White M.P.s meet A.N.C.

Press, 14 October 1985, Page 6

White M.P.s meet A.N.C.

NZPA-AP Johannesburg White opposition legislators, seeking consultations toward solving South Africa’s racial conflict, met outlawed black guerrilla chiefs in Zambia yesterday and drew the disapproval of the President, Mr Pieter Botha.

Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbed, leader of the Progressive Federal Party, and three aides met four top African National Congress members in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital. They were trading ideas “on possible solutions to the crisis created by the apartheid system,” said an A.N.C. spokesman. Three prominent white

South African businessmen went to Zambia to see the exiled guerrillas a month ago. Gavin Relly, chairman of the Anglo American conglomerate, said then that he thought "more talks might lead to some fruitful conclusion.”

It was an unprecedented attempt by anti-Govern-ment figures among the white-minority establishment to bring the banned A.N.C. directly into the situation.

Mr Botha said then, “I do not know what they (the businessmen) are going to achieve, other than to show signs of weakness to the enemies of South Africa.”

Mr Botha’s spokesman,

Jack Viviers, said yesterday that the President would make no new comment on the legislators’ visit to the A.N.C., adding, “What he had to say about the whole subject, he said before. He has nothing to add.” The Progressive Federal Party does not endorse black demands for a oneman, one-vote form of majority rule. But it has long sought to bring the A.N.C. and other parties shunned by the governing National Party into negotiations on South Africa’s future.

The Government says that it will not talk to the A.N.C. until the guerrilla

movement renounces violence. The A.N.C. says that the only topic it could discuss with the Government is the details of dismantling apartheid. Meanwhile the police say that of the more than 750 blacks killed in 13 months of rioting, two-thirds have died in police actions to disperse crowds. The police use rubber bullets,, shotguns, whips, tear-gas, and rifles and pistols in such situations. One-third have died in black-on-black violence, mostly in attacks by militants on policemen and others seen as collaborators with the white authorities.