ANC and Pretoria begin talks

CAPE TOWN (Reuter) - Chief negotiators for the South African government and the African National Congress met yesterday to prepare for a crucial summit between President F W de Klerk and the ANC president, Nelson Mandela.

The Constitutional Development Minister, Roelf Meyer, and the ANC Secretary-General, Cyril Ramaphosa, met at a secret venue near Johannesburg. South Africa's biggest labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu), announced that it would intensify mass protests 'to create a climate for free political activity'. Cosatu, with its allies, the ANC and South African Communist Party, launched the mass action campaign in July with the aim of ousting President de Klerk and three black homeland leaders who are opposed to the left- wing alliance.

The campaign included the march on Ciskei homeland last week in which 28 ANC protesters were shot dead by homeland troops. The ANC's western Transvaal branch said yesterday that it would march on Tlhabane, a town in Bophuthatswana homeland, on Saturday 'as an expression of our democratic right to secure free political activity'.