South Africa Rebels with a Cause

The three hues appear on everything from floral wreaths to T shirts, dominating mass funerals for black victims of South Africa's racial violence, meetings of the United Democratic Front opposition and the few other public demonstrations permitted under the current state of emergency. Black stands for the people, green for the country, gold for the minerals. The colors are the symbol of the African National Congress, the organization sworn to bring an end to South Africa's apartheid system of racial segregation -- and to three centuries of white rule. Though outlawed since 1960, the A.N.C. has emerged during the unrest of the past two years as the focal point of political allegiance in the seething black townships, the source of growing guerrilla ferment and, paradoxically, a possible key to an eventual solution of the South African dilemma. In Nelson Mandela and four other A.N.C. leaders who have spent the past 24 years in prison for their campaign against apartheid, the organization holds claim to a virtual pantheon of martyrs whose resistance appears more heroic by the day to a vast majority of blacks. In the face of severe criticism by the government, which regards the A.N.C. as "part of the international terrorist network," a number of white South African businessmen, churchmen and other prominent opinion makers have recently chosen to meet with A.N.C. leaders in exile.

More and more outside observers seem to agree that the organization has become too extensive to ignore. Long regarded in the West as Communist clients for their ties to the Soviet Union, A.N.C. leaders are being received by a lengthening list of Western officials. In September British Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe met A.N.C. President Oliver Tambo near London. Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker saw Tambo the same day. At their meeting Crocker told Tambo, "We are not talking with you because we like you but because we know you have influence in South Africa."

Ironically, this newly gained stature comes at a time of deepening militancy on the A.N.C.'s part that would ordinarily discourage feelers from the West. Last January the A.N.C.'s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, in Xhosa), called for a full-scale "people's war" against the white rulers of South Africa. Having confined its guerrilla strikes in the past mainly to government buildings and military installations, the A.N.C. warned that now "civilians will get caught in the cross fire."

Founded in 1912 by black professionals in the judicial capital of Bloemfontein, the A.N.C. fought against apartheid for decades through rigorously nonviolent means, mostly labor strikes and public service boycotts. In 1955 it joined several other South African civil rights organizations in signing a document called the Freedom Charter, which still serves as its ideological lodestar of record. The charter declares that "South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white" and calls for a unified, democratic state governed along color-blind lines. Economic goals are vaguely socialistic, envisioning the nationalization of some industries, including banks and businesses dealing in the "mineral wealth" of South Africa.