PERSPECTIVE ON SOUTH AFRICA : Organization Before Negotiation : The government, by demanding early talks, kept the ANC from first becoming well rooted among the masses.

Talks between the African National Congress and the South African government, once seen by the world as the path to peaceful change here, now seem on the verge of failure. Even ANC leader Nelson Mandela and President Frederick W. deKlerk spoke of “developments threatening this process” in a statement after their last meeting.

Among other problems, the ANC has threatened repeatedly to pull out of the talks and is once more mobilizing its members in mass demonstrations. The brutality of government security forces in quelling these demonstrations continues unabated.

The government has blamed the ANC for these confrontations, but if the ANC is guilty of anything, it is only of rushing into negotiations three months after its unbanning and 11 weeks after the release of Mandela. The organization failed to insist on the breathing space it needs to get itself on a new course.

Any businessman knows what a change in environment can do to his trading. New strategies are needed. This applies to the ANC, which for close to 30 years operated as a banned organization, calling the shots from far-off Lusaka, Zambia. It owed its popularity to its mystique and guerrilla attacks. Its fronts in the country--the United Democratic Front and the Congress of Southe African Trade Unions among them--endured through constant bannings and states of emergency. Organizational infrastructures were crude and its leadership was all underground.

The ANC has not had time to come up with new strategies appropriate to its position as a domestic political force. Its culture and that of its former legal fronts are at odds, leading to operational conflicts. The unions, for instance, are accustomed to a long, consensus-oriented decision process, while the ANC leadership has operated for years under a military-style discipline.

After having wielded power for five years of increasingly organized black unrest, the leaders of the Democratic Front, the trade unions and others that flew the ANC banner when it was in exile are unwilling (at levels below that of Mandela and ANC President Oliver Tambo) to yield their posts. There is jostling for power in middle management that has led to immense problems for the ANC leadership.

ANC detractors also forget that President De Klerk did not experience a burst of Christian love for blacks when he unbanned the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress and the South African Communist Party. It was part of a long-term strategy with only one objective--the retention of power by South Africa’s white minority, while avoiding civil war. If there was to be any power-sharing, it would be by co-opting black organizations into the system. By calling for talks, the ruling National Party forced the ANC into playing the game according to its rules.

In the meantime, De Klerk grew in stature. After scrapping more apartheid laws, he now commands immeasurable respect in black townships. When he visited Soweto two months ago, he was virtually mobbed. Students posed with him in front of TV cameras. This couldn’t have happened 12 months ago.

As for the ANC, it clearly hoped that by getting into early negotiations it would gain a head start on its political rivals, the Pan Africanist Congress and Azanian Peoples Organization. But it should first have addressed itself to the inter-organizational violence between the ANC and the primarily Zulu Inkatha and the crisis in black schools, the two burning issues in the black townships. This would have helped the ANC establish itself as a domestically oriented, overt political organization. When it failed to attend to the two issues, which in the meantime intensified, the government was able to play the part of honest broker.

Realizing that it is losing ground, and having abandoned guerrilla warfare under the terms of its agreement with the government, the ANC has reverted to mass black action as the only strategy to keep its foot-soldiers busy, show the black community it still has its sting, press De Klerk to the wall and refurbish its tarnished image.

Negotiations cannot recover their momentum in the current political climate. The only solution is to back away and start over. The ANC--and all other formerly banned organizations--need a pause of at least a year to develop sound organizational infrastructures. This period would enable these groups to address urgent issues in their community and perhaps plan a joint strategy, or at least make peace among the more violent factions. Then non-whites can get into negotiations, and ultimately elections, with a fighting chance.

This would be in De Klerk’s ultimate interest. For negotiations to have a lasting effect, black organizations must be capable of carrying their members with them. At the moment, no organization can.