ANC Rules Out Talks Until Violence Ends : S. Africa: The move is sparked by continued bloodshed in townships. It could stymie negotiations on a new constitution.

The African National Congress declared Saturday that it will not take part in planned constitutional talks with the white-minority-led government until President Frederik W. de Klerk acts decisively to stop violence in black townships and ban the carrying of Zulu spears.

But ANC leaders said they will maintain other contacts with the government, including discussions on the violence. Joint panels also will continue to implement agreements on political prisoner freedom, the return of exiles and the suspension of the ANC’s guerrilla war.

To back up its demand for government steps to end the violence, the ANC said it plans to stage a nationwide two-day general strike and a one-day national consumer boycott within the next month. It also formally refused to attend a government-sponsored conference on violence later this week.

The moves, which followed a one-day meeting of the 37-member ANC national executive committee, marked a hitch in the peace process but stopped short of destroying the increasingly strained relationship between the ANC and the government.

Nevertheless, the ANC’s new plans reflect growing impatience with De Klerk and frustration among the ANC’s rank and file over escalating black violence and the government’s inability--or, it contends, the government’s unwillingness--to put an end to it.

Clashes between supporters of the ANC and of the rival, Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party of Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi have claimed more than 5,000 lives in the last four years, including 250 in Johannesburg-area townships since May 1.

Unless the government and Inkatha “address this threat seriously by moving beyond rhetoric and posturing, unless they begin to take concrete and binding measures to end the violence, all South Africans will be the losers,” the ANC said in a statement.

However, the ANC’s decision to refuse to participate in power-sharing talks is unlikely to have any immediate effect because those negotiations have not yet begun.

Although the ANC and the government have had informal discussions on constitutional matters, the ANC has refused to formally enter negotiations until all political prisoners are free and political exiles are home. At any rate, no constitutional talks were envisioned before the ANC’s national planning conference in July.

Later Saturday, the ANC was criticized sharply by the government and Buthelezi, both of whom the ANC blames for the violence.

Gerrit Viljoen, the Cabinet minister in charge of constitutional development, said the ANC’s refusal to attend the conference on violence is “unjustifiable and irresponsible.”

Buthelezi, who says he will participate in the government’s conference on violence, accused the ANC of “bully-boy tactics,” and said that “they want to keep the pot boiling for their own benefit . . . to make South Africa ungovernable.”

Joe Slovo, the South African Communist Party leader and a member of the ANC’s national executive committee, said that to attend the government’s conference would be “to accept that the state is an impartial body standing above the violence.”

“We dismiss that,” he said.