South Africa No Easy Walk to Freedom

By Bruce W. Nelan

The sentence in the courtroom that day in June 1964 was life in prison. The verdict of history will hardly judge Nelson Mandela a common criminal. Despite the government's determination to lock him away for good and crush his liberation movement, the unrelenting crusade to abolish apartheid that he waged from a prison cell over the decades made him the supreme symbol of the black struggle in South Africa.

At 4:15 p.m. local time on Sunday, Feb. 11, Nelson Mandela walked out of the Victor Verster Prison Farm near Cape Town -- free at last. It was, said an announcer for the official South African Broadcasting Corp., "the moment that a majority of South Africans, and the world, have been waiting for."

A bulky 200-pounder when the prison doors closed behind him, Mandela is now a slim, white-haired statesman of 71. He has referred to his quarter-century behind bars as "long, lonely, wasted years." The tinge of bitterness is understandable, but the years were not entirely wasted. He has been planning a long time for this day, and blacks -- and many whites -- eagerly await his guiding hand to lead the nation toward a resolution of their racial antagonism.

In his home township of Soweto, children danced around Mandela's house singing "Mandela is coming!" Declared a jubilant Archbishop Desmond Tutu: "Here he is, this man who has such a crucial role to play in the making of this new South Africa."

Mandela has already committed himself to serve as the "facilitator" for negotiations between the black majority and the white minority government to draw up a new constitution granting power to all races. In fact, there will have to be several stages before that. While State President F.W. de Klerk's legalization of the African National Congress earlier this month was accompanied by relaxation measures that met most of the A.N.C.'s preconditions, the 3 1/2-year-old state of emergency remains in place and up to 300 activists are still in jail. That situation, says Mandela, will have to change if a "climate for negotiations" is to be established.

+ How the A.N.C. will re-enter the country's political life and who will take part in talks must still be worked out. Mandela is almost universally viewed as a leader of the A.N.C., but he now holds no official post in the Congress and is technically responsible to its leaders in Lusaka. He will have to work out with them just what formal role he will play.

De Klerk first announced that Mandela would be released "without delay" on Feb. 2. Then came a nerve-racking interval, recalling the years of slice-at-a- time tactics the government has used to neutralize black reaction. Mandela was kept waiting while the government whittled away at its proviso that he must renounce violence. Last Saturday De Klerk simply declared, "I came to the conclusion that he is committed to a peaceful solution and a peaceful process." Pretoria had long worried that when Mandela appeared on the streets of Soweto once again, black townships all over the country would explode into uncontrollable demonstrations. De Klerk still worries about that. After announcing Mandela's release, he called for calm and stability as the "conditions that would enable me to lift the state of emergency." He made it clear that the government will monitor Mandela's homecoming to test law- and-order in the black townships.

Much of the shock had already been absorbed after De Klerk's Feb. 2 speech. Most South Africans seemed to accept the fact of sweeping change -- but not white hard-liners. The Conservative Party threatened a campaign of demonstrations and strikes to force De Klerk out of office. The neofascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement sent hundreds of khaki-clad, heavily armed marchers into Pretoria's streets, shouting "Hang De Klerk, hang Mandela!"

Just such threats had slowed the release process. Several government ministers said they feared Mandela's life would be in danger. "He has a high profile and runs a risk," said De Klerk last Saturday. He could be threatened "by all sorts of people, radicals from the far left and the far right." An assassination would inevitably be blamed on the government and trigger a nationwide tide of violence. Government officials urged Mandela to accept police protection after his release, but he apparently spurned the offer.

The A.N.C. is racing to organize itself for the next phase. Its executive committee is to meet this week in Lusaka to decide when to open new offices in South Africa and whether to send home an estimated 15,000 exiles. It will also & have to readdress long-term political strategy amid the competing priorities of its political and military wings. But Thabo Mbeki, director of international affairs, speculated that the first thing Mandela might do is begin a struggle to force the government to lift the state of emergency and free all political prisoners. It could turn out that De Klerk, having ordered Mandela's release, would encounter him next at the head of an antigovernment protest instead of across the bargaining table. The A.N.C. meeting, said Mbeki, could decide whether to call for such demonstrations or to accept De Klerk's actions as evidence of good faith and seek negotiations immediately. Thanks to discussions he held in prison with visiting antiapartheid leaders, Mandela's thinking is widely known. He supports the so-called Harare Declaration, produced by the A.N.C. last year as a blueprint for negotiation. Once all preconditions for talks are met, the declaration says, an interim government should be established to abolish all apartheid laws and prepare for an election on the basis of one-person, one-vote majority rule. Mandela also still firmly adheres to the Freedom Charter, which calls for redistribution of South Africa's wealth and nationalization of banks and corporations, as "the most important political document" adopted by his organization.

In practical terms, negotiations between Mandela and the government have been going on for a long time. He met over the years with four Cabinet ministers and two State Presidents about preconditions and how to meet them. Now the discussions have grown substantive. Minister for Constitutional Development Gerrit Viljoen, the government's chief negotiator with the black majority, has rejected the A.N.C. demand for an interim government. Any talks, he said, would be held under the authority of the present government. In his view, the next step should be talks about formal negotiations. There will have to be a period of confidence building, "trying to understand exactly what the opposing views and attitudes are."

Viljoen argues that it is now time for the A.N.C. to stop talking about continuing armed struggle and offer some conciliatory gesture. "It is only fair," he says, "that in answer to the considerable strides the State President has taken, some steps should be taken on the other side to narrow the gap." Viljoen expects that Mandela will be not just a facilitator of talks but a central figure in negotiating a new South African constitution. "His stature and qualities are quite clear to anybody who has ever talked with him," said Viljoen. At the same time, he said, if the A.N.C. does no more than repeat its preconditions and demands, that would "raise a question mark about their seriousness, their commitment and their integrity."

Such comments indicate the South African government's confidence that it has won a round with its concessions, including Mandela's release, and that Pretoria will be able to control the negotiating process. By freeing the antiapartheid movement's spiritual leader, De Klerk believes he is turning a myth back into a man. By legalizing the A.N.C., he removes its cloak of underground heroism and turns it into an ordinary political party. Both Mandela and his organization will then be forced by circumstance and expectation to make compromises. And compromises are expected to anger and disillusion segments of the black majority, giving the government opportunities to divide the opposition.

From Pretoria's point of view, the longer talks drag on, the better. De Klerk hopes to win international approval -- and the end of economic sanctions -- by simply opening negotiations with legitimate black leaders. He also hopes that prolonged talks will stall the antiapartheid movement and drain the fervor from its protests.

Black leaders take exactly the opposite view. At least some members of the A.N.C. have seen during the past six months how powerless citizens have seized power all over Eastern Europe. With Mandela free, a leader not only in spirit but also in person, black South Africans could finally muster the unity to do the same. Years of protest and suppression have politicized them as never before and given rise to powerful antiapartheid coalitions. Skillfully led and adequately financed, such organizations could fill South Africa's streets and apply more pressure than the government has yet encountered. The notion that Mandela would soon be freed has focused everyone's attention on negotiations, but the political future of his country may depend in large part on the man and woman in the street.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Cape Town and Scott MacLeod/Johannesburg