A Long Road From Soweto

It was a schoolchildren's protest turned violent that sent Themba Thabethe on his odyssey to Moscow 17 years ago.


A Soweto child fed on leftovers from white familie's tables, Thabethe's adolescence was marked by angry rallies and run-ins with the police; he has spent his adulthood in exile. His story mirrors that of the organization he now represents in Russia, the African National Congress.


"I went home for the first time in 1991", Thabethe, 36, says from the office of the ANC Permanent Mission to Russia, near the U. S. Embassy compound. "A white person came up to me on the street and asked me for money".


As historically profound as the changes in Russia have been since Thabethe came here in 1979, they have been equally turbulent in his native South Africa.


Once a banned organization, today the ANC has set aside its espousal of violence and is negotiating, like Russia, to develop a new constitution.


But Thabethe cautions against perceiving recent events - like President F. W. de Klerk's remarkable apology for apartheid- as signaling the end to the system of exclusion.


He tells the story of a Russian-trained engineer who was recently called from Moscow for an interview with a South African firm. When he walked into the office for the interview, the businessman's jaw dropped.


"Oh - you are black. There is no job for you here", Thabethe says his friend was told. He returned to Russia. Within the ranks of the ANC, debate still rages over whether the path of peaceful negotiation Nelson Mandela has chosen is the proper one. The recent assassination of communist ANC leader Chris Hani has sparked renewed calls for violence, and Thabethe understands that pull.


"The people in South Africa today are in such a situation that they either have to do something against the law or die", he says, losing the smile he had worn to welcome visitors.


The defining moment of Thabethe's youth was, itself, one of terrible violence. As a school monitor in his Soweto high school in 1976, he said he helped organize students into a boycott of classes, followed by marches, to protest the poor quality of education.


The events of June 16, 1976 made headlines worldwide. As Thabethe and his schoolmates joined a larger protest, the group was met by police.


The police opened fire, shooting about a dozen children.


A summer of violence and protests followed throughout South Africa. Thabethe, then 19, said he spent months in hiding. In the fall of that year a woman promised to help him. Unbeknownst to him, she was part of the ANC underground. She helped him escape to Nigeria, where he continued his studies. In 1979 he received a scholarship to attend Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow. He has lived here ever since, becoming director of the ANC mission after his visit to South Africa in 1991.


It has been of great interest to him to watch what has happened to the Soviet Union, long-time supporter and mentor of the ANC.


While Russia and other former East Bloc nations move fitfully along the path of privatization, the guiding document of the ANC, "The Freedom Charter", remains unchanged since it was adopted in 1955, including its espousal of nationalization.


"The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole", it states, adding that all the land shall be "redivided among those who work it".


Those words, and the fact that the Soviet government supported the ANC for decades, caused the American government to shun it throughout the Cold War. "The U. S. government was very, very wrong, because this organization was never a Communist organization", Thabethe says.


Thabethe says the group is realistic about wanting to encourage private investment and growth, accompanied by a strong central support system.


"We must bring the undeveloped South Africans to the level of the developed South Africans as quickly as possible", he says.


But his view of the future is not idealistic. Should negotiations fail, he foresees an ocean of violence.


We don't have arms, we don't have military skills. We are virtually an unarmed people. But if the talks don't succeed we will never surrender".