South Africans to Enter Olympics : Summer Games: They will send the country’s first multiracial team to Barcelona.

South African sports officials announced Wednesday that the country would send a team to next year’s Summer Olympics in Barcelona. It will be the country’s first multiracial Olympic team and its first team of any kind in the Games in more than 30 years.

Sam Ramsamy, chairman of the National Olympic Committee of South Africa (NOCSA), said in Johannesburg that the country would accept an invitation from the International Olympic Committee to attend the 1992 Games.

The announcement has been expected since South Africa was readmitted to the IOC on July 9.

South Africa last competed in the Olympics in Rome in 1960, where, because of government policies, it sent an all-white team. The country was expelled from the IOC in 1970 for its national policy of apartheid, or racial separation. Reforms by President Frederik de Klerk have led to a softening of international bans against South Africa in many areas, among them sports.

South Africa was a founding member of the IOC but has never sent a racially integrated team to the Games, which was noted by Ramsamy.

“This is the first time that South Africa has competed in the Olympic Games,” he said. “Before . . . only a section of South Africa did.”

Even though South Africa has been banned from international competition for decades, it is expected to field strong teams in track and field and boxing--teams that will probably be mostly black. South African athletes have won 53 Olympic medals.

Wednesday’s announcement climaxed months of negotiations among rival sports groups. NOCSA had to overcome initial opposition from many anti-apartheid groups.

Ramsamy said that Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress, had given his “unconditional support.”

The announcement was not without controversy, however. Ramsamy said that in a break with Olympic tradition, South African athletes at Barcelona will not march under the nation’s flag, but rather under an “interim” NOCSA flag that he unveiled at a news conference.

Ramsamy also said that he has asked IOC permission to use the Olympic Hymn, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” in medal ceremonies instead of the South African anthem, “Die Stem” or “The Call of South Africa.”

South Africa’s current flag is seen by many as an embodiment of white rule. It includes a combination of the British and 19th-Century Boer Republic flags. The new NOCSA flag presented Wednesday is blue, red and green on a gray background.

Ramsamy said the NOCSA flag would represent national unity. He said the gray diamond-shaped background of the flag represented the country’s wealth, with the other colors representing the sea, the land and the crops.

He also announced a contest to find a new mascot to replace the Springbok emblem used by South African teams since the turn of the century.

News of the acceptance of the IOC invitation was welcomed by the South African government, but the symbolic changes were not.

Louis Pienaar, the government’s minister of national education, whose responsibilities include sports, was sharply critical of the decision to use a new anthem and flag.

“The proposals to use a Beethoven theme and a hastily thrown together NOCSA flag to replace the national anthem and national flag is a slap in the face of South Africa,” Pienaar said. “It is not for NOCSA--which in any case wasn’t democratically elected to change this--to decide. That decision will be taken by a future democratically chosen authority.”

Scott Kraft, The Times’ Johannesburg bureau chief, contributed to this story.

South Africa in Rome

South African medalists in the 1960 Summer Olympics at Rome, South Africa’s last Olympics:

Track and Field: Malcom Spence, 400 meters, bronze

Boxing: Daniel Bekker, super-heavyweight, silver; William Meyers, featherweight, bronze

HOW SOUTH AFRICA FARED IN THE 1960 MEDAL COUNT:

1. Soviet Union--103 total medals

2. United States--71 total

3. Italy--36 total

30. South Africa--3 total

Note: South Africa has never won a medal in the Winter Olympics.