STRUGGLING TO TALK

Stephen Robinson on the low ebb

of the ANC, now facing prospects of talks with the government

THERE is a remarkable sense of deja vu about the current strategies and antics of the world's oldest liberation movement, the African National Congress. Just as Western governments are trying to pin down the National Party on early negotia- tions with 'all black leaders', the ANC has stumbled down the same cul-de-sac it first trod 30 years ago by launching a campaign of defiance and bussing black activists into white hospitals. Only two things have changed in three decades: the government has learnt a trick or two and resists the temptation to arrest the 'patients', and secondly, the ANC's military position has deteriorated to such an extent that it cannot even blow up electricity pylons.

News of the rebel cricket tour has also provided the ANC with another timely red herring to distract it from the central issue of political negotiations. The oppressed classes, so the Mass Democratic Move- ment tells us, view the rebels as traitors: ho-hum. Anyone who claims to know the mood of the man on the Soweto minibus should be treated with deep suspicion, and in fact most blacks seem to view rebel tours in the same light as do the British middle classes. They feel there is something rather dubious about taking vast sums of money to play phoney test matches against the Springboks, but that it is scarcely the end of the world. At the same time, most would much rather Mike Gatting and his team spared us all the patronising cant about uplifting township cricketers.

But it is probably true to say that the outlook has never been so troubled for the ANC, at least since the early 1960s when the security police smashed the high com- 'It'll keep an eye on Congress.' mad of the military wing and jailed virtually the entire leadership, including Nelson Mandela, Walter Simulu, and Gov- an Mbeki. After a brief experiment with blowing up Wimpy bars, which was aban- doned a year ago, partly because maiming civilians proved unpopular at home and abroad, but also because the guerrilla operation has been deeply infiltrated, the armed struggle is at a distinctly low ebb.

But the likely prospect of Nelson Man- dela's release by Christmas is even more worrying, as shown by the public relations fiasco of the ANC's handling of the famous tea-party President Botha held in Mande- la's honour last month. The mealy- mouthed 'this means nothing at all' state- ments issued by the ANC were inept and graceless, and gave the impression (prob- ably correctly) that the ANC perceive the old boy to be much more valuable to them in jail. The appropriate strategy would have been to hail the meeting as evidence that the government had finally under- stood that the ANC cannot be ignored.

Yet there was a powerful symbolism to the meeting between two men representing the historic polarities Of the South African struggle. P. W. Botha will soon be shuf- fling off into sullen retirement to be replaced by a vigorous successor 20 years Botha and Mandela's junior. It seems reasonable to assume that once Mandela is released, he will take the view that he hasn't sat in jail for over a quarter of a century simply to follow Botha into obscur- ity. Indeed it is now clear that the meeting itself was the result of complex negotia- tions involving several cabinet ministers, apparently held without reference to the ANC or internal groupings — one reason perhaps why activists are privately en- couraging the view that at the age of 71 Mandela may already be past it.

To say that the ANC must be in a position to negotiate with the government is not to suggest that the government is serious in its stated desire to enter genuine negotiations with all groups, including the ANC. It is just that Mr F. W. De Klcrk, the new leading figure of National poli- tics, has boxed himself into a corner with his brisk reformist rhetoric. It is certainly possible that what De Klerk has said in recent weeks amounts to no more or less than what Nationalist leaders are required to say before embarking on a foreign tour, but the expectations he has created give the ANC a rare opportunity to embarrass him if he fails to fulfil them.

The National Party has been shrewd in suggesting it is prepared to go further than ever before. In fact the party is aiming more at a new brand of benign, central- ised, yet multiracial racism by co-opting compliant and none-too-bright black faces into the cabinet. (The first will almost certainly be in the cabinet within a year.) The priority is to ensure that if the ANC refuses to join in, they should be seen to have excluded themselves.

A recent report drawn up by internal activists meeting the ANC in Lusaka admits the opposition is in a tight spot. Lamenting that 'the imperialists [in Britain and America] want a modified, reformed capitalist' society to replace the apartheid regime', the document warns that even the Soviet Union appears to be wearying of support for the armed struggle: 'Negotia- tions are again a matter for discussion because of the manoeuvres of the imperial- ists, which have some support of our long-established friends.'

One of the difficulties is the manifest divisions within the ANC itself. The exiled organisation is split between thoughtful, realistic men like Thabo Mbeki, and the hardliners within the military wing, those who genuinely believe that with one more push the whole apartheid edifice will come tumbling down.

But more importantly, no one in the ANC has a serious notion of what sort of society they are striving to create. The well-intentioned white liberals who have been to Lusaka in recent weeks to meet the ANC have returned genuinely astonished by the ignorance of the exiled leadership's analysis of what is going on inside South Africa. The policies of the ANC are still essentially enshrined in the Freedom Char- ter, which, with its waffly platitudes such as the 'land belongs to all', remains their blueprint for a post-apartheid society. The ideology of the struggle against apartheid has remained unchanged for over 30 years, while the ideology of apartheid has been fine-tuned — one reason the government and the ANC are still slugging it out.

In over 40 years of National Party rule, the struggle against apartheid has been elevated, and at the same trivialised, into a moral crusade, both internationally and within South Africa. It has become an end in itself, and the purity of the struggle must not be sullied by any suggestion of negotia- tion with the Boers. There can be no doubting that justice will prevail, although there is less certainty about how this can be achieved. This attitude is fine so long as pictures of police shooting blacks appear nightly on the world's television screens, but becomes rather troublesome when the regime is talking about talks.

Despite some recent opinion polls which have shown government support collapsing even beyond the right-wing heartlands of the Transvaal, the National Party will hang on at next month's < general election. But should the economy really take a bad turn, it is not inconceivable that at the next election the Nationalists will be forced to keep the far Right out by going into coalition with the centre-left Democratic Party, which would in turn insist negotia- tions with the ANC begin.

Both superpowers now appear distinctly weary of their historic friends in the region. After settlements in Angola and Namibia, and perhaps soon in Mozambique too, it may be that the government and the ANC will eventually have to face up to the unthinkable and talk. When queueing for the negotiating table, it is dangerous to be first in line, but fatal to be second.

Stephen Robinson is South Africa corres- pondent of the Daily Telegraph.