Mandela takes over seat of white power for a day

Thirty years to the day since Nelson Mandela was arrested and imprisoned, he addressed the biggest political rally held in Pretoria from a platform in front of the steps of the Union Buildings, the seat of white South African power. In a scene rich in symbolism, and so relaxed and peaceful it evoked images at times of a California campus in the late 1960s, some 80,000 African National Congress supporters sat on the lawns that roll steeply from the imposing monolith and gazed in adoration at the 74-year-old legend who personifies their struggle for liberation. Armed to the teeth, the traditional custodians of minority rule, soldiers and police, watched from above in a defensive line stretching 300 yards across.

The ANC president had been supposed to lead the march through the city centre that preceded the rally. He did not because each time he tried to get out of his car he was mobbed. In the end he spoke, though it was the event that was important, more than the words. Dressed in a shiny blue track- suit and baseball cap, he praised the 4 million who, he said, had taken part in Monday and Tuesday's general strike; he congratulated the United Nations observer mission for contributing to the peacefulness of the 'mass action' campaign and he repeated the ANC's calls for the government to curb political violence and to accede to demands for an interim government and elections for a constituent assembly.

The ANC wanted negotiations, but not before these demands were met. Didactic, not rousing, as is his style, he gave President F W de Klerk a short, sharp lecture: 'It is time for the government to abandon the path that it has been following,' he said.

'While pursuing negotiations, it simultaneously sought to weaken the ANC and the democratic forces. Along this direction it also sought to build alliances with all sorts of dubious political formations in the hope that this would add to the process of weakening the ANC. This has been one of the gravest mistakes it committed in the current period. The time has arrived for it to abandon this path.'

Fifty yards behind Mr Mandela, standing guard with the police, was a statue of General JBM Hertzog, a former prime minister and one of the founding fathers of Mr de Klerk's National Party. Close inspection revealed a quizzical expression on his face, a look of bewilderment and surprise, as if the man who made the statue had anticipated this very scene.

Not only was there this sea of blacks stretching as far as the eye could see, some of them had mounted the statue, on the lawns beneath, of Louis Botha, arguably the greatest general of the Boer war.

The scene earlier, when the 80,000- strong phalanx descended down Kerk Street - to Pretoria what Oxford Street is to London - was no less baffling to the hundreds of white bureaucrats craning to watch out of the windows of the tall government buildings. The police - used to this sort of thing in the townships - remained impassive. The soldiers too. Except that, in full battle-gear, with automatic rifles at the ready, some of them appeared to be mildly embarrassed at how over- dressed they were for the occasion.

Evidently someone in government had got it into his head that the marchers might decide to go for what one ANC official jokingly described as 'the Bastille option'. Pallo Jordan, the ANC's director of information, said he was marching down Kerk Street, in the thick of the crowd, when a message came up on his pager from Gill Marcus, one of his colleagues back at the Johannesburg office. 'Contact Gill if possible,' the message read. 'People getting very anxious at the Union Buildings.'

Had they summoned up the courage to wander down among the crowd, their anxieties would have been rapidly allayed. Two scenes stood out: Three Afrikaans men in dark suits chatting cheerfully on a street corner as the 'comrades' streamed past; 30 or so white men and women sitting on the balcony of a Kerk Street pub drinking beer and waving to the marchers.

Undeterred, the Deputy Minister of Law and Order, Johan Scheepers, issued a statement in mid-afternoon denouncing the ANC's failure to control the crowd. Alleging, without details, that some marchers had been spotted carrying AK-47s, he listed the perceived abuses: many had been forced to take part; one flag had been pulled down; one window pane had been broken.

General Johan Swart, the police officer commanding the operation on the ground, told reporters that, save for one incident of looting, the day had passed off peacefully. He shook hands with Mr Mandela after the rally and said it was always a pleasure to meet him.

President de Klerk yesterday urged Mr Mandela to return to the negotiating table, hinting that talks between the government and the ANC could resume shortly, AFP reports.