South Africa Rebels with a Cause

By William R. Doerner.

The three hues appear on everything from floral wreaths to T shirts, dominating mass funerals for black victims of South Africa's racial violence, meetings of the United Democratic Front opposition and the few other public demonstrations permitted under the current state of emergency. Black stands for the people, green for the country, gold for the minerals. The colors are the symbol of the African National Congress, the organization sworn to bring an end to South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation -- and to three centuries of white rule. Though outlawed since 1960, the A.N.C. has emerged during the unrest of the past two years as the focal point of political allegiance in the seething black townships, the source of growing guerrilla ferment and, paradoxically, a possible key to an eventual solution of the South African dilemma. In Nelson Mandela and four other A.N.C. leaders who have spent the past 24 years in prison for their campaign against apartheid, the organization holds claim to a virtual pantheon of martyrs whose resistance appears more heroic by the day to a vast majority of blacks. In the face of severe criticism by the government, which regards the A.N.C. as "part of the international terrorist network," a number of white South African businessmen, churchmen and other prominent opinion makers have recently chosen to meet with A.N.C. leaders in exile.

More and more outside observers seem to agree that the organization has become too extensive to ignore. Long regarded in the West as Communist clients for their ties to the Soviet Union, A.N.C. leaders are being received by a lengthening list of Western officials. In September British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe met A.N.C. President Oliver Tambo near London. Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker saw Tambo the same day. At their meeting Crocker told Tambo, "We are not talking with you because we like you but because we know you have influence in South Africa."

Ironically, this newly gained stature comes at a time of deepening militancy on the A.N.C.'s part that would ordinarily discourage feelers from the West. Last January the A.N.C.'s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, in Xhosa), called for a full-scale "people's war" against the white rulers of South Africa. Having confined its guerrilla strikes in the past mainly to government buildings and military installations, the A.N.C. warned that now "civilians will get caught in the cross fire."

Founded in 1912 by black professionals in the judicial capital of Bloemfontein, the A.N.C. fought against apartheid for decades through rigorously nonviolent means, mostly labor strikes and public service boycotts. In 1955 it joined several other South African civil rights organizations in signing a document called the Freedom Charter, which still serves as its ideological lodestar of record. The charter declares that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white" and calls for a unified, democratic state governed along color-blind lines. Economic goals are vaguely socialistic, envisioning the nationalization of some industries, including banks and businesses dealing in the "mineral wealth" of South Africa.

The A.N.C.'s policy of nonviolence received a sudden and brutal setback in 1960 when police killed 69 unarmed blacks attending a political protest in Sharpeville, a black township 35 miles from Johannesburg. Shortly thereafter, leadership of the organization passed to two of the organization's young comers, Mandela and Tambo, who were law partners and longtime congress members. The A.N.C. was banned by the Pretoria government and began carrying out armed attacks from underground. Mandela and most other A.N.C. leaders were eventually captured and sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage. Tambo escaped because he had been sent abroad to open a headquarters and search for funds.

The newly exiled revolutionary found some interest in his cause in Scandinavia but little in other Western nations. Tambo's pleas were better rewarded by the Soviet Union, which beginning in 1963 became increasingly important to the A.N.C. as a supplier of funds, military equipment and scholarships for young members. Precisely how much influence Moscow has over A.N.C. policies and personnel is a matter of deep controversy. The organization has had close and unhidden ties for more than 60 years to the South African Communist Party, including pro-S.A.C.P. endorsements from Mandela before his jailing. Observers of the A.N.C. in Lusaka suspect that as many as half the 30 members of its national executive committee may belong to the S.A.C.P.

Questions about the role of Communists in the A.N.C. are hardly going to disappear. When Congress finally passed new U.S. economic sanctions against South Africa three weeks ago, it ordered President Ronald Reagan to issue a report early next year detailing any Communist influences on the A.N.C. The provision was inserted in the bill at the behest of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, who had been given access to unpublished CIA files on the A.N.C. Helms contended that the evidence shows A.N.C. leadership to be "fully penetrated and dominated by members of the S.A.C.P." As the group's exile continued into the 1970s, its influence among South African blacks declined somewhat. But that changed after a mass uprising in the black township of Soweto near Johannesburg in 1976. An estimated 4,000 young blacks fled the country to avoid detention, and most of them joined the A.N.C. The result was an infusion of new blood and fighting spirit. Well before Tambo's recent declaration of a people's war, A.N.C. guerrillas armed with Soviet-made AK-47 rifles began to escalate their attacks on South Africa from bases in Angola, Zambia and Mozambique. Total occurrences of armed attack or urban sabotage believed to be the work of the A.N.C. have grown from 65 in 1983 to at least 180 so far this year.

The government of State President P.W. Botha has ordered reprisal raids into countries that harbor guerrillas; negotiated security arrangements with Mozambique and Swaziland, designed to clear out A.N.C. fighters; and even stage-managed a coup in Lesotho, aimed at dislodging A.N.C. bases. After a series of raids last May, the President told Parliament, "South Africa has the capacity and the will to break the A.N.C. I give fair warning that we fully intend doing it."

The overwhelming strength of South Africa's armed forces and police is the most daunting problem facing the A.N.C., but not the only one. The organization's top leadership is mainly in its 60s, and even the younger leaders, none under 40, have spent years away from South Africa. Moreover, the A.N.C. spans a wide ideological chasm and is held together by little more than its opposition to apartheid.

For the moment, however, the A.N.C.'s principal challenge is how to avoid squandering its new political strength in South Africa and its heightened prestige abroad. On one hand, it must keep up pressure on the South African government if it is to retain its credibility and its following. On the other, even some A.N.C. leaders admit that a resort to more and more violence runs the very real risk of losing support, moral and otherwise, from the West and from whites in South Africa.

With reporting by James P. Fish/Lusaka and Peter Hawthorne/Johannesburg