S. Africa, ANC to Reschedule Stalled Talks

In discussions between South Africa’s two most important opponents, President Frederik W. de Klerk and African National Congress Deputy President Nelson R. Mandela agreed Thursday night to reschedule talks that had been suspended by the ANC in protest over police killings of black demonstrators.

The peace process “is on course again,” De Klerk declared after a three-hour meeting with Mandela at the presidential offices. It was the first formal contact between a free ANC leader and a South African president in at least three decades.

Mandela, at a separate news conference, described the meeting as “cordial, pleasant . . . and productive. We think, broadly speaking, we have been able to make very good progress and we are hopeful further meetings also will be productive.”

Mandela and De Klerk, each assisted by three senior aides, agreed on a new date for initial ANC-government talks. The ANC said the date will be announced as soon as Mandela reports back to the ANC’s national executive committee in Lusaka, Zambia.

The two sides also agreed to open formal channels of communication that would, in De Klerk’s words, “eliminate misunderstandings” between the ANC and the government in the future. Neither De Klerk nor Mandela would specify what those arrangements entailed.

The ANC’s efforts to unify anti-apartheid forces for eventual negotiations also were bolstered Thursday when four of the six leaders of South Africa’s self-governing black homelands pulled out of separate talks with De Klerk, and the leader of one of the country’s four nominally independent black homelands, Venda, was overthrown in a military coup.

Only two homeland leaders--Kwazulu chief minister Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi and Qwaqwa chief minister Kenneth Mopeli--turned up for their scheduled meeting with De Klerk. The government accused the ANC of intimidating the other homeland leaders, and De Klerk criticized Mandela, saying that “no leader should in any way whatsoever try to inhibit discussion.”

“There is no way I’m going to be intimidated by any bullying,” said Buthelezi, whose supporters have been engaged in a bloody war with the ANC-aligned United Democratic Front in Natal province. And Buthelezi said that “just because I’m here,” meeting with De Klerk, doesn’t mean “I’m aligning myself with the government.”

Mandela denied any ANC intimidation of the homeland leaders, contending that the four leaders had already made up their minds to boycott talks with De Klerk when they briefed the ANC on Wednesday.

The resurrected government-ANC talks, originally scheduled for next Thursday, will center on obstacles to formal negotiations. The ANC has refused to accept De Klerk’s invitation to negotiate a new constitution until the government lifts the 46-month-old state of emergency, releases political prisoners, ends political prosecutions and allows exiles free passage home.

The ANC, the primary black opposition group in South Africa, had suspended arrangements for those preliminary talks in protest over a March 26 clash between police and demonstrators in Sebokeng, about 25 miles south of Johannesburg. Police opened fire on tens of thousands of blacks protesting poor living conditions in that township, killing five. At least 10 other deaths occurred in rioting and additional clashes with police later that day.

The ANC had demanded a government response to the “massacre of innocent and defenseless people in Sebokeng.”

De Klerk met that demand Thursday by assuring Mandela that he had already ordered “an in-depth investigation” into the police actions in Sebokeng. The president also said he would consider appointing a judicial commission of inquiry into the deaths.

Mandela said he welcomed De Klerk’s moves but added that he had told the president that any commission of inquiry “must consist of people regarded as credible leaders” in the black community. “The perception that exists, especially among blacks in the country, is that a white judge is not the right person to head such an inquiry.”

It was the first meeting of the two leaders since Mandela was released from prison Feb. 11. They conferred twice while Mandela was a prisoner.

Mandela was joined in the discussions by Popo Molefe, general secretary of the UDF anti-apartheid coalition; Trevor Manuel, ANC leader in the western Cape province, and Ahmed Kathrada, a Mandela co-defendant in the 1964 treason trial and now part of the ANC’s internal leadership.

De Klerk was assisted by Roelof F. (Pik) Botha, the foreign minister; Gerrit Viljoen, minister of constitutional development, and Adriaan Vlok, minister of law and order.

The two sides agreed that escalating violence across the country, especially in Natal province where factional fighting has claimed more than 2,500 lives in the last three years, is a major impediment to fruitful black-white negotiations.

But they disagreed about the cause of that violence. De Klerk suggested that much of it was spawned by the ANC’s refusal to end its support for the armed struggle it has waged against Pretoria’s white minority-led government for 30 years.

The ANC contends that the armed struggle cannot be ended until the government stops using violence against anti-apartheid demonstrators. And Mandela blamed the violence in South Africa on the system of racial repression that has left the black majority impoverished and frustrated.

The government’s desire to open power-sharing talks with black opposition groups has triggered increasing violence in South Africa’s 10 homelands, which were created under apartheid to keep blacks away from white areas. Many residents of the four homelands that Pretoria considers independent are pressing their leaders to return the territories to South African rule.

A coup last month toppled the leader of Ciskei, one of the four independent homelands. And on Thursday, Venda President Frank Ravele, the leader of another of those independent homelands, was overthrown.

News of the coup was greeted with singing and dancing in the streets, news agencies reported. In an address on Radio Thohoyandou, coup leader Col. Gabriel Ramushwana, deputy chief of the Venda Defense Force, said he would lead the 2,578-square-mile territory until it is incorporated into South Africa.

“It is quite clear these (homeland) leaders have no support,” Mandela said. And while the ANC is willing to forget the past, he warned that “discredited homeland leaders” who are attempting to maintain their power despite public disapproval “will not be able to run to us for protection.”