Mandela and Pretoria deny a 'deal'

NELSON MANDELA engaged in semantic acrobatics over the weekend to dispel the impression, confirmed as fact on Friday by a senior government negotiator, that the African National Congress (ANC) had reached agreement with the ruling National Party on plans for a coalition government to run South Africa until the end of the century.

The ANC president, who faces problems from hardliners within his movement, was particularly upset about press reports that a deal had been made to share power with the government. 'Power-sharing' is PresidentF W de Klerk's catchphrase, and for the ANC to employ it - as Mr Mandela is painfully aware - would create the perception that it had capitulated to government demands.

Accordingly, in a speech on Saturday night he said: 'I . . . wish to categorically deny the statement made in the press that the ANC has agreed to power-sharing until the year 1999. An interim government of national unity is not power sharing.'

Fanie Schoeman, the deputy minister who on Friday announced to reporters that agreement had been reached with the ANC over a five-year transitional government, was quick yesterday to point out that Mr Mandela was playing word games. 'A government of national unity is power-sharing,' said Mr Schoeman, one of the government's chief negotiators.

What he had said on Friday night, he reiterated, was based on what the two parties' negotiating teams had agreed in bilateral talks last week. Each party that attained a specific minimum support in the country's first all-race elections, expected early next year, would be included in the new government - a body that would double up as parliament and constitution-making body.

This, indeed, was exactly what Mr Mandela said on Saturday night. 'The ANC proposes an interim government of national unity which would include those parties that have won a certain proportion of seats in a constituent assembly.'

Both Mr Mandela and Mr Schoeman were distressed at the use of the word 'deal' by the press. 'Let me dispel all rumours that there have been any secret deals or pacts with the government. These rumours are devoid of any truth and are mischievous in the extreme,' Mr Mandela said in his speech.

Mr Schoeman told a radio station in Johannesburg yesterday morning that the word 'deal' was not appropriate, but he repeated that agreement had been reached on a five-year interim government.

The only thing that was certain yesterday, after the morning newspaper headlines had trumpeted the now dreaded 'd-word' across their front pages, was that the public at large would remain as confused as they have been since the negotiating process officially began three years ago.

The problem, to employ a favourite political commentators' metaphor, is that government and ANC negotiators are way head of the pack. Responding to South Africa's political and economic complexities, they have been engaging in a series of compromises and accommodations for which the broader public, nurtured in the politics of antagonism, are not prepared.

Indeed, according to inside sources in the government and ANC camps, leaders on both sides are keenly aware of the need to perpetuate the impression that they remain at loggerheads. Some sleight of hand is necessary, they say, to allow time for the power-sharing/ interim-government-of-national-unity deal to be sold to ANC radicals, to vacillating white right-wingers and to the Inkatha Freedom Party, whose leader, Mangosuthu Buthelezi, issued a statement on Saturday threatening a bloodbath in the event that reports of a secret deal were true.