SOUTH AFRICA EMPTY CLASSROOMS : Blacks’ Boycott Drags On, White Students Race Ahead : Lack of skills is as big a barrier to power as is apartheid. Nelson Mandela and the ANC must act to end this whirlpool of destruction.

SOWETO, South Africa — Despite calls by Nelson Mandela for black students to return to school to prepare themselves for a new society, on any given day one-fourth of South Africa’s black high school students are still not in class. This does not mean that Mandela has failed. It does emphasize the seriousness and stubbornness of the education crisis in the black community.

Central to the crisis is the rejection of the inferior education prescribed for blacks since the National Party came into power in 1948. The present government, trapped in its apartheid policies, argues that while improvements are necessary, separate education for different race groups will not be abandoned.

Anti-apartheid organizations reject this separatism and have made it part of their confrontation with the government. In practical terms, this means that for the past five years there has been little schooling of any kind in black areas. This has eaten into the social fabric of the community. Drug and liquor abuse have grown. Robberies and rapes are increasing. Girls, some as young as 13, are mothers.

The crisis is one of the biggest facing the recently legalized African National Congress, particularly as education is what most blacks want for their children. Any political organization that can resolve the crisis will have grateful black parents voting for it lock, stock and barrel.

For Mandela and the ANC to consolidate their position as the de facto government of a new South Africa, they will have to ensure, through their allied community organizations, that students return to class. But events are not moving in this direction.

In early March, more than 6,000 teachers in Soweto and Alexandra townships went on strike, calling for a complete overhaul of the educational system. Many parents angrily asked if a walkout would make children go back to class. They noted that schools have been disrupted by protest over and over again, and that Soweto has hardly had a week of effective learning this year.

Black teachers, at the front of the crisis, argue that the situation is beyond their control. They have no option but to join their young charges in anti-government demonstrations, demanding change.

Parents, unimpressed by this explanation, are now insistent in their demands that political activism be reduced to prevent education from being sacrificed. For instance, of 196,000 black students who took graduation exams last year, only 18,000 qualified for college. The results predictably provoked a round of recriminations between the government and community organizations. The ANC, the major organization in black politics, had to carry much of the blame. Despite denials by the ANC, when students five years ago adopted the slogan “liberation now, education later,” the ANC did not intervene. Instead it praised the courage of the youth for challenging the government’s inferior educational system. Students chanted ANC slogans during their protest campaigns. Now, while black schooling is caught in this whirlpool of destruction, white children continue to learn. Close to 30,000 qualified for university from last year’s 70,000 entrants. Black youths will have sacrificed their lives in vain, as whites will still be in control of the country’s future, this time because of skills rather than color.

Everybody now realizes that when the government introduced separate and inferior education for blacks, it was to keep them in perpetual servitude. But when these same blacks directly and indirectly keep themselves out of class, whose interests are they serving?

Conscious of this, and the clamor by parents, the ANC and other organizations have embarked on a campaign to get pupils back in class. The ANC and Mandela must show parents that they are concerned with the education of their children, for education is the only hope that blacks have to genuinely control the destiny of this nation.