Save the Negotiations, Save a Nation : South Africa’s De Klerk and Mandela must return to the bargaining table

Democracy remains an elusive goal in South Africa. Thirty million blacks still cannot vote or have any say in government. Their status can be improved only if Nelson Mandela and President Frederik W. de Klerk return to the negotiating table and resume talks on a new constitution that guarantees universal suffrage and a non-racial democracy.

Mandela would return with his hand strengthened by last week’s relatively peaceful mass protests by the black majority; strikes called by the African National Congress prompted the majority of black urban workers to stay home. The show of support for the ANC parallels that won by De Klerk when white voters in March approved his referendum against apartheid.

De Klerk has long been willing to resume the talks, which Mandela and other representatives of the ANC suspended after the Boipatong massacre. In that violence, witnesses accused South African policemen of helping Zulu migrant workers murder 42 men, women and children in Boipatong, a township filled with ANC supporters. After this latest bloody incident, the ANC made the end of such violence a condition of resumption of talks.

In response, De Klerk has banned dangerous weapons--including so-called cultural weapons such as spears--from “areas of unrest,” including most townships near Johannesburg. An independent commission is investigating the Boipatong massacre, including the allegations of police complicity. Police officials have denied those charges.

In another move against violence, De Klerk has asked experts how to transform the male-only hostels, which are home to single men, into family housing. That change would be significant. The hostels often are breeding grounds for violence. In many townships, the segregated housing is populated by migrant workers who belong to the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Political Party, the chief black rival of the ANC.

In a hopeful sign, Mandela and De Klerk talked by telephone on Friday for the first time in weeks. The two sides last week also discussed the release of political prisoners, another ANC demand.

Much has happened since the Boipatong massacre. The South African government, long hostile to outsiders, welcomed veteran U.S. diplomat Cyrus R. Vance as a special envoy from the United Nations, along with a team of U.N. observers. And a South African team, integrated and a symbol of the nation’s future, participated in the Olympic Games for the first time since 1960. But if such integration is to become a way of life in South Africa, De Klerk and Mandela must return to the negotiating table with a sense of urgency and a willingness to compromise.