Marching To Pretoria

In its campaign to take power from the white government, South Africa’s black majority has two main weapons: mass protest and international pressure. Most economic and sports sanctions imposed from abroad have now been lifted — as South Africa’s participation in the Barcelona Olympics attests — so Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress have increased their efforts at home.

After a two-day general strike by millions of black workers last week, the A.N.C. and its allies in the trade unions and the Communist Party turned up the heat with marches in several cities. Most dramatic was the peaceful turnout in Pretoria, the heart of Afrikanerdom and the administrative capital of the country, where 70,000 marchers drew up in the park below President F.W. de Klerk’s office and chanted, “De Klerk must go!” Said A.N.C. secretary- general Cyril Ramaphosa: “Next time, Mr. De Klerk, we are going to be inside.”

In his speech to the marchers, Mandela made it clear that the protest was not intended actually to topple the President but to press him into faster movement toward a multiracial interim government. “We have not come here to gloat,” he said. “We are here to take South Africa along the road to peace and democracy.” De Klerk said later he had been talking privately with the A.N.C. and was “confident that negotiations will be resumed.”