Panel to Plan End of S. Africa Black Strife

In their first historic round of peace talks, the African National Congress, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the government agreed here Saturday to draw up a plan to end the bloody internecine conflict and “work for peace in South Africa as a supreme priority.”

The initiative was the first, tentative sign of progress toward ending the escalating black factional war, which stands as the biggest obstacle to launching negotiations for a new constitution and voting rights for the black majority. The ANC has refused to participate in constitutional talks until it is satisfied that the government is doing all it can to end the violence.

The one-day meeting, sponsored by church and business leaders, agreed to form a committee, including three representatives each from the ANC, its rival Inkatha and the government, to write a code of conduct for political organizations and the police.

The panel also will study ways of enforcing those codes, improving social and economic conditions in violence-torn townships and setting up “peace secretariats” at local, regional and national levels to stem the fighting. Its report is due by the first week of August.

In the last five years, more than 5,000 blacks have died in factional fighting in Natal province, the base of Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha party. Last year, when Inkatha attempted to broaden its political support base, the war spread to ANC-dominated townships around Johannesburg, where 1,800 have died.

The primary combatants in the war have been supporters of Nelson Mandela’s ANC, the most powerful black organization in the country, and supporters of Buthelezi’s Inkatha, which has a mostly Zulu membership of 2.2 million.

The roots of the conflict date to the mid-1970s, when Buthelezi formed Inkatha and agreed to participate in the government’s homeland system as head of one self-governing homeland, KwaZulu, in Natal Province.

Inkatha and the ANC both opposed apartheid, but they disagreed vehemently on the way to end it. Inkatha favored working within the white-controlled system and rejected the then-banned ANC’s guerrilla war and sanctions campaign. The ANC strongly opposed the homeland system, and ANC supporters labeled Buthelezi a sellout.

Mandela and Buthelezi signed a peace pact in January, but the agreement fell apart when the fighting worsened. The ANC has blamed the conflict on the government and rogue elements in the security forces, which it contends have been providing support for Inkatha. Inkatha has blamed the ANC, saying Inkatha supporters have only been defending themselves against ANC aggressors.

In May, President Frederik W. de Klerk called a two-day peace conference. But the ANC and most other anti-apartheid organizations boycotted it because they considered the government to be a combatant and an inappropriate party to organize the conference.

The peace process was restarted last week by a multiracial panel of church and business leaders.

Neither Mandela nor Buthelezi, who is in the United States, attended the Saturday talks. Mandela, who said he hopes the delegates will focus on “mending whatever wounds have been opened,” later met with ANC President Oliver Tambo, who arrived from London to attend an ANC conference.