions in South Africa as well as abroad may also contribute to it,” De Klerk said.

“We want to ensure that what is done with this fund must have the support of the overwhelming majority of the people in this country,” said De Klerk, whose budget this year allocated more than 40% to social programs and trimmed defense spending by nearly 15%.

On Thursday, opposition leaders said a wave of unrest sweeping through South Africa was threatening government efforts to open negotiations on power-sharing.

Officials say the wave of violence is the worst to hit South Africa since the mid-1980s. About 300 people have been killed in fighting during the last month, mainly in black townships.

Police said Friday that three people died in black townships when residents spread false rumors that a rival group of blacks was planning an attack, causing mass panic.

Thousands of women and children in several townships south of Johannesburg fled their homes Thursday evening for refuge at hospitals, police stations and trade union offices after hearing a rumor that a group of Zulus would attack, the police said. Men remained at home, arming themselves and setting up roadblocks.

In one of several incidents, a 40-year-old white man driving his luxury car past the black residential area of Sebokeng, south of Johannesburg, was killed when local residents stopped his car and hit him in the head with a machete, police said. Drivers who failed to stop at the roadblocks, made of huge rocks, had their cars stoned by a mob that numbered in the hundreds, they said.