Mandela, on Stump, Castigates De Klerk : South Africa: ANC leader accuses president of waging war on blacks, says there will be no place for him in new government.

African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela on Saturday accused President Frederik W. de Klerk of waging war against blacks and said there will be no place for him in a future democratic government.

Mandela, kicking off campaigning in volatile Natal province, told several thousand supporters in Mupumalanga, 12 miles west of the provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg, that De Klerk is not concerned about black lives at all.

“I have not seen any head of state in the world allow his people to be slaughtered,” Mandela said.

He was speaking in a township that used to be one of the flashpoints in the turf war between the ANC and its main black rival, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party.

Local leaders brokered a peace deal 18 months ago, and the township has since been untouched by violence, which has claimed 12,500 lives in Natal and black townships near Johannesburg in the past three years.

Mandela said De Klerk’s ruling National Party belongs to the past and that the president does not care about the lives of black South Africans.

“If he is concerned only with the interests of whites, we do not want him in government at all,” he said to loud applause.

The ANC wants the country’s first democratic elections on April 27 “to put an end to all these things which are a threat to peace,” Mandela said.

Earlier Saturday, Mandela told a rally in one of the poorest areas in Natal that De Klerk and the police Internal Stability Unit are waging war on blacks.

“Although Mr. De Klerk is in discussions with us, he is actually waging a war against our people,” Mandela said at a rally in Ohlange, 12 miles north of Durban.

“It is a unit which wages war against our people. The purpose of the ISU is to frighten blacks and Indians away from the poll,” the ANC leader added.

The ANC has often accused police of racism and abuses against blacks.