South Africa

By Wayne Svoboda

The headline of the full-page advertisement that appeared last week in 22 English-language newspapers across South Africa said simply, LET THE A.N.C. SPEAK FOR ITSELF. The ad then urged State President P.W. Botha to legalize the outlawed African National Congress, which that very day was holding a 75th-anniversary celebration at its headquarters-in-exile in Lusaka, Zambia. Prominently featured in the advertisement was a silhouette of Nelson Mandela, the A.N.C.'s symbolic leader, who is serving out a life sentence at Pollsmoor Prison, near Cape Town. The advertisement, placed by 18 antiapartheid and church groups, asserted that "there can be no solution to this country's problems without the participation of the A.N.C."

The government's response to the ad was swift. By midnight it had extended emergency press regulations to forbid publication of "any advertisement or report calculated to improve or promote the public image or esteem of an organization which is unlawful." Likewise forbidden were attempts to praise, defend, explain or justify the actions of illegal political groups. The import of the new rules was clear: any positive mention of the A.N.C. would be judged "subversive" and subject editors to a $9,000 fine, a ten-year prison term or closure of their publications.

The ad represented the most brazen of several challenges last week to the Pretoria government. In the coastal city of Port Elizabeth, the Rev. Allan Hendrickse, one of Botha's two nonwhite Cabinet ministers, led a group of 30 | protesters to whites-only King's Beach for a chilly ten-minute "splashabout" in defiance of the law. Proclaimed Hendrickse: "This is God's beach!" In the Transvaal, Ster-Kinekor, South Africa's main distributor of foreign films, said it would stop supplying U.S. productions from Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures unless whites-only admissions policies were dropped. Ster-Kinekor said it was under pressure from the two U.S. filmmakers.

Such continuing pressure on Pretoria was cold comfort to A.N.C. President Oliver Tambo as he presided over anniversary festivities in Lusaka. There were speeches, rallies and a birthday cake decorated with icing in black, green and gold, the A.N.C.'s colors. But the most remarkable event was Tambo's speech, in which he played down the bloody guerrilla tactics that the A.N.C. has advocated in recent years. Instead, he embarked on a more moderate approach, pledging that "civilians, both black and white," would not be harmed by A.N.C. fighters. He called on whites to "come together in a massive democratic coalition" with blacks. Declared Tambo: "Our white compatriots have to learn the truth, that it is not democracy that threatens their future. Rather, it is racist tyranny."

To reassure wary whites both inside and outside South Africa, Tambo spelled out more clearly than ever the sort of government the A.N.C. leadership envisions for the country. A majority-ruled regime, he vowed, would guarantee freedom of speech, the press and religion, and would outlaw arbitrary arrests or detentions without charge. An accompanying A.N.C. policy statement emphasized the need for creating new wealth instead of merely redistributing existing assets. While refusing to promise that South Africa's whites would be granted special "minority rights" protection under a black majority, Tambo avoided the harsh rhetoric that marked his speeches in 1986, which the A.N.C. had proclaimed the year of its military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation).

Tambo may have adopted the softer tone with an eye toward his meeting with U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz in Washington later this month. The U.S. shares the A.N.C.'s goal of a multiparty democracy in South Africa but objects to its violent tactics and Communist connections. Last week the Secretary departed on an eight-day trip to six black African countries that are considered U.S. allies -- Senegal, Cameroon, Kenya, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and Liberia -- but had no plans to meet with Tambo or visit South Africa during his journey. Said Shultz: "Right now there doesn't seem to be any way to take a fruitful initiative there."

At week's end South African authorities once more lashed out at the foreign press, this time calling for the expulsion of the outgoing New York Times Johannesburg bureau chief Alan Cowell, 39, a British citizen who has reported from South Africa since 1983. More troubling, Pretoria also rejected the visa application of Cowell's successor, Serge Schmemann. That left a major U.S. daily newspaper without the staff to report the news in South Africa, despite entreaties from Times editors in New York City and U.S. embassy officials. Cowell, whose work permit expired last June, had been allowed to remain in the country while his application to stay was reviewed. No reason was given for his expulsion, but South African officials have in the past been riled by Cowell's reporting.

The latest action against the Times had a chilling effect on the foreign press, which has watched uneasily as the government has banished seven foreign television and print journalists in the past year alone. This week Los Angeles Times Johannesburg Correspondent Michael Parks, who was ordered to leave by Dec. 31, then granted an extension, will meet with authorities to appeal the decision.

Former South African Deputy Information Minister Louis Nel may have summed up the government's attitude when he told reporters last year that "we would like to see all the foreign journalists out of South Africa." What will prove harder to exorcise is the tension and trouble witnessed and reported by those journalists.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Lusaka