South Africa Calls Off Its State of Emergency : Apartheid: But controls will remain in effect in troubled Natal province. De Klerk’s action is likely to improve his nation’s standing abroad and aid its dealings with the ANC.

President Frederik W. de Klerk announced Thursday that the harsh four-year-old state of emergency will expire at midnight tonight in most of the country, a move likely to improve South Africa’s international standing and to facilitate formal power-sharing negotiations with the African National Congress.

The emergency, which had been extended for one-year periods in each of the last three years, will be renewed only for Natal province, the scene of bloody confrontations among black groups.

For the rest of the country, the move eradicates what is perhaps the principal symbol of South African repression in the 1980s--a system of detentions without trial, restrictions on the movement and life style of hundreds of dissidents, bans on political organizations and activity and constraints on news coverage.

De Klerk’s decision removes what the black nationalist, anti-apartheid ANC has long identified as one of several obstacles to full negotiations with the government. The others are the release of political prisoners and amnesty so that exiles may return safely.

In announcing his move, De Klerk acknowledged that the state of emergency was “one of the most important issues constantly raised inside and outside South Africa” and one of the “main stumbling blocks” to negotiations.

He added that “as a gesture,” he would release 48 people the ANC has identified as among more than 300 political prisoners held in South African jails. And he said “the government has started to act” to bring back ANC exiles by granting “temporary reprieve” to many leaders so they can re-establish political activities in South Africa.

De Klerk coupled his announcement with a challenge to the ANC to respond to government reforms by renouncing “armed struggle” to end apartheid and to end its calls for further economic sanctions against South Africa.

ANC leader Nelson Mandela, in Paris on Thursday to urge French President Francois Mitterrand to maintain sanctions, called the lifting of the state of emergency “a victory for the people of South Africa as a whole, black and white.”

As long as the state of emergency lasted, he said, “no peaceful political activity was possible.”

But he continued his call on Western governments to impose sanctions on South Africa. “It doesn’t change my mind” regarding sanctions, he said of the emergency decree.

Over the next six weeks, the ANC leader will be visiting other European countries and the United States to urge continued sanctions against the South African government.

Mandela and other ANC leaders criticized De Klerk’s decision to renew the emergency in Natal province, a region where internecine strife among black groups has cost as many as 3,000 lives since 1986, including 500 since the beginning of this year.

“The violence in Natal has escalated precisely during the state of emergency,” said Mohammed Valli Moosa, an ANC leader, at a press conference after De Klerk’s announcement. “The target of the state of emergency was not this kind of violence, but activists and leaders of our movement.”

They also noted that “many pillars of apartheid still stand,” in the words of Ahmed Kathrada, a member of the ANC’s national executive committee. These include laws that give police extraordinary powers even in the absence of the state of emergency.

The emergency restrictions were not always strictly applied during the last several months. Last fall, supporters of the still-outlawed ANC were allowed to hold a big rally welcoming ANC leader Walter Sisulu and other political prisoners when they were released. And in February, De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC and other previously outlawed groups, announced that Mandela would soon be freed and ended emergency regulations muzzling the print media’s reporting of anti-government unrest.

De Klerk’s announcement Thursday came in the wake of a serious electoral setback for his National Party, an indication that a large number of white voters are discontented about the relatively rapid pace of reform in South Africa this year.

On Wednesday, the right-wing Conservative Party, which strongly opposes De Klerk’s anti-apartheid reforms, came within 547 votes of winning what had been the Nationalists’ safest seat in Natal province, in a working-class constituency just outside the Indian Ocean city of Durban.

The special election to fill a vacated parliamentary seat was the first chance for voters to react to reforms that date back to February, when De Klerk freed Mandela from prison and legalized the ANC and 60 other anti-apartheid groups.

The election was widely billed as the last “white vote” in South Africa, since De Klerk is moving to bring blacks into the political system before the next scheduled general election, which would take place in September, 1994.

The conservatives poured money and manpower into the district in the hope of demonstrating that the reforms had left the government’s white constituents behind. Party literature urged voters to “Stop the ANC” and identified the ANC and the Nationalists with Communists--specifically, Joe Slovo, the South African Communist leader and ANC stalwart who returned from exile this spring.

The campaign helped the Conservatives move from a distant third place in the district’s last election to a close second in this one. Political analysts here said the results indicate that De Klerk has lost much of his white support, but they argued that in a general election, the National Party would still retain a majority in Parliament.

Still, said Robert Schrire, a professor of political studies at the University of Cape Town, the vote indicates that De Klerk “is now playing mostly to an international and ANC constituency.” That means, he said, that white voters may be assuaged only if the international community and the ANC begin to make concessions to the De Klerk government to demonstrate that anti-apartheid reform will benefit everyone, not just the country’s black majority.

In his speech lifting the emergency, made in Cape Town to a rare joint session of the South African Parliament in which whites, Coloreds (mixed race), and Asians (mainly from India) but not blacks are represented, De Klerk appeared intent on moving reform forward despite the voters’ reaction.

“The process of normalization has been traumatic for all of us,” he said. “It has been a bewildering and sometimes frightening experience for many. But without it, we cannot achieve either a negotiated and lasting solution or the normalization of our relations with the rest of the world.”

He seemed to acknowledge frankly that the emergency was a major cause of South Africa’s political, economic, and cultural isolation in the world community.

“We need foreign trade and investment,” he said. “We need technological, cultural and sporting interaction with other countries. We have a right to make our voice heard in the councils of the nations.”

Beyond that, however, De Klerk’s move underscores a radical difference in atmosphere between the South Africa of today and that of 1986, when former President Pieter W. Botha first imposed the Draconian system. Then, South Africa was racked by unprecedented civil unrest, especially in its black townships, that had harmed its reputation worldwide and energized the economic sanctions movement.

Within days of establishing the state of emergency on June 12, 1986, Botha’s government had detained thousands of anti-apartheid activists without trial.

Over the next two years, the government developed its system of restrictions, in which freed activists were restricted to their homes and immediate neighborhoods and they were obliged to report to local police authorities, sometimes several times a day. Scores of opposition groups were banned and hundreds of activists forced into exile.

Today, many of the organizations at which the initial proclamation was aimed have been legalized by the government, petty segregation is being scrapped, and a South Africa ruled by the black majority looms ahead.

Many of the police powers embodied in the emergency decree are duplicated in existing laws, some of which the ANC has also insisted be reviewed.

Within the last week alone, De Klerk had proposed that Parliament scrap the Separate Amenities Act, which permitted a noxious level of public segregation. Given the National Party’s parliamentary majority, the move was tantamount to rescinding the law.

In his speech Thursday, De Klerk indicated that similar fates await the Group Areas Act and the Land Act, which restrict black settlement and property ownership, “early next year.”

THE ELEMENTS OF APARTHEID

South African racial law and practice as state of emergency is cut back:

Voting--Blacks have no vote in national affairs, a key demand of the African National Congress in negotiations with the government; voting rights are expected within the next four years.

Jail--The ANC lists more than 300 political prisoners held in South African jails and some reports estimate as many as 3,000 are held; 48 are to be released soon, other cases are to be considered later.

Exile--ANC leaders and others who fled into political exile to escape repression are gradually being permitted to return under “temporary reprieve.”

Facilities--Racial segregation at swimming pools, beaches and other public places permitted by the Separate Amenities Acts is to be abolished by Parliament under legislation proposed June 1.

Property--Restrictions on residence and land-owning rights of blacks and other racial and ethnic groups under Group Areas and Land acts; to be reconsidered and probably abolished early in 1991.

Homelands--Ten tribal black homelands, all accorded self-governing status and four of them recognized by Pretoria as “independent” countries; opposed in principal by the ANC and likely to be a subject of negotiations with government.

Security--Blacks complain of brutality by police enforcing law under acts giving them extensive powers; ANC wants them revised.