S. Africa’s Deadlock Must Not Stand : U.N. should intervene before democracy talks fully collapse

Nelson Mandela, the co-president of the African National Congress, and South African President Frederik W. de Klerk cannot agree on much these days. As a deepening stalemate threatens to permanently derail the democracy talks, Mandela refuses to meet with De Klerk, and the ANC refuses to return to the negotiating table. However, both leaders are willing to allow the United Nations to intervene in an attempt to break the bitter deadlock.

The U.N. Security Council is expected this week to consider the crisis in South Africa. The United Nations should contemplate sending negotiators to bridge the chasm between the two sides before the situation worsens beyond repair.

It also should consider monitoring the deadly township violence. Such independent scrutiny should reassure the ANC, which repeatedly has accused the government of failure to control security troops and of complicity in the violence.

De Klerk ordinarily opposes outside intervention in the affairs of his government. However, his foreign minister, Pik Botha, has indicated that the minority government would welcome an inquiry by a U.N. envoy, Cyrus Vance, a former U.S. secretary of state, before the Security Council debates the South African crisis.

Mandela asked U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to investigate and monitor the violence between warring black factions after the Boipatong massacre on June 17. That attack claimed 42 men, women and children as they slept in a township near Johannesburg. On the basis of eyewitness accounts, the congress has accused government security forces of providing safe passage to the men who killed the ANC supporters and their families. The witnesses described the slayers as roving bands of hostel dwellers who back the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party. Three days after the massacre, security police fired on ANC supporters who chased De Klerk from Boipatong when he visited there.

A key stumbling block to the resumption of talks is the belief of many black South Africans that the government has secretly encouraged the township violence that has claimed as many as 8,000 black South Africans since De Klerk began his reform of apartheid and released Mandela from prison. The ANC is not satisfied with an independent commission that cleared De Klerk of any involvement in the Boipatong killings.

The chairman of that commission did reprimand De Klerk’s minority government for ignoring earlier recommendations that could have quelled the violence. The government, for example, could have closed the migrant worker hostels, which are the homes of single men who leave poor rural areas to work in the cities and which often harbor those who participate in the violence. The commission also criticized the ANC for repeatedly accusing the government of complicity in the township attacks and contended that the congress had created a climate conducive to more violence. The ANC, however, is unwilling to recant its accusations, given the government’s history of funding Inkatha.

In the interest of peace and progress, both sides must give. With the help of the United Nations, the De Klerk government must compromise further. The ANC too must find terms of agreement and must return to the negotiating table to pursue democracy and equality for all South Africans.