ANC Rejects Call to Walk Out of Talks : South Africa: Two whites are burned to death and two blacks shot in the wake of Chris Hani’s assassination. But Mandela vows not to be swayed from negotiations.

Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress leaders decided Sunday to press ahead vigorously with constitutional negotiations, rejecting calls from militants for a suspension of those talks in protest over Chris Hani’s assassination.

The ANC, meeting in emergency session with its Communist Party and labor union allies, concluded that the killing of Hani, one of the country’s top black leaders, allegedly at the hands of a white gunman, was designed to derail black-white talks.

“Any suggestion of calling off negotiations would just play into the hands of the murderers,” said Joe Slovo, a key ANC and Communist Party negotiator and close friend of Hani’s. “This is their purpose: to spike the negotiations process. And we must defeat that purpose.”

Cyril Ramaphosa, secretary general of the ANC, added that Hani’s death “should act as a catalyst, to make sure the negotiations process gathers momentum. It is what Comrade Chris would have expected all of us to do.”

In the wake of Hani’s assassination, sporadic incidents of violence were reported Sunday from Cape Town to Johannesburg.

Police said that two white men were burned to death in their cars in Lwandle township near Cape Town when they drove there to buy liquor at a tavern. The mob that attacked the men also injured a third white, cutting off part of his tongue, police said. The authorities said they were not sure whether the incidents were linked to outrage over Hani’s death.

Police fired on mourners gathering for a commemoration service in a squatter camp in Soweto, killing one black. A second black person was killed in Phola Park, a squatter camp south of Johannesburg, when police fired on another crowd of protesters. Police said they fired in both cases only after being fired upon.

“We urge all South Africans, and especially the security forces, to act with maximum restraint,” Ramaphosa said. “If the police continue to attack people wanting to express their sorrow, then the entire situation will just deteriorate further.”

The ANC has set Wednesday as a national day of mourning, and it called on its supporters to conduct dignified rallies to honor Hani’s memory and protest the manner of his death.

“This man was beloved by the poor of this country,” Slovo said. “And we cannot expect this to go by without an expression of their feelings.”

Hani, the 50-year-old general secretary of the Communist Party and a leading figure in the ANC, was the second-most-popular black politician in South Africa after Mandela. He also was a key participant in multi-party constitutional talks, which resumed earlier this month.

Even more important, his credentials as a former chief of staff of the ANC’s guerrilla army made him a hero to the ANC’s militant black youth, many of whom oppose negotiations. And the ANC had been relying on Hani to convince that constituency of the importance of negotiating with the white-minority government.

Now ANC officials admit privately that Hani’s assassination, in the driveway of his home Saturday, has undermined their efforts to persuade radicals to join negotiations and cost them one of the most important political weapons in their battle to contain rising township anger.

In recent weeks, Hani had called repeatedly for an end to anti-apartheid violence, blaming much of it on ANC-aligned neighborhood self-defense units that he said had veered out of control.

Hani’s violent death, though, has rekindled some calls for a violent overthrow of the government. And the ANC’s decision to remain at the negotiating table with South Africa’s white leaders will be an especially tough sell to youth.

Peter Mokaba, the fiery leader of the ANC’s youth league, said Sunday that ANC supporters in the townships are angry over Hani’s death and impatient with the slow pace of negotiations.

“We’re always being told to be calm when we want to hit back,” Mokaba said. “For three years now we’ve been negotiating. The leaders talk of a political solution. But the so-called peace process is not on. What is ‘on’ is war.”

Mokaba said the ANC should continue negotiations, but, in words that suggested the depth of the ANC’s difficulties, he added that the youth also “must be able to return to the barricades. We must be able to make our ‘mass action’ bite.” During the height of unrest in the mid-1980s, township youth erected barricades of burning tires in the streets to prevent police from entering.

Meanwhile, police said ballistics experts had determined that one of two revolvers confiscated from Janusz Jakub Wallus, a Polish immigrant arrested shortly after Hani’s slaying Saturday, matched the bullets that killed the ANC leader. The weapons were part of a consignment stolen from South African air force headquarters in 1990.

The police commissioner said a search of the suspect’s apartment uncovered a “hit list” containing the names and addresses of political leaders, including Hani. Although the authorities declined to reveal the names on the list, they said they had contacted those named and offered police protection.

No evidence of a conspiracy has yet been found, police added, but that possibility still was being investigated.

Hani was killed by four bullets fired as he arrived at his home in the multiracial suburb of Dawn Park, near Johannesburg. A white neighbor witnessed the shooting and called police with a description of the assailant and the license plate number from his car. Less than an hour later, Wallus was arrested in the car a few miles from the murder scene.

Wallus, 40, who has not yet been charged, is due to appear in court Tuesday.

The Sunday Times, a Johannesburg newspaper, reported that Wallus, who lived in Pretoria, had close links with white right-wing extremist groups, including the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Both the right-wing Conservative Party and the Resistance Movement have denied knowing Wallus.

The ANC said Sunday that Hani’s death has raised new concerns about the safety of all its leaders and has prompted it to review security arrangements. Most ANC leaders, including Mandela, are protected by ANC guards. But those guards are not always armed, and ANC officials have complained that police have been slow to issue firearm licenses to ANC guards.

ANC leaders were so concerned about Hani’s safety last year that they took the unprecedented step of asking the police to increase security in Hani’s neighborhood. But the ANC said the government had made no effort to step up security there. And, on Saturday, Hani had given his guards the day off.