Black South Africans have many obstacles to overcome. Despite winning the right to vote, they still need to achieve equality in housing, employment and education with white residents.

To survive, they must end the black-on-black violence as well as the fighting between groups of different races. Only then can they give their children hope for the future.

African-Americans face the same difficulties.

Nelson Mandela, president of the African National Congress in South Africa, made this claim before the national convention of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Indianapolis this summer.

"We (the ANC) stand here not as a people from another land, but as part of you. Part of the great family of black people," said Mandela. "Your problems are the problems of the black man throughout the world. Our problems related to the youth are identical to yours."

A white minority has ruled South Africa through apartheid, or the separation of races, until President Frederik de Klerk abolished most apartheid laws in mid-1991.

Children's Express asked Rupert Richardson, the president of the NAACP, to explain how Americans and South Africans could have identical problems. After all, racial segregation was abolished in the United States in the mid-'60s.

"Any time a person is a victim of racism and separatism, it does something to the self-esteem and to the psyche," explained Richardson. "And therefore, perhaps some of the acting out by African-American youth is similar to some of the acting out of the young people in South Africa."

This parallel between South African youth and African-American youth is only part of the reason that the NAACP and the ANC have publicly allied themselves.

"I cannot see how (the NAACP and ANC) can remain separate," said Richardson. "We are a civil rights organization with the same basic organizational structure and the same thrust."

Other groups in South Africa have the same thrust as well. The Inkatha Freedom Party, the Pan-Africanist Congress, the South African Communist Party and other organizations wish to develop a new government without apartheid that provides equal opportunity for all. Yet the NAACP has decided to support only the ANC.

"(ANC) is the one that is established along the same principles as ours," said Richardson. "It is the largest, and perhaps the most effective, and we are the largest and most effective civil rights organization here. So it's a natural fit."

Although the NAACP and the ANC fit naturally together, their union excludes many non-whites in South Africa who need aid from the United States.

"I think we haven't reached out more because our vision was a little narrower than we would like it to have been," said Richardson. "This is a growth for us too. As we broaden our thinking, we are going to reach out (to the other political groups)."

Bond between NAACP, ANC

Indeed, the NAACP is growing in a new area. Because of sanctions by exporting countries, South African access to international loans, arms and oil is still forbidden until a new government is in place. Despite these obstacles, the NAACP and ANC are creating some kind of formal bond.

Currently, however, only similar ideas, words and donations unite the organizations.

"We are going to have to find a way, and we have not designed yet how we will make those ties," said Richardson. "We do know that we are going to have to re-establish our department of international affairs, for example, and have that department sit down and study ways that we can work together."

When Mandela spoke before the NAACP's national convention, he presented his ideas on how the two groups could work together.

"I refer in particular to the work we have to do in South Africa concerning voter education, voter identification and voter organization," said Mandela. "What we need now is your experience. What we need is your input to ensure that we organize those who are hopeless, to exercise their new and unalienable right. . . . That they actually go to their polling station on voting day. And that they understand fully the liberating effect of their new freedom."

Mandela asked for this help because political parties in South Africa are negotiating the terms of the country's first universal election. The Convention for a Democratic South Africa, the multiracial forum developing the transition from apartheid to democracy, hopes to hold the election next April.

The United Nations will ultimately decide what groups will oversee and aid in the voting process.

Request to oversee elections

"We do know that if they are going to have free elections, with NAACP as having fought for the right to vote and fought for open elections all these years, we certainly intend to ask (the UN) for a status that will allow us to send people over to supervise those elections," said Richardson.

The parliament and legislative body elected in 1994 will have the authority to create a new constitution, which should be adopted in 1995. Then they will install a national government. A second election is proposed for the year 2000, under the guidelines of the new constitution.

Because the winners will fashion the constitution, many hopes for South Africa depend on the outcomes of this election. Any group winning the support of about 5 percent of the population will be included in the new government.

Political parties struggling to gain these votes have been blamed for increasing violence in South Africa. More than 10,000 have died from black-on-black violence in the past three years since the government began discussing an end to apartheid.

Richardson wants to give a message to anyone using violence as means to power.

"I would say as long as God gives you breath, there is a chance that you can make a difference. But if you are willing to perpetrate violence, you risk not only the life of the person that you attack, you risk your own life. And dead folks don't make any changes."

Polls indicate the ANC will win 50 percent to 60 percent of the vote in next year's election. In the negotiations about a constitution, passage of a bill of rights will require at least a 70 percent majority.

Realizing the need for more votes, Mandela voiced his own opinion on whom children and adults both should support.

"We (the ANC and NAACP) need control of the masses, millions of whom are illiterate," said Mandela. "We need to see that they do not vote for any party by mistake."

According to Richardson, however, the ANC will have to reach that goal alone.

"I would hope we wouldn't start telling kids, or anybody, what party to vote for. We don't in this association," said Richardson. "We really are non-partisan, and we have a philosophy that we have no permanent friends, we have no permanent enemies, just permanent interests. I hope that as South African youth develop, they will take that independent approach to their political leaning."

Even if the NAACP remains non-partisan in South Africa, it will provide desperately needed aid. What will they receive in return?

"We hope that if nothing else, people in this country will see people who look like them rising above situations, and therefore get inspired. If we get no more than that, we will have gotten a lot," said Richardson.

"Very often in the association (NAACP) what we do is not for what we get. It's for what we can give and what we can stimulate. But I do think it will come back to all of us."

EDITED BY: Kate Schnippel, 18