De Klerk Hits ANC as Chiefs Boycott Talks : Homelands: Mandela gets blame as he arrives in Cape Town for session snubbed by other leaders.

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  Nelson R. Mandela flew to Cape Town to meet South African President Frederik W. de Klerk, who blamed the African National Congress for a snub by four black homeland leaders who boycotted talks with him today.

Mandela, the ANC deputy president, arrived at De Klerk’s Cape Town office this evening with three other ANC leaders for the guerrilla movement’s first official talks with the white rulers it has opposed since its foundation in 1912.

De Klerk said he will ask Mandela about the homeland leaders’ absence.

“It is clear to me that there has been ANC involvement in one way or another. Pressure has been brought to bear,” De Klerk said after meeting the two homeland leaders who showed up.

“I will be discussing it with Mr. Mandela, most definitely so, because I have not tried to interfere in his discussions with anybody in any way whatsoever.”

The stay-at-home leaders denied that pressure had been put on them to boycott the long-scheduled meeting.

In the nominally independent homeland of Venda, army officers overthrew the government in an apparently bloodless coup today.

Venda is regarded as independent by South Africa and its leaders had not been invited to the Cape Town talks.

The two non-independent homeland leaders who met De Klerk were KwaZulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, whose Inkatha movement has been fighting ANC supporters, and Chief Minister Kenneth Mopeli of Qwaqwa.

Leaders of the KaNgwane, KwaNdebele, Lebowa and Gazankulu homelands pulled out on the eve of the meeting.

Colored (mixed race) Labor Party leader Allan Hendrickse said Mandela had telephoned him to ask him to boycott the talks.

Hendrickse attended, with Indian community leader J. N. Reddy, but said that in the light of Mandela’s call he diverted the talks from discussion of constitutional reform to focus on a nationwide wave of political violence.