S. African, ANC Leaders Adopt Talks Formula

Heralding a diplomatic breakthrough, South Africa’s white-led government and the African National Congress wrapped up three days of talks here Friday with a commitment to end escalating violence and to pursue “a peaceful process toward negotiations” to end apartheid.

The communique, the first agreement ever reached between the primary warring forces in South Africa, announced plans to begin meeting the ANC’s preconditions for negotiations by setting up a joint panel to recommend ways of identifying and releasing political prisoners.

The government also promised to review security legislation and “work toward” lifting the four-year-old state of emergency. The two sides agreed to open channels of communication “to curb violence and intimidation from whatever quarter.”

The agreement set South Africa’s fledgling peace process in motion only three months after President Frederik W. de Klerk removed a 30-year-old ban on the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups and freed Nelson Mandela from a life jail term.

De Klerk, joined by ANC leader Mandela at an extraordinary news conference, said the pact was “an important breakthrough in the peaceful process that we want to take place in South Africa. A great step forward has been taken.”

Mandela described it as “the realization of a dream for which we have worked patiently and consistently over the last 30 years. Not only are we closer to each other. But we are all victors. South Africa is a victor.”

Although the ANC did not specifically agree to abandon its guerrilla war against Pretoria, Mandela said the ANC would “honor every word in the agreement (and) in that spirit look very hard and earnestly” at ending its strategy of armed struggle.

The ANC has conducted a campaign of bombings inside the country for nearly three decades, killing and injuring hundreds of police officers, soldiers and civilians. That effort has been mostly dormant for months, but the ANC has refused to formally relinquish it until the government agrees to a mutual cease-fire.

The government contends that the recent upsurge of violence in the country, where the death toll approaches the levels of the bloody riots of 1984-86, has been worsened by the ANC’s continuing commitment to the armed struggle.

Since Mandela’s Feb. 11 release, more than a dozen black demonstrators have been killed by police and several hundred have died in black-on-black violence, with most deaths occurring in Natal province where ANC supporters have battled members of Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha movement for more than three years.

The discussions, which began Wednesday, did not touch on the larger hurdles facing South Africa’s peacemakers, including the denial of voting rights to the 27-million black majority and the legal system of racial segregation known as apartheid. The government has promised to extend voting rights to blacks and end apartheid, but it wants protection for the white minority.

Instead, this week’s talks were aimed at clearing the initial obstacles to negotiations. Among those are the current unrest and the ANC’s insistence that the government free more than 2,000 political prisoners, lift the emergency decree and allow the ANC’s 20,000 exiles to return home without fear of prosecution.

“We have made progress on almost every aspect of the obstacles,” Mandela said. “And we are now closer to one another.”

The agreement created a joint “working group” to recommend ways of meeting the ANC’s demands on political prisoners and immunity for exiles. The panel, meeting in secret, will discuss a definition of “politically motivated crimes,” which could also include crimes committed by right-wing whites, and draw up a mechanism for releasing prisoners and granting amnesty for those not yet charged.

The group has been given a deadline of May 21, after which the ANC and the government will meet again to consider its recommendations. In the meantime, the agreement said, the government will give immediate attention to granting immunity to the thousands who left the country without a passport.

The government also agreed to urgently consider temporary immunity for members of the ANC’s 37-member national executive committee and selected other ANC leaders “to enable them to return and help . . . to bring violence to an end and to take part in peaceful political negotiations.” Five members of the ANC’s 11-member delegation to the talks are currently in the country under such an immunity.

By allowing the ANC to fully re-establish itself as a political force inside the country, the government hopes that the ANC can help quell increasing violence, much of which has been attributed to young ANC supporters.

Mandela said the ANC has been hampered in its efforts to rein in the youth by government actions that for 30 years put ANC leaders in jail and forced others into exile or underground.

During those years, Mandela said, “there was nobody to explain the policy of the organization (to the youth) and instill discipline. Now that the ANC has been legalized, we consider it our duty to stress discipline and tolerance.”

Both the government and the ANC face increasing criticism from extremists. Right-wing whites have begun to arm themselves, saying they fear that the government is preparing to hand over the country to black majority rule. The ANC faces similar pressure from well-armed black radicals, who criticize it for agreeing to talks with the government.

Mandela appealed for support for the agreement from his countrymen as well as foreign governments. But he stopped short of calling for an end to economic sanctions against Pretoria.

“The strategy of sanctions will remain in place,” Mandela said. “But we hope that as a result of this agreement and further developments it will not be necessary for us to call upon the international community to intensify sanctions.”

“On this,” De Klerk countered, “Mr. Mandela and I obviously disagree. We do not believe sanctions are justified. The time has come for them to fall away.”

Mandela and De Klerk also disagreed during the news conference when asked about the status of apartheid.

“Twenty-seven years ago I went to jail and I had no vote,” Mandela said. “Today, I still have no vote and that is due to the color of my skin. You can then decide whether apartheid is alive or not.”

De Klerk said apartheid and black voting rights are two of the issues to be resolved “when we get the negotiation process going.”