Contradictory Tracks to Power : The ANC will need extraordinary skill to get through the transition. Its good fortune is to have Mandela.

Nelson Mandela often refers to the fact that he has been speaking to senior members of the South African government for the past four years. What we are seeing today is a continuation of the process of dialogue and political engineering that he initiated from his prison cell.

It is important that Americans understand the unique aspects of the political transition being conducted by the government of President Frederik W. de Klerk, actions taken largely in response to specific demands by the African National Congress and the Mass Democratic Movement.

The movement faces the overriding challenge of maintaining international economic pressure until the apartheid system has been completely dismantled and replaced by a nonracial democracy. The more nuanced and complex dynamics of the current political process, however, are overshadowed by such an effort. A leading black South African journalist referred in private to the ANC and the ruling National Party as now being the two “mainstream parties” in the country. Both have moved closer to the political center in recent months. It will be a few years before the ANC can test its political strength in a general election. In the meantime, a multiple-track strategy is taking shape.

In the first track, the ANC is keeping pressure on the government to take down the pillars of apartheid and to end all forms of political repression directed by or tolerated by the state.

Because the ANC seems destined to become the majority party, it has a vested interest in having a more moderate National Party as its parliamentary opposition rather than the far-right parties threatening armed confrontation. At a rally in May outside Pretoria, Mandela went so far as to urge white South Africans to support De Klerk. He knows that whites who share his party’s ideals need no special encouragement to join the ANC.

After the preconditions for substantive talks have been fully met, the National Party, the ANC and the latter’s allies will have to agree on arrangements for writing a new constitution. At the moment, the gap between the two sides is very wide. All the anti-apartheid groups, including the Pan-Africanist Congress and the Azanian Peoples Organization, call for a democratically elected constituent assembly. De Klerk will have to move a considerable distance from the round-table scenario that his party advocates to satisfy such a demand. He also may have to renege on his promise to submit any constitutional changes to a referendum of the white electorate. It would be a profound anomaly for a democratic and nonracial South Africa to be held hostage to a veto of the white minority.

De Klerk must retain enough support among his wary constituency until it is ready to accept the basic tenet of the ANC’s Freedom Charter: “South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white, and no government can justly claim authority unless it is based on the will of the people.”

It now appears likely that the country will have two governing systems during the transition period, a formal one based on the National Party’s parliamentary dominance and an extra-parliamentary one shared principally with the ANC. Leading echelons of the two parties are increasingly linked by private advisers, and these connections will be bolstered by ad hoc committees to tackle particular policy issues.

It has long been felt that the achievement of a general agreement on economic reform would be the greatest hurdle during the transition. The gap between the two sides has narrowed perceptibly. Mandela now speaks of the importance of pursuing redistribution “in conditions of a growing economy,” of “an expanded market” as “an engine of growth” and of the need “to attract substantial foreign investment.”

On the other hand, the government’s zeal to privatize publicly owned corporations has been tempered in response to criticisms from the ANC and the trade unions. The government, the ANC, the business community and the trade unions are likely to discover unexpected areas of common ground as they advance and revise their positions on economic restructuring. Most important, strategies must be devised to spur increased capital investments in post-apartheid South Africa to meet the massive social needs spawned by four decades of that system.

The special circumstances of contemporary South Africa have forced the ANC, since its unbanning in February, to combine the tactics of armed struggle, legalized political protest and incipient national governance. It will take extraordinary skill to maintain these contradictory positions during the transition period. It is the good fortune of that brutalized country that Mandela has emerged from his long incarceration ready to lead all of its people, directly and indirectly, from the deep divisions fostered by apartheid. Our government must respond with resolute action to help him and his colleagues bring their historic struggle to a successful conclusion.