JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- President Frederik de Klerk lifted a 4-year-old state of emergency in South Africa Thursday in a further bid to normalize the political climate, but retained special powers to deal with strife in Natal province.
In an address to a special session of Parliament in Cape Town, De Klerk also announced the release of 48 political prisoners and a review early next year of two of the country's most controversial discriminatory laws covering land ownership and segregated residential areas.
African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, following a meeting in Paris with President Francois Mitterrand on the fourth day of a 45-day foreign tour, declared the announcement a 'victory for the people of South Africa as a whole.'
In a not infrequent display of divergent opinion in the movement, the ANC leadership in South Africa dismissed the action as a 'half-measure' and demanded the emergency also be lifted in Natal.
ANC supporters are fighting a rival, Zulu-based movement for political supremacy in black townships of Natal province. Aggravated by the emergency, poverty and power politics, the conflict has left some 3,000 blacks dead since 1987.
De Klerk, continuing to chip at four decades of apartheid in spite of growing white resentment, said his decision to lift the emergency had removed one of the 'major stumbling' blocks to full blown power-sharing negotiations with the black majority.
He called on the ANC to demonstrate its 'commitment to peace' by abandoning the armed struggle and its calls on the West to maintain sanctions against Pretoria. Its 'vacillation' was impeding progress, De Klerk said.
As President Bush flew to Milwaukee on a campaign trip, White House Press Secretary Alixe Glen read a statement aboard Air Force One welcoming the announcement as 'another significant' step toward creating a climate conducive to negotiations.
'With this latest move, the government has moved to meet almost all of the opposition's requirements to enter into negotiations. We look forward to the early beginning of a negotiating process.'
De Klerk announced his decision at a joint sitting of the racially segregated Parliament that represents whites and South Africans of mixed-race and Asian descent but excludes the 28 million black majority.
'After thorough consideration of all the relevant factors, I have decided to announce that there will no longer be a general countrywide state of emergency but that henceforth it will exist in Natal only,' he said.
'The government has pursued with all its might and resources the ideal that, as far as security was concerned, there should be a return to normality in which the remaining vestiges of violence could be countered with the ordinary laws of the land.
'That point has now been reached,' he said.
But De Klerk said 'ordinary laws of the land' were unable to cope with the 'increasing phenomenon in Natal of violence among blacks which has led to destruction of human life and property and has assumed shocking proportions.'
De Klerk lifted the national emergency a day shy of its fourth anniversary. His predecessor, Pieter W. Botha, first imposed the regulations on June 12, 1986 to curb a black uprising that began in 1984 over rent hikes and constitutional changes that continued to exclude blacks from national power.
It had been renewed annually by Botha and was used to detain without charge as many as 50,000 people -- some for as long as three years. Sharp media restrictions denied television viewers graphic pictures of clashes, and police curtailed the amount of information which could be published on the unrest.
It prompted Western nations, including the United States and the members of the European Community, to impose their most effective sanctions yet against South Africa to force an end to apartheid, plunging the economy into its worst post-war economic crisis.
'We cannot stop the world and get off as some people in South Africa would like us to do,' said De Klerk, jousting with the rightist Conservative Party, which nearly unseated the National Party in a parliamentary by-election Wednesday in the port city of Durban.
'Whether we like it or not, we must wrestle also with the international realities of the present and secure for our country its rightful place in the community of nations. This the government will continue to bring about.'
De Klerk has repeatedly appealed to international leaders to lift sanctions, but Mandela said Thursday that despite the lifting of the national emergency punitive sanctions must remain in place until the pillars of apartheid are torn down.
The ANC has demanded a lifting of the emergency, the release of all political prisoners, an end to political trials, the return of exiles and the removal of all other repressive security legislation before it will join power-sharing negotiations.
De Klerk, speaking before a rare joint session of parliament, said his decision had removed one of the 'major stumbling' blocks to full power-sharing negotiations with the country's black majority in an attempt to end its protracted political crisis.
He also announced the release of 48 political prisoners 'as a gesture' in advance of an agreement with the African National Congress on the release of all political prisoners and the return of exiles.
'We are on the threshold of the real negotiation process and the time has come for other important role players to do their bit,' De Klerk said.
'After thorough consideration of all the relevant factors, I have decided to announce that there will no longer be a general countrywide state of emergency but that henceforth it will exist in Natal only,' he said.
De Klerk also called on the ANC to stop 'vacillating' on key issues.
'The government has pursued with all its might and resources the ideal that as far as security was concerned, there should be a return to normality in which the remaining vestiges of violence could be countered with the ordinary laws of the land,' de Klerk said. 'That point has now been reached.'
The state of emergency was first imposed on June 12, 1986, to curb a black uprising in townships across the country. Its measures included detention without charges and a clamp on the media, provoked Western nations to impose punishing trade sanctions.
It had been renewed annually by De Klerk's predecessor, Pieter W. Botha, who cited a 'revolutionary climate' each time the emergency was extended.
De Klerk was greeted by laughter in the chamber from the right-wing Conservative Party benchers at the start of his nationally broadcast address when he referred to his mandate for reform -- a day after the ruling party only narrowly won a parliamentary-by election against the right-wing opposition.
By a margin of 547 votes Wednesday, the National Party held onto the middle-class and blue-collar constituency of Umlazi in the Indian Ocean port city against Conservative Party warnings that de Klerk is leading South Africa to black majority rule.
'It is a time, obviously, when people feel insecure,' a greatly relieved National Party victor, Piet Matthee, told reporters minutes after hearing the results of the first test of the white electorate's opinion since de Klerk began his reforms in February.
In final results, Matthee got 5,762 votes in the traditional National Party stronghold. Conservative Party candidate Francis Hitchcock, campaigning on an anti-reform platform, gained 5,215 votes, and the liberal Democratic Party just 982 votes.
Conservative leaders said the close result indicated a lack of support for de Klerk's reform program.
Since February, de Klerk has released black leader Nelson Mandela following 27 years in prison, lifted a 30-year ban on the ANC and the South African Communist Party, and embarked on an ambitious legislative program that includes abolishing racial segregation in public places and empowering him to grant amnesty to ANC guerrillas and other political offenders.
Imposition of the state of emergency prompted Western governments to impose tough trade sanctions in 1986 that threw the economy into its most serious crisis since the National Party rose to power on a platform to safeguard minority white privilege.
De Klerk, who has pledged to negotiate an end to apartheid, sought on a nine-nation European tour last month an end to sanctions as a reward for his reform efforts.
