From the archives: Apartheid Foes Stage Huge Rally

SOWETO, South Africa -- Staging the largest anti-apartheid rally in South African history, 70,000 black and white activists rocked a giant soccer stadium with foot-stomping liberation songs Sunday, waved flags of the outlawed African National Congress and South African Communist Party and roared a welcome for seven recently freed ANC leaders.

Former ANC General Secretary Walter Sisulu, to approving shouts of “ Amandla! “ (“Power!”), called for an intensification of the sanctions campaign against Pretoria until the white minority-led government proves itself “serious about negotiations.”

“The apartheid regime faces a deep and irreversible crisis today. All its strategies for reforming apartheid have failed dismally,” said Sisulu, 77, released two weeks ago after 26 years in prison. “The ANC has captured the center stage of political life in South Africa. More and more people, black and white, are being inspired by the ideals of the ANC.”

Sisulu addressed the rally from in front of a 50-foot-high banner that proclaimed: “ANC Lives. ANC Leads.” It was flanked by the black, green and gold flag of the ANC and the red flag of the Communist Party, an ANC ally.

Thousands in the stands at Soccer City, on the edge of the 2.2-million-population township of Soweto, wore T-shirts with slogans supporting the banned organizations and vowing, “The struggle continues.” They sang freedom songs and were led in chants of “Unban the ANC!” during the 10-hour rally, which included 3 1/2 hours of speeches laced with revolutionary rhetoric.

Such a rally, which technically violated dozens of South African laws, would have been unthinkable less than two months ago, when President Frederik W. de Klerk took office promising to dismantle apartheid and launch negotiations with the black majority. Since then, De Klerk has begun to remove the police grip on peaceful protest one finger at a time, and he unconditionally released Sisulu and six other leading political activists.

By approving Sunday’s rally in advance and stationing unarmed police officers discreetly outside the stadium fences, the government continued to draw cautious international approval.

But the outdoor rally, the first since the ANC and the Communist Party were banned 29 years ago, also indicated a strong base of support for the ANC among black South Africans, despite Pretoria’s long-running effort to vilify the organization and crush it.

Government officials recently have said that allegiance to the ANC, the main guerrilla group fighting Pretoria, has waned and that other, legal black organizations, including Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi’s 2-million-member Inkhata movement, have at least as much support as the ANC.

“All of us here are living proof that the government has failed to drive us into oblivion,” said Cyril Ramaphosa, co-director of the committee formed to welcome the freed ANC leaders. “They may have banned the ANC on paper, but the ANC lives in our hearts.”

The aging ANC leaders, wearing suits and ties and shaded from the midday sun by umbrellas, paraded around the soccer field, raising fists to cheers from the crowd. They were led by a group of goose-stepping young men in khaki uniforms with epaulets in ANC colors.

“The moment our country and the whole world has been waiting for has arrived,” said Ramaphosa, general secretary of the National Union of Mineworkers. “The ANC is going to speak to us today.”

“Never in my lifetime have I seen a sight like this,” said Steven Seleke, a Soweto office worker in the stands who was 6 when Sisulu went to prison. “I feel now that our freedom is just around the corner.”

The rally led the government’s evening newscast, which showed footage of the crowd and read excerpts of Sisulu’s remarks. In an interview on the broadcast, Minister of Law and Order Adriaan Vlok defended the government decision to allow the rally, saying that while mass protests create security risks, “we must be prepared to run risks.”

“Opportunities must be created where people can express their political views in an orderly fashion,” he added.

On the podium with Sisulu were four other founders of the ANC’s military wing who were convicted in 1964 along with Nelson R. Mandela, the nation’s best-known black activist, and sentenced to life in prison. They included 79-year-old Govan Mbeki, who was released in 1987. Unlike the others, Mbeki is under nighttime house arrest and prevented from addressing political gatherings or being quoted by journalists.

De Klerk, who says he wants to bring legitimate black leaders to the negotiating table, is under pressure to ease restrictions on anti-apartheid activity and allow anti-apartheid leaders to meet with their supporters, something that has been illegal under the three-year-old state of emergency.

It remains a crime in South Africa to “further the aims” of the ANC, and government officials have repeatedly warned anti-apartheid activists that the ANC remains banned.

But the government, which only a few years ago sent an activist to prison for possessing a coffee mug with “ANC” written on it, has not strictly enforced that law in recent months. Both the government and the ANC have laid down conditions for negotiations. De Klerk says the ANC must “commit itself to peaceful solutions . . . by word and deed,” which is generally understood to mean laying down its arms.

The ANC, on the other hand, has refused to give up its armed struggle unilaterally and says it will not come to the table until the government releases Mandela and other political prisoners, removes bans and restrictions on 400 activists and dozens of anti-apartheid groups, lifts the state of emergency and halts all political trials.

“We have stood for peace in our long struggle of resistance, we stand for peace today, and we will stand for peace tomorrow,” Sisulu told the rally. But “we see no clear indication that the government is serious about negotiations. All their utterances are vague.”

Sisulu declared unacceptable a recent government proposal that ethnic elections be held to identify the country’s black leaders. Instead, he called for a nationwide, multiracial election, on the basis of one person, one vote, to elect a constituent assembly to draw up a new constitution.

Although De Klerk says he supports some form of power sharing with blacks, he opposes a one-person, one-vote system, saying it would lead to black domination of the white minority.

“We, the oppressed people, are still waiting for President De Klerk to explicitly repudiate apartheid,” Ahmed Kathrada, one of the freed ANC leaders, told the rally. “We are waiting for them to show genuine remorse, to apologize to the people of South Africa.”

Kathrada also chided the government for making whites fearful of the ANC.

“It has never been the policy of the ANC to drive whites into the sea or do anything to harm (their) cultural heritage,” he said. “A government under the ANC could be black, could be mixed or could even be all white. Color will play no part in it.”

In a letter read to the rally, Oliver R. Tambo, president of the ANC in exile, said De Klerk “will determine whether we go along a road of bitter conflict or toward a negotiated settlement (to) abolish white domination and racial separation.”

“De Klerk may yet claim a position among the peacemakers of our country,” Tambo added.

BACKGROUND The African National Congress was formed in 1912. For nearly 50 years, it followed a strategy of nonviolent resistance. Banned in 1960, it adopted a strategy of sabotage and bombings a year later under Nelson R. Mandela’s leadership. Today, with headquarters in Lusaka, Zambia, it maintains a standing army, a large educational facility in Tanzania and diplomatic missions in most world capitals. The ANC seeks to replace South Africa’s white minority-led regime, in which blacks have no vote, with a non-racial government based on a system of one person, one vote.