. . . Let’s Not Be So Quick to Decide : They must remain until the majority rules. Only then can one be certain anti-apartheid efforts will not be reversed.

Representatives of the State Department are walking the halls of Congress, briefing members of the House and Senate about the Bush Administration’s position on sanctions against South Africa. Unfortunately, and predictably, President Bush plans to lift the sanctions imposed by the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986.

In so doing, the President will be ignoring the pleas of a large number of members of Congress, church and civil-rights groups, the African National Congress, pro-democracy groups in Africa and the United States, and the Congressional Black Caucus.

By lifting sanctions, President Bush will be responding to the arguments of large corporations, conservatives and old hands in the State Department who have never agreed with sanctions. The President will tell you that he has no choice but to follow the law. But he will be ignoring his own position that on matters of foreign policy, he is not limited to congressional decisions.

It might be instructive to state the conditions embodied in the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986. Under the law, five conditions must be met before sanctions can be lifted. They are:

--The release of all persons prosecuted for their political beliefs or unlawfully detained without trial, including African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela.

Mandela has been freed, but not all political prisoners have been released. This is a matter of major dispute in South Africa.

--Repeal of the state of emergency and release of all detainees held thereunder.

This condition has been partially met, but there is no accurate accounting of detainees held under the state of emergency. However, the police continue to arrest and detain blacks without cause or trial.

--Lifting of the ban on democratic political parties and permitting free exercise of political activities.

Although it is true that the ANC, the Pan Africanist Congress and other political parties--including the Communist Party--are free to organize, blacks do not have the right to vote. What kind of “democracy” is this?

--Repeal of the Group Areas Act and the Population Registration Act.

These two acts have been repealed. Another, however, which abolishes racially based land laws, in fact maintains the status quo by allowing residents in white areas to prohibit any change in existing “norms and standards.” In other words, a majority of whites in residential areas “may by agreement draft bylaws regarding overcrowding of residential premises, including ‘norms or standards’ for determination of overcrowding (and) the maintenance of residential premises in a clean hygienic condition. . . .” Therefore, if two-thirds of the white residential property owners propose a bylaw prohibiting blacks from residing in those areas, the white local authorities must uphold it as the law.

--The government must enter into good-faith negotiations without preconditions.

The South African government has not created a climate conducive to good-faith negotiations, as evidenced by documented complicity in the continuing violence between Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha supporters and ANC.

Apartheid in fact, if not in law, continues to be the order of the day, and there is as yet no proof of serious movement by the government toward a nonracial democracy.

In addition, two of the most important issues affecting South African blacks are not covered by the U.S. sanctions law: one person, one vote, and land reform. And there is a reason for that omission.

When Rep. Ronald V. Dellums’ sanctions bill passed the House, it was indeed “comprehensive” and powerful. However, the threat of a veto caused the Senate to pass a weak version of the bill, with the condition that there would be no conference committee to resolve the differences or strike a compromise. The House was faced with a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The weak Senate version was an unnecessary compromise because President Reagan vetoed the bill anyway.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the architect of the dismantlement of apartheid in South Africa, President Frederik W. de Klerk. Not once in his frequent statements about sanctions and apartheid has De Klerk ever mentioned majority rule. He envisions in post-apartheid South Africa a system tantamount to what he calls “a Rhode Island Senate situation.” In the U.S. Senate, Rhode Island, with a little more than 1 million people, has the same representation as California with 30 million. What De Klerk is quietly engineering is a system of non-proportional representation in which whites would have the same representation as blacks in one of two houses of Parliament.

During this year’s congressional Easter recess, the prestigious Aspen Institute sponsored a conference in Cape Town in which every pro-democracy, anti-apartheid group in South Africa participated. More than a dozen members of the U.S. Congress also participated, as well as De Klerk and Mandela.

Mandela was asked repeatedly whether U.S. sanctions should be lifted. His response was emphatic and consistent: Sanctions should not be lifted until the following were allowed by the South African government: an all-party conference, a constituent assembly, a new constitution and free, fair, supervised elections based on one person, one vote.

In addition, Mandela said he did not believe that De Klerk’s actions in dismantling apartheid should be viewed as irreversible, and that majority rule would be the only guarantee that anti-apartheid efforts could not be reversed.

On the U.S. domestic front, the political timing for lifting sanctions would be most unfortunate. Given the President’s antagonism toward the proposed civil rights act, a move to lift sanctions now would send a strong negative message to more than 30 million African Americans and millions of anti-apartheid and pro-democracy supporters in South Africa and throughout the world that the Bush Administration is not concerned about democracy in South Africa for the black majority.