ANC Makes Key Concessions on S. Africa Power

The African National Congress, in the most significant policy shift since it was legalized in 1990, formally agreed Wednesday to a series of important concessions designed to speed the process of negotiations.

The ANC’s national executive committee, meeting after weeks of intense internal debate, abandoned its long opposition to power-sharing with the government and said it is willing to consider a temporary government of “national unity”--even after a new, multiracial government is established.

“The situation demands an urgent breakthrough,” the ANC said in a statement released after the meeting in Durban.

The ANC leaders’ decision was the first serious attempt by the country’s most powerful black opposition movement to warn this country’s 29 million blacks that they may have to accept something less than pure majority rule to get President Frederik W. de Klerk to swiftly give up power.

A national unity government, as envisioned by the ANC, would allow minority parties with proven support--groups such as De Klerk’s National Party and Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party--to play an important part in the future government, even if they lose the election to the ANC.

By modifying its negotiating stand, the ANC hopes to hasten the process of writing a new constitution that extends voting rights to blacks, breaks De Klerk’s grip on political power and ends widespread uncertainty in the country.

“Every aspect of the crisis in South Africa . . . can only be resolved by removing the white regime from its monopoly on power,” the ANC said.

While the ANC plan would allow losing parties in any future South African election to temporarily retain substantial say in the country’s future, the congress said it would never allow them to obstruct “the orderly transition to majority rule” or to “paralyze the functioning of government.”

The effect of the ANC policy change would be to delay, probably by five or 10 years, the installation of a government in which a black majority alone would be able to determine the nation’s future.

Meanwhile, the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, embroiled in a bitter war that has claimed 6,000 black lives in the past three years, have agreed in principle to a summit meeting between ANC President Nelson Mandela and Inkatha leader Buthelezi.

Although a time and place for the meeting have yet to be set, the agreement was hailed in South Africa as a step toward ending the bloodshed and forging a lasting peace between the two rivals.

But much preliminary work remains to be done, and the two organizations will begin meetings soon to arrange the summit. A Mandela-Buthelezi meeting in 1991 failed to halt the carnage; a peace accord signed later that year by Mandela, Buthelezi, De Klerk and others has been largely ineffectual.

The ANC’s new willingness to consider sharing power with the government removed a key obstacle in negotiations with De Klerk. But more movement will be necessary. The government remains committed to strong, permanent protection for minorities in any constitution, and it hopes to achieve that by granting broad, autonomous powers to regions.

Nevertheless, the ANC compromise is an important step forward.

Political analysts see the ANC’s move as a recognition of the importance of including whites and minority black parties, such as Inkatha, in the future government to create political stability.

A ready example for South Africans is the chaos in Angola, another southern African country, where rebel leader Jonas Savimbi lost that nation’s elections and refused to accept the results. That outcome could have been avoided, many here believe, if Savimbi and his opponent, Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, had committed themselves to a government of national unity before the elections.

Among other things, the ANC leaders said, the organization will need--at some point in the negotiations process--to consider job security, retirement packages and an amnesty for the police, as well as the predominantly white army and civil service. If a future government threatened jobs in the civil service, where many have been reluctant to embrace De Klerk’s reforms, they might use their considerable power to destabilize the country, the ANC argued.