The ANC, Pretoria Return to Table, but Without a Significant Other : South Africa: The sliding economy has concentrated minds on both sides. Mandela may soon have to keep an eye on his left.

The African National Congress’ decision to resume negotiations with the government and other parties is an important breakthrough in South Africa’s halting transition toward the post-apartheid era.

Pretoria’s concessions--freeing political prisoners, mostly banning “cultural weapons” in public, fencing in hostels--to get the ANC talking again also represented a significant victory for the congress at the expense of the Zulu-based Inkatha movement led by Chief Mangosuthu G. Buthelezi. But the events that pushed the ANC back to the table demonstrate some of its inherent political weaknesses.

Not surprisingly, Buthelezi reacted furiously to the ANC-government accord, claiming it sanctioned “ethnic cleansing” against Zulus and “Zulu concentration camps.” Cultural weapons usually refer to spears and other implements that Zulus brandish, while ANC leaders charge that the hostels are where Zulus plan massacres of ANC supporters. The chief’s accusations were especially bitter, because some Inkatha supporters have recently been massacred by non-traditional machine guns and because some ANC leaders have openly called for the assassination of senior members of Inkatha. In withdrawing from the negotiations, Buthelezi hinted that he might try to form a “rejectionist” front with other “homeland” leaders and with the white right-wing opposition.

President Frederik W. de Klerk’s agreement with the ANC, which most members of the government still despise, and his very public humiliation of Buthelezi, despite the fact that many whites have long seen the Zulus as potential allies in the fight to prevent ANC political domination, reflects a simple, if brutal, political calculation. The ANC and its allies, the South African Communist Party and the trade unions, have repeatedly demonstrated that they can mobilize, or coerce, large numbers of people to strike or use other means to disrupt economic activities. The congress had promised to continue these mass actions until its conditions were met. The government was well aware of the damage being inflicted on the economy and--in light of the killings at Bisho, where “homeland” troops killed 29 ANC supporters last month during a political protest--to its carefully groomed international position.

Accordingly, while there will be many seats at the negotiating table--including, perhaps, an Inkatha that realizes it will be completely marginalized if it remains unseated--the transition to a non-racial democracy will largely be an affair between the government and the ANC.

Still, the ANC’s own political position has become more complicated. The massacre at Bisho highlighted the continuing problems caused by the congress’ formal alliance with the South African Communist Party. The massacre began when communist militants deliberately broke an agreement on the march’s route, as well as a national accord on political demonstrations, by trying to storm the barricades and overthrow the “homeland” government. The enthusiasm with which the communists led more than 24 people to their deaths underscored the differences between the militants seeking to overthrow the white government and the ANC suits, led by Nelson Mandela, hoping to form a condominium with De Klerk to manage the transition.

More generally, as the ANC becomes less and less a guerrilla army and more and more the government-in-waiting, it has been forced to soften its rhetoric on the economic reforms it vows to implement once in power. During the last two years, the ANC has begun, reluctantly, to come to terms with the realities of the complex South African economy and what can and cannot be done, in the short-term, to redistribute income. The communists and some of the trade unions, however, still feel old-style socialism, recharted to avoid the “pilot errors” in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, is a viable option.

These differences over strategy, tactics and ideology will eventually splinter the alliance of anti-apartheid groups, resulting in fewer ANC members and, for the first time, opposition from the left. This is a particularly dangerous prospect for the ANC, because the patrician exiles who returned to lead the congress and the technocratic younger leaders who are so at ease meeting foreign bankers and diplomats have not had the militants’ success in mobilizing and organizing people in the black townships and the impoverished rural areas.

Beyond future debates about national policy, the ANC leadership now understands that the extremely poor state of the economy places real constraints on its own ability to threaten the government through more strikes and job actions. Mandela’s decision to meet with De Klerk was motivated, in part, by a dire warning from Finance Minister Derek Keys, who said the economy, which has shrank for two consecutive years, might soon be in free fall. The ailing economy has caused an increase in poverty and, not surprisingly, given the dramatic disparities in wealth, a jump in robberies and thefts.

In an extraordinary statement, Mandela said, “The youths in the townships have had over the decades a visible enemy, the government. Now that enemy is no longer visible, because of the transformation that is taking place. Their enemy now is you and me, people who drive a car and have a house.” He thus acknowledged that if the ANC’s mass action campaign continued, there might not be a country worth inheriting.

Put another way, the ANC and the government were forced into an embrace. Such will be the pattern of the transition to non-racial rule, if it is to occur: extraordinarily tough bargaining that compels leaders to flirt with national disaster and then, abruptly, recognition that the future will only be achieved through realistic compromise.

One such forced compromise occurred last week, when, as part of the prisoner-release agreement, ANC members who had killed whites and a white right-wing fanatic who had murdered several blacks were freed. The releases produced great bitterness on both sides but also a palpable understanding that a better future will only come about if the grievances caused or renewed by the transition are addressed in private.