S. Africans Set Tentative April Date for Multiracial Vote : Elections: The agreement is a victory for the government and ANC. Final accord awaits multi-party consultations.

Black and white negotiators tentatively agreed Thursday night to set April 27, 1994, as the date for the first multiracial democratic elections in South Africa’s 350-year history.

The parties postponed final approval of the date until multi-party talks resume later this month, but the agreement marks an important victory for President Frederik W. de Klerk’s government and the African National Congress, the two powerful opponents that have emerged as unlikely allies in the election-date debate.

Cyril Ramaphosa, the ANC’s chief negotiator, said the decision would “reverberate throughout the length and breadth of the nation.”

Both the government and the ANC said that setting an election date, no matter how tentatively, would restore confidence in the negotiations process, spark a resurgence of the moribund national economy, dampen violence and cool growing black anger over the lack of speedy progress toward extending voting rights to the disenfranchised majority.

Under the resolution adopted Thursday, the election date could still be changed. Delegates agreed to consult their parties and reconvene June 15 to confirm the date. Then the recommendation will be forwarded to the full multi-party forum, scheduled to meet June 25.

“The message that has come out very clearly here is that we must finalize everything by the 15th of June,” Ramaphosa said after the talks concluded. “I firmly believe that we will.”

Later Thursday night, Ramaphosa and government negotiator Roelf Meyer joined ANC President Nelson Mandela on the stage at a function honoring Mandela and Meyer as “Men of the Year.”

“Our warmest congratulations to both Cyril Ramaphosa and Roelf Meyer for their excellent performance and what they have achieved,” Mandela said. “They have given us all strength and new hope.”

The ANC has been under increasing pressure from its supporters to persuade negotiators to set an election date; the issue had become an important test of the negotiating process in the eyes of many blacks. The ANC also has promised to call for a lifting of all remaining economic sanctions against Pretoria when a final election date is set.

Right-wing whites, several black homeland leaders and Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party had strongly opposed setting a firm election date. Each of those parties seeks pre-election guarantees of strong regional autonomy under a new constitution.

“It is wrong, really, to focus on elections at this stage,” said Frank Mdlalose, Inkatha’s chief negotiator. “We must first eliminate violence, and we must be sure we’ve got our fundamental constitutional principles.”

But Walter Felgate, another Inkatha negotiator, said the tentative agreement “allows all parties to revisit the issue.”

The ANC, the government and most of the other 24 parties participating in the talks Thursday had argued that setting an election date would send an important message to black South Africans and to foreign investors that the days of white-minority rule are numbered.

Most details of the elections remain to be decided, from the duration of the voting to the minimum voting age. And the negotiating parties, representing most of South Africa’s political spectrum, have yet to determine what type of government voters will elect.

Inkatha and right-wing white parties do not object to elections next year. But they fear that their demands for regional autonomy will be buried under a government dominated by the ANC and want to draw up binding constitutional principles before any campaign or elections.