ANC Leader Urges Shift in Stand on Sanctions

African National Congress President Oliver R. Tambo, opening a historic nationwide ANC conference Friday, urged his black liberation movement to consider for the first time softening its stand on sanctions against South Africa.

“It is no longer enough for us to repeat the tired slogans,” said Tambo, 73, delivering the first speech since his return Thursday from 30 years in exile. “We should . . . carefully re-evaluate the advisability of insisting on the retention of sanctions, given the new developments in the country and abroad.”

Tambo’s recommendation signaled an important change in strategy for the ANC, which until now has publicly insisted that sanctions be maintained until a new constitution has been adopted or, at the least, “profound and irreversible” change has occurred.

Many ANC leaders have begun to worry that, no matter what the ANC says, the United States and other foreign countries may soon ease or remove sanctions against Pretoria.

World leaders, including President Bush, have said they want to reward President Frederik W. de Klerk for his reform initiatives and encourage him to continue to dismantle apartheid and begin negotiations with black leaders.

As Tambo spoke Friday, a summit of European Community leaders in Rome was considering a proposal to lift its ban on new investments in South Africa. The ban is a voluntary part of the EC’s 1986 sanctions package, which prohibits importing South African gold coins, iron and steel. Britain and Italy already have lifted their bans on South African investments.

The likelihood of a modification of sanctions by the EC in coming weeks, and the possibility that the Bush Administration will soon determine that De Klerk has met most of the conditions for easing U.S. sanctions, has forced the ANC to reconsider its position.

ANC Deputy President Nelson Mandela has written European Community leaders, urging them to hold off on removing sanctions at least until February, when De Klerk is expected to announce plans to remove laws segregating neighborhoods and restricting black ownership of land.

But a confidential discussion document being formally circulated at the ANC’s three-day conference says that if the ANC remains rigid on sanctions and they begin to erode anyway, the movement will “suffer a major defeat.”

“Then the perception will be created that the government has scored a major victory over the ANC, having succeeded in persuading the world to lift sanctions,” the document adds.

The document, which will be debated at the conference, recommends that the ANC take control of the sanctions debate by drawing up a step-by-step sanctions modification program linked to government reforms.

The ANC’s concern, according to Tambo, is that “at no stage should we ever allow the strategic initiative to shift to the other side.”

ANC-inspired sanctions against South Africa have isolated the country diplomatically, economically and culturally. Among the stiffest sanctions are those contained in the U.S. Anti-Apartheid Act, which restricts American investment and the purchase of South African products.

While economic sanctions have eaten into South Africans’ pocketbooks, an array of international cultural, educational and sports boycotts have had a strong psychological impact.

Pretoria has long fought sanctions, arguing that those policies hurt the black majority more than the white minority by creating unemployment and making the government too poor to raise the standard of living of blacks.

But government opponents say that without the sanctions campaign, the government would have taken even longer to begin dismantling apartheid and come to the negotiating table. And lifting the pressure of sanctions from the government now, some in the ANC argue, would slow the pace of reform.

The sanctions discussion document, entitled “Managing the Period of Transition,” suggests that the ANC consider loosening the cultural, educational and sports boycotts. It also recommends that the ANC encourage foreign investments in programs that will directly improve the living conditions of the nation’s 28 million blacks, beset by high unemployment and severe housing shortages.

However, the document recommends that the oil and arms embargo, as well as sanctions against development loans, remain in place as long as the white minority controls the government.

The future of sanctions is one of the primary topics up for discussion among the 1,600 delegates to the conference, which ends Sunday. Others include the escalating black factional fighting in Johannesburg-area townships, the ANC’s negotiations strategy and the status of the recently suspended armed struggle.

Delegates also are expected to raise questions about the operations of the ANC, which has had difficulty making the transition from a revolutionary movement to a legal, democratic political organization.

Tambo acknowledged the criticism of ANC leaders indirectly on Friday, telling the conference that the ANC must “root ourselves amongst the people . . . and, jointly with them, find ways to advance our cause. Conditions of illegality, which in the past imposed some limitations on our adherence to principles of democracy, no longer prevail.”

The ANC president said that protest marches and other forms of mass action may soon replace the armed struggle and sanctions as the predominant form of liberation struggle. And he urged the ANC to organize “all South Africans, black and white, . . . into a mighty vehicle of liberation.”

Both Tambo and Mandela expressed concern about the level of violence, which has soared since the ANC and other anti-apartheid groups were legalized in February.

So far this year, 3,460 people, most of them black, have died in political violence in South Africa--more than have died in 11 years of conflict in Northern Ireland, according to the South African Institute of Race Relations. Since July, 1,020 people have died in factional fighting in Johannesburg-area townships.

“The massacres in the townships and elsewhere are a painful reminder that apartheid is still firmly in place,” Tambo said. “Accordingly, the struggle against apartheid should be intensified on all fronts.”

Mandela, in his keynote speech to the conference, said most of the black factional fighting was “neither the outcome of political rivalry nor the expression of political intolerance among the oppressed.” Instead, he said, it was part of “an orchestrated campaign of counterrevolutionary violence” to destroy confidence in the ANC and its leadership.”