Hope And Death

DUBBED A MERE "PLANNING CONFERENCE," THE gathering was in fact historic. When negotiations resumed near Johannesburg after a nine-month deadlock, the meeting included 26 delegates from the widest spectrum of antagonists ever put together on South African soil. Besides the African National Congress and the governing National Party, the talks included such ex-boycotters as the apartheid-forever Conservative Party and the black-power Pan Africanist Congress. The conferees reached agreement on the agenda's main item: a resumption by April 5 of formal talks on constitutional issues like power sharing. Said A.N.C. secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa: "A torch of hope has been lit."

Yet as before, violence tested the resolve of the politicians. Gunmen staged a conference-eve attack on a school bus in Natal province, killing six. Three days later, a similar cold-blooded ambush there left 10 people dead. What may have been tit-for-tat murders prompted fears of renewed clashes between A.N.C. and Inkatha Freedom Party supporters.