PERSPECTIVES ON SOUTH AFRICA : Go On With Talks, Despite Betrayal : If negotiations between the ANC and the government collapse, the spiral of violence will commence anew.

When a disillusioned African National Congress suspended talks with the South African government a few weeks before the ANC’s conference in June, it had little choice in the face of government obduracy. It was in danger of losing its militant constituency if it continued talking to President Frederik W. de Klerk while he welshed on agreements. And violence between ANC followers and the conservative Zulu-led Inkatha was eroding the ANC’s standing in the international community.

Radical black groups, including the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) and Azanian Peoples Organization (Azapo), had opposed the ANC’s talks with the government from the beginning, arguing that the government’s past was too pockmarked with duplicity and broken promises. The PAC and Azapo then watched smugly as De Klerk’s government tailored reforms to suit South Africa’s whites and dragged its feet on the release of prisoners and the return of exiles.

Now comes “Inkatha-gate”--the disclosure that the government funded the ANC’s rival to the right.

“We have been vindicated,” said Lybon Mabasa, Azapo’s president for political affairs, after the exposures, while PAC Deputy President Dikgang Moseneke said the government could not be trusted “under any circumstances.”

Hard-liners are calling on the ANC to completely withdraw from the talks. Oliver Tambo, past ANC president and now national chairman, has warned of a return to armed struggle. And moderate blacks who trusted De Klerk feel utterly betrayed. They maintain that he must have known about the funding. If he did not, it meant that the security forces were beyond his control, which is worse.

Yet, despite this hardening of attitudes, the ANC must not pull out of the negotiation process, for the government is at its weakest since talks started a year ago. The ANC once more enjoys the moral high ground, and De Klerk, the darling of the international community since he started his courageous reforms, has his back to the wall. Even President Bush, just a month after lifting U.S. sanctions against South Africa, sent a strong message of protest against the government’s actions.

Inkatha-gate has also vindicated ANC claims of a “third force” behind rising black-on-black violence. This at least partly cleanses the ANC’s own involvement in the bloodshed. Thus, abandoning the talks would tarnish the ANC’s strengthening image.

Yes, government duplicity is a strong reason for pulling out, but the collapse of negotiations would be an enormous victory for the right wing and a trigger for uncontrollable black anger. Violent protest from the right and left would result, plunging the country into turmoil. The feared return to armed struggle would likely come to pass. Even the PAC and Azapo would not relish such an eventuality.

But if the talks recommence, De Klerk will return to them a chastened man. He knows that he must keep a closer watch on his own lieutenants and be ruthless when dealing with the right wing. He knows that if he does not, the international community can resume the pressure that forced him to the negotiating table in the first place.

The ANC therefore has only one useful option: It must pursue a negotiated settlement relentlessly, albeit with tighter checks on government actions. In return, the international community should become more deeply involved, as both observer and arbiter, in the negotiations.