Preparations by the ANC for a meeting with the government, aimed at helping to remove the remaining obstacles to negotiations, were accompanied by the setting up of open ANC structures throughout South Africa. The meeting itself, due to take place in Cape Town just two months after the unbanning of the ANC, was postponed by the ANC after police killed 11 people at a march in Sebokeng.
Walter Sisulu, elected to the ANC's National Executive Committee (NEC) in March, was appointed to chair the movement's internal structure. He and Nelson Mandela, elected Deputy President of the movement, were due to be joined in South Africa by other members of the NEC returning from exile.
Mandela was welcomed in Lusaka when he arrived with Sisulu for the NEC meeting on 1-2 March, not only by the ANC's National Executive but by heads of state of many countries. Among those present were the heads of the Frontline States of Southern Africa and leaders from the Commonwealth, the European Community, the Non-Aligned Movement and other countries. In Lusaka Mandela emphasised the themes he had stressed at South African rallies in the two weeks after his release from prison. He reiterated the need for the international community to maintain pressure on Pretoria in the form of sanctions so as to maintain the momentum towards change.
Mandela maintained his position when he visited Sweden two weeks later, to be reunited with the ANC President, Oliver Tambo, who was receiving medical treatment there. On the question of sanctions and the isolation of the apartheid regime, he said: 'Nothing has changed in the political situation in South Africa to warrant a review of our policy.'
On 17 March, while Mandela was still in Sweden, President De Klerk announced that a date for talks between members of his cabinet and the ANC had been agreed and that they would be held on 11-12 April in Cape Town.
The ANC's decision to engage in such talks was announced in a statement by the organisation's NEC a month earlier on 16 February. The statement noted that the steps taken by De Klerk, welcome as they were, fell short of what was needed to create a climate conducive to genuine negotiations to end apartheid and introduce a democratic political system. On his return to South Africa from Sweden on 17 March Mandela stated: 'So far the government has met only one of the demands contained in the [Harare] declaration . . . it still has to lift the State of Emergency, end political prosecutions and guarantee the safe return of all exiles.'
The initial talks were to be aimed at addressing these remaining obstacles to negotiations. Even though the question of an amnesty for exiles had not been agreed, when announcing the date, De Klerk said that 'no-one would be prevented from forming part of the delegation on ground of conviction for offences inside South Africa'.
On 19 March the Organisation of African Unity's Ad Hoc Committee on Southern Africa — the body which had initiated the OAU's adoption of the Harare Declaration in August last year — endorsed an ANC suggestion that a group be appointed to monitor events in South Africa. It agreed that the six-member Namibia monitoring team from the Frontline States should move to Lusaka and monitor events in South Africa.
At the March meeting attended by Mandela and Sisulu, the ANC's NEC discussed as a matter of urgency another decision it had announced on 16 February, to send some of its members back into South Africa from exile. Together with ANC leaders inside the country, they would carry out an extensive consultation with all democratic and anti-apartheid forces on the current situation and on the ANC's perspective.
A number of other ANC personnel were due to return in order to participate in the establishment of the new ANC headquarters in Johannesburg and in the establishment of regional and local structures.
The relationship between the un-banned ANC and organisations within the country which had existed legally while the ANC was proscribed, became a matter for extensive discussion. The South African Youth Congress (SAYCO) announced in February that it would dissolve and become part of the ANC's youth section. The Seshego Youth Congress in the Lebowa bantusan took a similar decision. The South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU), having called for a single trade union federation, decided that it would dissolve itself and that its members would become part of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU).
