Apartheid Is ‘on Way Out,’ Tutu Says in Southland Visit

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, beginning a 10-day speaking, preaching and fund-raising visit in Southern California on Friday, said that while apartheid is “on the way out,” economic sanctions against the South African government have been “extremely effective” and should be continued until the dismantling is “irreversible.”

Citing the rapid progress of current talks between the South African government and the African National Congress, the ebullient black Anglican churchman and Nobel Peace Prize laureate predicted that the beginnings of an integrated government could be in place before 1991.

“We are looking toward the emergence of a constituent assembly by the end of the year,” Tutu, 58, said at a press conference in Los Angeles on Friday.

The ANC wants a new constitution to be drawn up by such an assembly, elected in a one-person, one-vote election open to all races. The government, however, believes the constitution could be drawn up by “recognized leaders” in South Africa without a vote.

Despite the sweeping reforms launched by South African President Frederik W. de Klerk, Tutu said, the most pressing concern of the country’s 28 million blacks is the right to vote.

“We want the franchise,” he said during an interview with The Times in Santa Barbara, where he shared his vision of a world at peace with a crowd of 500 who gathered to honor him Thursday night with the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation award.

“That is what gives us access,” Tutu said. “If those who make the laws are accountable to you, then they are not likely to pass ones that are unacceptable because you will toss them out.”

At the press conference Friday, Mayor Tom Bradley said Tutu’s “dynamic leadership” opposing apartheid had been “the catalyst for . . . the historic talks” between De Klerk and the ANC about black-white power sharing.

But during the interview, Tutu said some aspects of apartheid are “still very firmly in place.” Spending on education that favors whites and residential discrimination patterns have “enabled the government to uproot and unsettle more than 3 million people,” he declared.

Wearing a large silver cross on a chain over his customary purple clerical shirt and white collar, Tutu added, however, that he deplores violence in any form as a means of retaliation. Nelson Mandela, the 71-year-old leader of the ANC who was freed in February after 27 years in prison, recently acknowledged that the ANC had tortured dissidents in detention camps in Angola.

Although praising Mandela “for admitting it, great man that he is,” Tutu said the ANC should make “an independent inquiry lest the issue become a running sore.”

“I’m as firmly opposed to that kind of activity by the ANC as I am of it being perpetrated by the government,” Tutu added. His view is at odds with that of several high-profile anti-apartheid church leaders who have declared that while the ANC should not have engaged in torture, violence should not be ruled out until apartheid is ended.

Tutu said he sees a link between conciliation moves involving Mandela and de Klerk in South Africa and the end of the Cold War in Europe.

Praising de Klerk for entering negotiations with the ANC, the Cape Town-based archbishop, who is primate of the Anglican Church in the Province of Southern Africa, said it was “one of those surprising ironies of history” that his countrymen are now lauding De Klerk as “the Gorbachev of South Africa.”

Tutu has made several trips to Los Angeles to raise funds for his scholarship program, which he established in 1984 with his Nobel Prize money. He said he plans to take a less visible role in African politics and devote more time to the church’s “bridge-building” role.

“Governments can no longer continue oppression and survive,” he said, adding that he is telling Americans to continue “making it clear that morality matters. Governments must remember . . . that freedom is cheaper than oppression and right ultimately is profitable.”

In Santa Barbara, where he was honored for his commitment to abolishing injustice without violence, Tutu described “the devastating consequences of human sin when we look at the ecological disasters of our making.”

“Things are horribly out of joint,” he said in a speech, “when we see the laws of the jungle applied so ruthlessly in the intercourse between humans, where it is eat or be eaten, survival of the fittest and the weakest to the wall.”

But in a more upbeat mood Friday morning--after he and an aide had taken an hour’s walk along the beach--a beaming Tutu quipped that it was easy to understand, “when you see a beautiful place like this, how God--after he made the Earth--rubbed his hands in satisfaction and said, ‘This is jolly good. I haven’t done too badly.’ ”

Today, Tutu will receive an award at Claremont Graduate School and begin a round of speaking at area colleges, preaching in churches and at rallies, and raising funds to enable disadvantaged Southern African youths and those exiled for their political activities to attend U.S. universities.

TUTU’S SOUTHLAND APPEARANCES

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s public meetings during his May 10-22 visit to Southern California include:

Today, 3 p.m.: Receives an award and speaks briefly at commencement exercises in Bridges Hall at the Claremont Graduate School.

Sunday, 8:30 and 11 a.m.: Preaches at Holman United Methodist Church, 3320 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles.

Tuesday, 2 p.m.: Addresses students at the Art Center College of Design, Pasadena; at 4:30 p.m. addresses students at Occidental College in Eagle Rock.

Wednesday, 3:30 p.m.: Dedicates stained glass window portraying the archbishop with children of different races, St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 1014 Altadena Drive, Altadena.

Thursday, 6 p.m.: Southern Africa Refugee Scholarship Fund dinner, Biltmore Hotel, Los Angeles.

Friday, 8 p.m.: Speaks at rally at St. John’s Episcopal Church, 513 W. Adams Blvd., Los Angeles.

May 20: Preaches at 9 and 11:15 a.m. services and speaks at the 10:15 a.m. rector’s forum at All Saints Episcopal Church, 132 N. Euclid Ave., Pasadena.

May 21, 10 a.m.: Preaches at Fuller Seminary chapel service in Pasadena Presbyterian Church, 54 N. Oakland Ave.; addresses students at Cal State Long Beach in the afternoon; speaks at 7:30 p.m. rally, sponsored by Messiah Episcopal Church, at Santa Ana High School Auditorium, 520 W. Walnut St.

May 22: Addresses students at Caltech in Pasadena in the morning; speaks to students at UCLA in the afternoon.