NEXT STEP

Delegates from 22 South Africa political organizations will hold talks on Dec. 20 and 21 in Johannesburg. The meeting, to be called the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, will be part of the tedious process designed to grant voting rights for the first time to the country’s black majority. Among matters on the agenda will be general constitutional principles, on which most of South Africa’s political leaders agree, and the process for drawing up that constitution, on which there is substantial disagreement. Representatives of the Organization of African Unity, the United Nations and heads of diplomatic missions, including U.S. Ambassador William Lacy Swing, will be invited as observers to the December meetings. The negotiations will probably run through most of 1992 and perhaps into 1993.