South Africa: Lay Down The Spears!

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Spears, clubs and battle-axes might seem to be totally outmoded weapons in an age of laser-guided bombs. But in South Africa they retain some power -- in one sense, more power than Winnie Mandela. Contrary to many expectations, it is the carrying of those supposedly "ceremonial" weapons by Zulus, not the possible jailing of Winnie Mandela, that has emerged as the chief obstacle to continuation of black-white negotiations on the nation's future.

Winnie's followers in the African National Congress, who call her Mother of the Nation, did shout outrage at her conviction last week by a white judge (South Africa does not have jury trials). Mandela and two codefendants had been accused of kidnapping four young black men from a Methodist minister's home in Soweto in December 1988 and beating them in a back room of the Mandela house. Judge Michael Stegman found Winnie to be only an accessory to the assault but decided that she had planned the kidnapping. Denouncing her as a "calm, composed, deliberate and unblushing liar," he sentenced her to six years in prison.

Winnie Mandela, however, is free on minimal bail -- roughly $70 -- and pursuing an appeal that could take many months to be decided. Even if she loses, there is some speculation that State President F.W. de Klerk will pardon her rather than jail the wife of his main partner in negotiations to shape a multiracial regime. That partner, A.N.C. deputy president Nelson Mandela, took a mild line. He expressed confidence that his wife's name would eventually be entirely cleared and said he would continue talking to De Klerk.

But negotiations were at the breaking point anyway because of those spears and battle-axes. To the A.N.C., at least, they have come to symbolize the black-vs.-black violence that has been tearing the nation's townships apart. Fighting between supporters of the predominantly Zulu Inkatha Freedom Party and A.N.C. backers has claimed more than 200 lives just this month and at least 1,000 so far in 1991. Archbishop Desmond Tutu voices grief that a weekend body count of 15 dead has come to be considered hearteningly low.

A.N.C. leaders charge that white police have failed to prevent or actually fomented Zulu attacks on A.N.C. supporters, allegedly because the ruling Nationalist Party favors Inkatha as a presumably more pliable partner in a postapartheid government. So the supposedly more militant (indeed communist- allied) A.N.C. has been driven into the ironic position of demanding that the white government protect it from its fellow blacks -- starting with a ban on the Zulus' "cultural" weapons. Zulus say tribal tradition requires them to carry the spears, clubs and battle-axes in public, but the A.N.C. charges that they are being used to kill its supporters.

The A.N.C. gave the government until last Wednesday to outlaw the weapons. But De Klerk would not go beyond a meek compromise offer, allowing the weapons to be carried only on genuinely ceremonial occasions. Rather than let yet another deadline -- the third it has set in the past three weeks -- slide by, the A.N.C announced on Saturday that it would suspend talks with De Klerk on a new constitution until he made "progress" in meeting its demands. The A.N.C. will probably also boycott an all-party peace conference called by the government for this week, but De Klerk insisted he would go ahead regardless.

Though the situation may seem to verge on farce (Suppose De Klerk gave a peace conference, and nobody came?), it is deadly serious. Continued negotiations would be unlikely to accomplish much anyway until after early July, when the A.N.C. holds its first congress inside South Africa in 30 years and De Klerk finds out whom he will be dealing with next. (Mandela is virtually certain to be re-elected, but other aging leaders who have operated for decades in exile may be replaced by younger blacks who have grown up in the segregated townships.) Nonetheless, Archbishop Tutu warned last week that a suspension of the negotiations now would almost certainly lead to still greater violence, which in turn would make it more difficult than ever to set up a new regime.

For all the violence, however, rapid progress is still being made toward breaking down apartheid. The gradual easing of restrictions that began in 1982 has accelerated considerably since De Klerk took office in 1989. His government has done away with the segregation of facilities, such as public parks and government hospitals -- the last statutory vestiges of so-called petty apartheid -- lifted the ban on the African National Congress and freed many political prisoners, most prominently Nelson Mandela. Now De Klerk is about to pull down what are generally regarded as the last remaining legal pillars of apartheid: the laws that forbid blacks to live in white areas or < own land outside their tribal homelands and require that every South African be classified by race at birth. All are scheduled to be repealed by the white parliament before it concludes its term at the end of June.

That, of course, does not mean apartheid will then cease to exist. The legal structure built up over more than 40 years cannot be demolished quite that quickly, and provincial and local governments have ways of maintaining segregation even when it is no longer required by federal law, for example, turning swimming pools over to private operators or charging fees for the use of libraries that whites can afford and most blacks cannot.

Overshadowing everything else by far is the problem of framing a new constitution that would finally empower blacks to vote, hold office and share in governing the nation. Major differences remain, but De Klerk's government and Mandela's A.N.C. have already agreed on some important ideas. The document, for example, must contain a bill of rights and set up a two-chamber legislature with some form of proportional representation. De Klerk reportedly told British Prime Minister John Major on a visit to London early in May that a constitution could be in effect and elections held in two to five years.

Some U.S. experts fear that De Klerk is endangering this time-table by "backsliding," seeking tactical advantage by playing black leaders such as Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi off against each other. But Mandela voices faith in De Klerk's sincerity, and De Klerk reportedly told Major that he recognizes that the future of South Africa can be settled only between his government and the A.N.C.

According to British sources, De Klerk also confided to Major that he expected some whites to emigrate to Canada, Australia or New Zealand rather than live in a state with a newly empowered black majority. Simultaneously, though, he has speculated publicly about winning an eventual multiracial election by putting together a coalition of the National Party, Inkatha and perhaps some other moderate-to-conservative black groups that could reap a substantial share of the black vote, and an overwhelming majority of whites.

Despite his moves to eliminate apartheid, De Klerk seems to have retained most of his white support. His main opposition, the right-wing Conservative Party, has nothing to offer except a return to "grand apartheid" that most whites recognize to be impossible. Both South African and foreign experts agree that the dismantling of apartheid has gone too far to be reversed. But the big question remains: Can the now inevitable transition to a multiracial state be achieved smoothly by negotiation or only haltingly after more harrowing violence?

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town, with other bureaus