Southern Africa Hope, Blood And Defiance

By John Greenwald

No sooner had cheering crowds welcomed Pope John Paul II to tiny Lesotho (pop. 1.6 million) last week than the cool night air erupted in explosions and flashes of light. But these were not fireworks welcoming the Pontiff. Blocks from the route the Pope's motorcade had taken through Maseru, the capital, South African commandos were storming a hijacked bus on which a band of antigovernment Lesotho guerrillas had been holding 71 Catholic pilgrims for 29 hours. When the gunfire ended, three of the four rebels lay dead. So did a 14-year-old girl, one of 31 children on board, who was killed in the cross fire. The fourth hijacker and a 55-year-old male hostage died a day later.

The tragedy came amid a week of turmoil -- and a few gestures of amity -- in strife-prone southern Africa, a region of guerrilla conflicts and racial hostilities. John Paul had arrived in Lesotho via a circuitous route. Bad weather forced his chartered Air Zimbabwe jet to veer from Maseru and land at Jan Smuts Airport in Johannesburg. The unscheduled stop was a public relations windfall for South Africa, which had been pointedly excluded from the Pope's five-nation tour. While John Paul did not kiss the ground at the airport, as is his custom on first visiting a country, he spent two hours with Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha, who greeted him and led him through throngs of astonished passengers to the VIP lounge.

Botha ordered 100 lunches and several bottles of South African wine for the papal entourage and settled back to discuss the latest developments in southern Africa. While he and the Pope chatted, government officials hastily arranged for a motorcade to take the papal party on the 300-mile journey to Lesotho, a black-ruled kingdom entirely surrounded by South Africa. "We consider it a privilege to assist the Holy Father," said an obviously elated Botha. "We are known for our hospitality."

Just miles from the airport, an embarrassing standoff was unfolding between the government and three antiapartheid leaders who escaped from custody earlier in the week. The three, who were being held without trial under South Africa's 27-month-old state-of-emergency laws, slipped away from guards while receiving physical therapy at Johannesburg Hospital. After making their way across the city, they took refuge in the U.S. consulate on the eleventh floor of the bustling Kine Center, a popular shopping and office complex.

Though the government said it would not rearrest the men if they left the building, all three vowed to stay in the consulate unless they were allowed to go free without political restrictions. They also demanded an end to the state of emergency and the release of more than 800 political detainees. U.S. State Department officials said the escapees would not be forced to leave "against their will." The point was buttressed by a spokesman for the U.S. embassy in Pretoria, who declared that "consular premises are inviolable and host governments may not enter without consent."

The impasse dimmed some of the luster of a rare episode of diplomacy in the region: State President P.W. Botha's first official visit to neighboring black African states. Even as the Pope was in nearby Zimbabwe, Botha journeyed to Mozambique and Malawi with peace proposals of his own last week. After meeting with Mozambican President Joaquim Chissano, Botha gave assurances that Pretoria would no longer aid rebels of the Mozambique National Resistance, also known as Renamo. The right-wing guerrillas have been trying for 13 years to topple the Marxist government, cutting rail lines, sacking villages and driving farmers off their land. The bitter civil war has destroyed much of the country's food supply and devastated its economy.

Botha also pledged South Africa's help in restarting Mozambique's giant Cahora Bassa hydroelectric-power dam project, whose transmission lines have been repeatedly sabotaged by the Renamo insurgents since the facility was built in 1975. That promise showed both neighborliness and self-interest, since the dam's chief customer will be South Africa. Altogether, the encounter may have reflected a new willingness on the part of Pretoria to pursue conciliatory policies toward its black neighbors abroad while continuing to crack down on opponents of apartheid at home.

With reporting by Peter Hawthorne/Maseru and Maryanne Vollers/Johannesburg