Mandela Lashes Out at De Klerk : South Africa: He accuses Nobel Peace Prize partner of allowing township violence as part of a ‘deliberate strategy’ to cow potential ANC voters. A National Party spokesman calls the charge ‘nonsense.’

Less than a month after the two men accepted the Nobel Peace Prize, Nelson Mandela bitterly accused President Frederik W. de Klerk on Saturday of permitting a savage spiral of violence among poor blacks as a “deliberate strategy” to win votes in the country’s first democratic elections.

Mandela said De Klerk, whose National Party draws strong support from the nation’s 5 million whites, is seeking to exploit the bloodletting to win swing votes from the 7 million mixed-race and Indian voters in the April 27 election.

“He believes that by allowing this violence to continue among (black) Africans, in which men, women and children are being slaughtered, it will frighten people from voting for the ANC,” Mandela said.

“This is a deliberate strategy on the part of De Klerk,” he said--a charge one of De Klerk’s associates dismissed as “nonsense.”

Mandela also emphasized that he and other political leaders in the African National Congress are powerless to stop the slaughter that has claimed more than 13,000 lives in the last four years, despite growing evidence that some of the worst violence is committed by local militias created by the ANC to police the war-torn townships.

“It is only when we are in government that we can address the question of violence,” Mandela told a news conference called to mark the 82nd anniversary of the founding of the ANC. But he added, “It’s going to take months and even years” to curb the carnage in what he called “the most violent society in the world.”

The continuing terror in the townships has cast an ominous cloud over the broader historic drama as South Africa casts away the remnants of oppressive white rule under apartheid and grants full citizenship to the black majority for the first time.

Come election day, about 28 million blacks--including Mandela--will be able to vote for the first time in their lives. And if polls are correct, Mandela is almost certain to become the first black president in a five-year government of national unity dominated by the ANC.

But the ANC worries that intimidation and fear could cut its vote significantly and reduce the credibility of the final tally. That is one reason why Mandela launched his stinging attack on De Klerk. The two negotiating partners and co-laureates have become bitter campaign rivals.

The charge that De Klerk has sought political gain from his nation’s violence is difficult to prove. And in any case Mandela has repeatedly called for the immediate withdrawal of most township police, especially the heavily armed Internal Security Units, rather than an increase in police presence.

He repeated that demand Saturday, accusing security forces of “conducting a war” against township blacks and saying the military and police had “perpetuated” the bloodshed.

Danie du Plessis, spokesman for De Klerk’s National Party, denied Mandela’s charge. “It’s absolutely nonsense to say De Klerk would do nothing to curb the violence. We’ve sent in how many divisions of the army to townships to calm them down. That doesn’t help.”

He cited a recent investigation by a commission chaired by Judge Richard Goldstone that has blamed at least some of the clashes on rogue Self-Defense Units and other vigilante groups set up by the ANC and its chief black rival, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party. The groups are competing for political and economic power inside many of the townships.

South Africa’s Transitional Executive Council, a multiracial panel empowered to oversee the run-up to the elections, plans to create a 10,000-member National Peacekeeping Force by the end of March to help limit campaign violence. The force will be drawn from the military, police and 10 guerrilla and homeland armies created during the apartheid years.

In addition, thousands of election observers are expected from the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of African Unity, church groups, political parties and other groups to help monitor the polls and any violence.

Mandela announced that he would accept a challenge for a televised debate with De Klerk before the election. Sounding irked, he added that he had learned of De Klerk’s challenge in a newspaper.

By most accounts, personal relations between the two leaders, never warm, have soured considerably in the four years since De Klerk released Mandela from 27 years in prison and they began grueling negotiations to dismantle apartheid and prepare the nation for democracy.

The National Party, which erected apartheid in 1948 to ensure white supremacy and has held power ever since, hopes to persuade voters to forget the past and vote instead on which party is better prepared to rule in the future.

The ANC strategy, in turn, is to remind black voters of the oppression of apartheid and at the same time to lower expectations that their wretched poverty will turn to prosperity under a black-led government. Nearly half the country’s blacks are illiterate and unemployed, living in tin shacks and squatter camps.

The ANC also seeks to reassure whites and others nervous about their safety and property under a black government. In his comments Saturday, Mandela even appealed to what he called “ultra-right” whites.

“The Afrikaner community has an important role to play,” he said. “They produce the country’s food. They control the security forces. They are in the civil service. They man the key installations. We want them to continue to play that role as we move from apartheid to democracy.”

But he said the ANC would not give in to the demand by the self-named Freedom Alliance, a coalition of neo-Nazi white groups and conservative black leaders, to allow the creation of a separate homeland for white Afrikaners.