Mandela Cautions on Lifting Sanctions

The African National Congress pleaded with the world community Saturday “not to be hasty” in lifting sanctions against South Africa even as it praised President Frederik W. de Klerk’s pledge to scrap three of the main legislative pillars of the apartheid system of racial separation.

“Whatever changes have been brought about, or the government intends bringing about, the reality is that apartheid is still in force,” ANC leader Nelson Mandela said at a news conference.

“We still have no votes. We can’t be members of Parliament. The state organs are still dominated by whites. The police are still harassing, persecuting, even killing, our people,” he said, speaking of South Africa’s 30 million blacks.

The ANC leader made an appeal to the Bush Administration and Congress, saying: “Until the reality (of apartheid) changes,” sanctions “must be maintained in spite of what Mr. De Klerk has said.”

De Klerk’s reform process still could be reversed, Mandela warned. The dismantling of apartheid would become “irreversible” only when “we ourselves control the process,” he said.

But in a formal statement reacting to De Klerk’s speech Friday to Parliament in Cape Town, the ANC “commended” the president on his new reform proposals. De Klerk said he would soon submit legislation canceling the Land Acts of 1913 and 1936, which have reserved 87% of all land for whites; the Group Areas Act of 1966, which enforces segregated housing and living, and the Population Registration Act of 1950, which classifies people by race.

The ANC also praised De Klerk’s “Manifesto for the New South Africa,” which was released at the time of his speech. The document contains a long list of basic values and principles intended to form the basis for a new non-racial, democratic constitution and political and economic system.

The ANC said De Klerk’s proposals brought about “the narrowing of the distance between the positions” of the ruling National Party and the ANC, and this would be “of great assistance in providing a climate conducive to the elaboration of a new constitution.”

But the black nationalist organization added that it was “ironic” that De Klerk still rejected the ANC’s call for an elected constituent assembly and interim government, saying this amounted to an insistence that “a minority regime, which has no legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of our people, presides over the transition to democracy.”

Meanwhile, a brawl in a hotel between dozens of blacks and whites, allegedly provoked by right-wing white extremists, left at least 23 people hurt and 32 under arrest Saturday, police and witnesses said. All of those arrested after the fight were blacks, a police official said, because the whites involved “managed to run away.”

The fighting broke out soon after midnight at the Majestic Hotel in the town of Krugersdorp when four whites “started looking for trouble” with two black men, hotel manager John Joubert said.

“The white guys were obviously those far-right types . . . it’s possible they were cursing the blacks about the changes,” he said, referring to De Klerk’s announcement.