ANC Suspends Meeting With S. Africa Leaders

The African National Congress announced Saturday that it has suspended plans for its historic first meeting with the South African government in protest over the “unprovoked killing and maiming of defenseless demonstrators” by police in Sebokeng township last week.

“If the government talks about negotiations on the one hand and murders our people on the other--that we cannot accept,” Nelson R. Mandela, the ANC deputy president, told a rally Saturday. “These conditions do not create a climate conducive to negotiations.”

The surprise announcement threatened to scuttle one of the most important meetings in South African history, the April 11 talks in Cape Town between ANC leaders and President Frederik W. de Klerk’s white-led government. The two sides had agreed to meet to discuss hurdles to negotiations on black power-sharing and settlement of South Africa’s racial conflict.

It also reflected growing disarray within the ANC leadership, which has been unable to assert firm control over its grass-roots supporters, many of whom oppose negotiations with the government. Internal ANC leaders had earlier said the increasing township violence would not derail the planned talks, but local activists successfully pressured the ANC to change its mind.

De Klerk said he would study the report on the police action in Sebokeng, where officers killed at least eight blacks Monday. But the president told a party gathering Saturday night that even if the criticism of police was justified, the ANC should not have withdrawn from the scheduled talks, which would be the type of dialogue that could prevent similar incidents in the future.

De Klerk’s liberal political opponents, the Democratic Party, agreed that the incidents in Sebokeng did not warrant cancellation of the ANC-government meeting. The Democrats also urged the government to appoint a judicial commission, with both government and ANC members, to investigate police conduct.

The ANC decision, relayed by Mandela to De Klerk on Friday, came five days after the bloody unrest in Sebokeng, a black township about 30 miles south of Johannesburg. The trouble began when police confronted tens of thousands of blacks marching to protest high rents and poor living conditions.

A judge had denied permission for the march and, as volunteer marshals talked with the crowd, the police opened fire with shotguns, killing at least five people and injuring several hundred. More than 10 other people were killed, at least three of them by police, in the resulting violence that flared throughout the township.

The ANC, in the statement issued Saturday from its headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, said the Sebokeng killings marked the third fatal police attack on “peaceful demonstrations against the injustices of apartheid” in three weeks.

“Under the present circumstances, (we) consider it ill-advised to proceed with arrangements to meet De Klerk and his colleagues on April 11. Effective from this moment, all arrangements for this meeting are suspended,” the ANC said.

The ANC said it will review its decision within five days. In the meantime, it said, the South African authorities should show their commitment to peace by “taking demonstrative action to bring the trigger-happy police, vigilantes and other perpetrators of this violence to justice with all deliberate speed.”

Although Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok has said he regretted the deaths in Sebokeng, he and other government officials have consistently expressed public support for police officers. Police in the neighboring township of Sharpeville used tear gas to break up a similar demonstration on the same day without loss of life. And large, legal marches in South African townships later in the week were peaceful.

De Klerk also has expressed concern about an upsurge of violence in South African townships since the ANC was legalized on Feb. 2 and Mandela was freed from prison on Feb. 11. The number of incidents of unrest recorded by police have soared almost to the levels of the turbulent 1984-86 period.

Despite ANC leaders’ calls for peace, its supporters have been responsible for some of the trouble, De Klerk has said. And he blames the ANC’s refusal to renounce its 30-year armed struggle, which has been mostly dormant in recent months. If the violence continues, the president said, the government “will be obliged to use its full power to restore law and order.”

Anti-apartheid leaders have generally welcomed government moves to allow some black marches and demonstrations, most of which have been peaceful. But activists have bristled at judicial orders banning other such protests.

“The people of South Africa have the right to assemble and demonstrate in support of their just demands,” the ANC said. “We claim this as an inalienable right, not as a favor conceded by the regime at its discretion.”

As the primary group fighting the white minority-led government, the ANC is considered a key player in any negotiations on South Africa’s future. De Klerk wants to launch negotiations with the ANC and other leaders of the black majority to draw up a new constitution that will end white-minority domination and give blacks a vote in national affairs.

De Klerk has met several of the conditions of the ANC, and the two sides agreed last month to meet to discuss the two remaining ANC conditions--release of all political prisoners and lifting of the 45-month-old state of emergency. Both sides announced names of those in their delegations last week, and the talks appeared to be on track until Saturday’s announcement.

The ANC said its decision was made by the 35-member national executive committee, which operates in exile, after consulting with Mandela, Walter Sisulu and other internal ANC leaders who are preparing for the exiles’ return.

Many black rivals of the ANC, and even some ANC supporters, are wary of De Klerk’s promises and are opposed to negotiations with the government until the pillars of apartheid, including segregation of neighborhoods, schools and hospitals, have been removed.