Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 8, 1990 TAG: 9004080058
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA LENGTH: Medium
The meetings are the rescheduling of a session planned for April 11.
Giving three days for the encounter, which will involve senior officials on both sides, suggests that the participants may try to accomplish more than their original one-day agenda envisioned.
A week ago, the ANC insisted on a postponement in protest over the shootings of demonstrators in a black township, Sebokeng, on March 25.
After three hours of talks on Thursday in Cape Town, President F.W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, the deputy president of the ANC, announced that the meeting would go ahead.
The congress consented after de Klerk told Mandela that he would ask his Cabinet to approve an independent judicial inquiry into the deaths in Sebokeng.
The announcement of the agreed date was withheld until Saturday because Mandela said approval was needed from the ANC's national executive committee, which remains in exile in Zambia.
The congress said previously that at the meeting it planned to press its demands that the national state of emergency be lifted, that an unconditional amnesty be extended to all political prisoners and exiles and that political trials end.
It said those steps were needed to create a climate that would permit the Congress to join the formal negotiations that de Klerk has proposed on the country's future.
In Lusaka, a congress official, Steve Tshwete, was quoted by Reuters on Saturday as saying that Mandela would arrive there today to consult with the organization's leadership in exile.
The Azanian People's Organization has refused to join the negotiations proposed by de Klerk that are intended to lead to a new constitution for South Africa giving political rights to the black majority.
The African National Congress also announced Saturday that Mandela would immediately move into the 15-room mansion in Soweto that his wife, Winnie, had built for him while he was in prison.
A statement issued from Lusaka said the decision was based on Mandela's personal requirements and his obligations to the congress.
In the two months since his release from prison, he has received journalists and other visitors in his front yard or cramped living room at the four-room matchbox of a house where he had lived before his 27 1/2 years of confinement.
The poor security of the house is believed to have motivated the decision to move into the new two-story modern house, which has a fortified appearance and sits behind a high wall.
by CNB