South Africa Breaking Rules

Children danced triumphantly at the door of the small red brick house in Soweto, the sprawling black township outside Johannesburg. Neighbors and friends greeted its famous resident with joyous tears and welcoming hugs. For the first time in nine years, Winnie Mandela, a leading antiapartheid activist and the wife of jailed Black Leader Nelson Mandela, enjoyed a privilege that most take for granted: the right to enter her own home.

Since 1962 Mandela has lived under various banning orders restricting her activities. In 1977 she was banished from her Soweto house to Brandfort, in a remote area of the Orange Free State. When unknown arsonists fire bombed her residence there last August, Mandela blamed the government, defiantly returned to Soweto and challenged her banning restrictions in court. Following moves by some courts to invalidate banning orders recently, a government prosecutor last week announced that the state was abandoning its efforts to enforce the restrictions on Mandela. Though technically the ban had not been lifted, no attempts were made to prevent Mandela from returning to Soweto. The activist, 51, was unsentimental about the government's action. "It was my right to be at home," said Mandela. "No one is grateful for a right that is rightfully ours."

Impatience with the apartheid regime pushed Bishop Desmond Tutu last week to call on the international community to impose economic sanctions against the South African government. Shortly after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984, Tutu warned that he would openly support sanctions unless the government dismantled apartheid within two years. Last week he said his patience had run out. "I have no hope of real change from government unless they are forced," he declared. "We face a catastrophe in this land, and only the action of the international community by applying pressure can save us." The government- controlled broadcast network sharply criticized his move. Tutu, it said, had "aligned himself still more closely with the forces of revolution."

Meanwhile, other antiapartheid activists took a less confrontational tack. On Easter Sunday a conference of 1,500 black teachers, parents and students decided against a national school boycott. Instead, the group urged students who had engaged in sporadic local boycotts to return to their classrooms and subvert the school system from within.