Mr Tutu fails to persuade A.N.C. to give up violence

Press, 7 April 1987, Page 24

Mr Tutu fails to persuade A.N.C. to give up violence

From the “Economist’s” South African correspondent

Mr Desmond Tutu, the Anglican Archbishop of South Africa, visited Zambia on March 21 in an effort to talk South Africa’s outlawed African National Congress into abandoning violence in its fight against apartheid. He returned from his talks with Mr Oliver Tambo, the A.N.C.’s president, admitting failure. It would, he said, take “dramatic developments” — such as the release of Mr Nelson Mandela, the unbanning of the A.N.C. and the unconditional return to South Africa of its exiled leaders — to persuade the organisation to give up the gun. This is no surprise. The A.N.C.’s strength among South Africa’s blacks is largely the result of "armed propaganda.” By increasing the number of guerrilla attacks inside South , Africa from four in 1976 to more than 230 last year, the A.N.C. has convinced many blacks that it is the country’s most effective enemy of apartheid. But its efforts to touch off a general insurrection have failed. Mr Tambo admitted last October that the A.N.C. had suffered reverses in Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho, where South African pressure on the host countries had forced its fighting men to pull out. The A.N.C.’s military weakness is a main, if curious, reason for its reluctance to renounce violence. Negotiations now would leave the South African Government holding too many trump cards. The Government has said Jt would talk to the A.N.C. if it gave up violence. But the Government wants to be sure that the A.N.C. is only one of several competing black parties at the negotiating table. Hence the; organisation’s determination to fight on until the balance of .power among blacks shifts decisively in its

favour. The state of emergency that the Government imposed last June may have started to tilt the balance the other way. The United Democratic Front, the group that has been hit hardest by the emergency, is close to the A.N.C. The front’s two presidents, Mrs Albertina Sisulu and Mr Archie Gumede, are former A.N.C. stalwarts. Of some 24,000 people, detained last year, at least threequarters were members of the U.D.F. or its affiliates. Most of the U.D.F.’s leaders have been charged with high treason; and the Government has declared it an “affected organisation,” thereby preventing it from receiving money from overseas. The repression of the U.D.F. has helped its black adversaries. One beneficiary has been Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha, the Zulu-based movement which claims , to have more than one million signed-up members. Violent clashes between Inkatha and the U.D.F. are worrying the A.N.C. At his meeting with Archbishop Tutu, Mr Tambo .sug-

gested that the Church might try to mediate between them. That will be hard: hostility between Inkatha and the U.D.F. is deepening. Inkatha is strongly pro-capitalist. It opposes economic sanctions and denounces the use of violence in the fight against apartheid. The Government would undoubtedly like to use Chief Buthelezi to counter the more radical challenges from the A.N.C. and the U.D.F., but the chief is no puppet. He refuses to negotiate unless Mr Mandela is released from prison. Even then he can be expected to drive a hard bargain. At the very least he expects to become a partner in some sort of . multi-racial Government. The other current that has been gaining strength is the black consciousness movement, which leans towards the exiled Pan-African Congress. The ideology known as Africanism is enjoying a revival. Two organisations have recently embraced it: the South African Black Municipal and Allied Workers’ Union, and the Azanian National Youth Unity organisation. Africanism plays down class and emphasises race. In contrast to the A.N.C.’s Freedom Charter, which says that South Africa belongs to all the people who live in it, Africanism concentrates on repossessing the land of the "white settler minority.” The reappearance, of Africanism may signal the revival of the Pan-African Congress as a real force in South Africa. Its jailed president, 73-year-old Mr Zeph Mothopeng, is not due to be released until 1994. But there is increasing speculation that he will get out sooner. A trial run, perhaps, for the release of Mr Mandela? Copyright — The Economist