The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

Intro

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. Here are the day's headlines.

In Geneva, Reagan and Gorbachev held unexpectedly long private meetings but imposed a news blackout on the contents. The Reverend Jesse Jackson met Gorbachev for forty-five minutes. A Republican controlled senate committee rejected President Reagan's nominee for the Humanities Agency. A Houston Court ordered Texaco to pay Pennzoil over $10 billion dolars in takeover damages. [on camera] Details of these stories coming up, Jim Lehrer is covering the Summit in Geneva. Jim?

We have a different perspective on the summit from our Kansas City essayist, James Fisher. Charlayne Hunter-Gault interviews one of South Africa's key figures, Gatcha Gatsha Buthelezi, chief of the giant Zulu tribe, and Kwamepowerful nations in the world took a walk together to the poolhouse. The unscheduled stroll was part of an unscheduled two hours President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev spent in private conversation on day one of their summit meeting in Geneva. Little was said afterward about what was said in private or in the more formal sessions with others present because of a mutually imposed news blackout.

[voice-over] The day began with smiles and a handshake on the steps of a Geneva chateau. Mr. Reagan played host. Once inside, reporters tried to get in some questions.

SAM DONALDSON, ABC News: Mr. President, what are you going to say to Mr. Gorbachev, sir, to try to convince him that you want peace?

Pres. RONALD REAGAN: Sam, that will be the subject of the meetings, I think --

Mr. DONALDSON: Mr. Gromyko once said of you, you have a nice smile but iron teeth, I guess meaning you're tough. What do you have to say about that, sir?

MIKHAIL GORBACHEV, General Secretary of the USSRCP [through interpreter]: It hasn't yet been confirmed. As of now I'm still using my own teeth.

LEHRER [voice-over]: The serious talk started with a private meeting. Only Mssrs. Gorbachev and Reagan and their interpreters were present. It was supposed to go 15 minutes, but it went on an hour. From there Mssrs. Reagan and Gorbachev joined their advisers for the first formal session, which continued after a lunch break. Then the day ended with another hour in private. White House spokesman Larry Speakes described that meeting this way.

LARRY SPEAKES, White House spokesman: The President suggested that he and the General Secretary walk outside the residence toward Lake Geneva. They did. They walked for about five minutes to a poolhouse, which is located just a few yards away from the shores of the lake, and went inside and sat before an open fireplace in which a fire had been lighted, and they talked there from 3:55 to 4:44, 54 mnutes, the second meeting lasting roughly an hour, privately between the two with only interpreters present.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Speakes said the tone throughout the day was good.

Mr. SPEAKES: The exchanges were good, the opportunity for both to talk with each other concerning these major issues was carried on in an atmosphere which the General Secretary has described as businesslike, which we agree is the appropriate description of it.

LEHRER [voice-over]: The evening was social with President and Mrs. Reagan going to a dinner hosted by the Gorbachevs.

[on camera] There was also an unusual sideshow to the main event. Gorbachev, during the lunch break, went back to the Soviet Mission building in Geneva.

Rev. JESSE JACKSON, civil rights leader: And that delegation of people included former congresswoman from New York, Mrs. Bella Abzug. Here is Jane Alexander, and actress.

LEHRER: There he met for 40 pre-planned minutes with Jesse Jackson, the American political and civil rights leader. Jackson delivered petitions from American peace groups and asked about the treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union, among other things. It was there Gorbachev gave his first impression of Mr. Reagan, which came in response to a question from NewsHour reporter Jeff Goldman.

Gen. Sec. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: We had a very calm, businesslike, pleasant talk. It had just started. Therefore, I wouldn't tell you anything.

LEHRER: The first ladies of the United States and the Soviet Union also met today for the first time. Mrs. Reagan and Mrs. Gorbachev had tea together, Mrs. Reagan was the host. Our report is from Tim Sebastion of Visnews.

TIM SEBASTION (Visnews) [voice-over]: Mrs. Reagan, as a former Hollywood actress, is used to the limelight and she must find it hard to believe that someone from the Soviet Russia should be competing with her in camera sense and publicity skills. Eventually, though, the publicity men brought the two of them together. Mrs. Gorbachev, who has earlier surprised people by wearing the same clothes as yesterday, had changed for the visit and, if they really were rivals, Mrs. Reagan didn't show it. In fact, of course, the summit atmosphere means that both women would want to get on like their husbands seem to be.

LEHRER: Day two for Mssrs. Reagan and Gorbachev begins at 10 o'clock in the morning. Mr. Gorbachev plays host for day two of the talks. Robin?

MacNEIL: In this country a Texas jury today ordered Texaco to pay a record $10.5 billion in damages to Pennzoil. It was the largest award ever made in a corporate dispute, and arose from the takeover of Getty Oil by Texaco last year. Pennzoil claimed it had a prior contract to take over Getty itslef, and the state district court in Houston found that Texaco had illegally induced Getty to breach it. The takeover made Texaco the nation's second-largest oil company and doubled its oil land gas reserves. Texaco immediately said today it would appeal.

In Washington a committee of the Republican-controlled Senate took the unusual step of turning down a Reagan nominee. He is Edward A. Curran, nominated to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Senate Labor and Human Resources Committee reached a tie of eight votes to eight, and sent the nomination back to the White House. Democrats claimed that Curran was unqualified and had a credibility problem with the committee. The lone Republican voting against the nomination was Robert Stafford of Vermont. He spoke with our reporter, Keenan Block.

Sen. ROBERT STAFFORD, (R) Vermont: I don't like, in fact I very much dislike having to oppose the White House on an appointment that's been sent up here by the President, but I felt my conscience required me in this case to oppose Mr. Curran's nomination. And I told him some time ago that I would have to do it. I did so for two or three reasons; one was that I thought that Mr. Curran did a very poor job when he headed up the National Institute of Education. Another was that I considered his academic background inadequate for this particular sort of responsibility. And, finally, there was a widespread feeling in the academic community around the country, and especially in my own part of it, in New England, that he was not the sort of person that we had in mind when this position was created.

MacNEIL: In other overseas news, Israeli jet fighters shot down two Syrian jets today in a dogfight over Lebanon. The Israeli military command said the Israeli F-15s were on a routine patrol over eastern Lebanon when two Syrian MiG-23s tried to intercept them. They were shot down with air-to-air missiles and the Israeli planes returned safely. Syria said its planes had drive off Israeli planes which tried to violate Syrian airspace, but did not mention losses. It was the first Israeli-Syrian air crash in three years.

Terry Waite, the British hostage negotiator, returned to Beirut saying he had very important things to tell the kidnappers of four Americans. Returning from London, where he met U.S. officials, Waite said he's hopeful that progress can be made.

In Genoa, an Italian prosecutor said he's issued arrest warrants for PLO official Mohammed Abbas and several aids, charging them with the murder and kidnapping in the Achille Lauro hijacking. Abbas is the man Washington accuses of masterminding the incident. The prosecutor, Luigi Carli, also said one of the four accused hijackers sentenced yesterday on arms offenses had admitted killing Leon Klinghoffer, the partially crippled elderly American who was shot and thrown overboard.

That's our news summary. Coming up from Geneva, extended coverage of Jesse Jackson's unexpected meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev, and Jim Lehrer analyzes the first day of the summit with former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Malcolm Toon, and an official Soviet observer, Sergei Plekhanov. Then our Kansas City essayist Jim Fisher has a different perspective on the sumit. We have a newsmaker interview with Gatsha Buthelezi, chief of South Africa's six million Zulus, and a documentary report on the crisis in Tennessee prisons. Peace Petition

LEHRER: There was the walk to the poolhouse and four hours of Gorbachev-Reagan conversation on this, the first day of the summit meeting here in Geneva. There was also a mini-summit of sorts between Gorbachev and U.S. political and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. It happened during Gorbachev's lunch break at the Soviet Mission.

Rev. JACKSON: Our profound thanks to you for taking time out of this busy summit session to hear our plea for peace.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Jackson's plea included a proposal to end all nuclear testing.

Rev. JACKSON: We are concerned that there be a halt to nuclear testing. The comprehensive nuclear test ban is a result of this meeting, it is clear to us that the cost and the danger and the likelihood of nuclear war is of such that it is the pre-eminent issue of this hour.

Sec. Gen. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: What you have been saying here, that you are, as representatives of U.S. citizens are interested in, that is, preventing nuclear war, totally coincides with our own views and is the basis of our policy. This is the base of our proposals here in Geneva, and we shall persist on them and we shall conduct this correct line as we [unintelligible]. And we also believe or hope that the United States will work with us together.

LEHRER [voice-over]: In addition to his plea for peace, Jackson's agenda included the touchy subject of human rights for Soviet Jews.

Rev. JACKSON: There is a great sense of anxiety by many American people about the plight of Soviet Jews, and we certainly hope that one of the byproducts of this historic session be the elimination of those tensions because they will go a long ways toward establishing the bonds of mutual trust.

LEHRER [voice-over]: That prompted this response from Gorbachev.

Sec. Gen. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: We would like to say that Jews are a part of the Soviet people. They are a fine people. They contribute a lot to the cause of disarmament. They are a very talented people, and they are very valued in the Soviet Union. Therefore, the problem, the so-called problem of Jews in the Soviet Union does not exist. Perhaps this problem exists only with those who would like to mar the relations with us.

LEHRER [voice-over]: Gorbachev then made what amounted to his own play for greater understanding between the people of the superpowers.

Sec. Gen. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: We should get acquainted with each other. As to our system, we are committed to our system which was born of the October Revolution which liberated us from our subjugation to capitalism, which liberated us from exploiters. We did away with those vestiges of a capitalist world. The people in the Soviet Union support our socialist system. You might have other views; this is your right. We might discuss it. I would like to say once again that we are for open doors and we welcome the opportunity for everyone, including the U.S. citizens, to travel to the Soviet Union, to get acquainted with the Soviet people and even get married. Why not? I'd like to say that I highly appreciate our discussion here and I understand your noble motives. You are concerned for the situation, and you are concerned that all be based base our policy on that voice. We -- by the way, I can tell you that whenever a Soviet Russian and American citizens meet, it is always basically easy-going and sympathetic atmosphere. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Americans and Soviets are very much alike. Well, at any rate, we are big nations, we are straightforward and open nations, and whoever has been to the Soviet Union knows this fact. And believe me, this is not propaganda.

LEHRER [voice-over]: The session concluded with a gift to Mrs. Gorbachev, an embroidered section of the peace ribbon used in an anti-war protest at the Pentagon last spring, and a presentation of petitions urging both leaders to work for peace.

Sec. Gen. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: How many hopes you got here?

Rev. JACKSON: A million and a half.

Sec. Gen. GORBACHEV [through interpreter]: Well, if we consider that around 1.5 million are represented here, you have friends and family members and those are millions upon millions. Behind Closed Doors

LEHRER: We look at the day's summit events now with an American and a Russian. The American is Malcolm Toon, the retired career diplomat and Soviet expert who served as U.S. ambassador to Moscow from 1976 to 1979. The Russia is Sergei Plekhanov, the head of political and social studies at the USA-Canada Institute in Moscow, the Soviet government's official think tank.

Mr. Ambassador, first, what do you make of Gorbachev's giving Jackson that much time and attention on a day like this?

MALCOLM TOON: Well, Jim, there are two aspects to this problem, this queston, the Jesse Jackson aspect and the Gorbachev aspect. Let me speak to the Jesse Jackson aspect. I admire Jesse Jackson in some respects. In other respects I think he's impossible. And I think his behavior and performance today would put him in the latter category. It seems to me that one of the -- he may not have violated the Logan Act, which, as you know, prevents negotiations by private American citizens with foreign governments; he certainly was practicing private diplomacy, and I think that's something that a private American citizen should not do. It just complicates the life of any government. Now, Gorbachev, when he responded to Jackson's plea on behalf of Soviet Jewry, I think certainly was disingenuous and I think came close to almost a blatant lie when he told the audience that he felt that Soviet Jews lived the same sort of life as any other Soviet citizen. So this is simply not true. And the evidence that this is not true is incontrovertible. It is very difficult for the average Soviet Jew to practice his religion, to carry out his religious rituals the way he's supposed to do in accordance with the precepts of his religion because, as you know, synagogues are few and far between, rabbis can't even be trained on Soviet soil, and material that they need to carry out their rituals is often confiscated at the border, and in case it's difficult to find. So that I think the average plight of the Soviet Jew is much worse than Mr. Gorbachev described. Secondly, as you know, there are probably a million Jews who want to leave the Soviet Union, and that in itself seems to me to belie what Mr. Gorbachev said, that the average Jew is perfectly happy with his lot there. And when a Soviet Jew tries to leave the Soviet Union, files application for formal exit, then he loses his job, and while he's walking around idle and so forth he's arrested for parasitism.

LEHRER: What's parasitism?

Amb. TOON: He's considered a parasite. He's arrested and put in jail. And for that reason I think it should be brought to the attention of the audience that the plight of the Soviet Jew is not as described by Mr. Gorbachev.

LEHRER: Mr. Plekhanov?

SERGEI PLEKHANOV: Well, I think Ambassador Toon, with all due respect to him as a distinguished American political figure, has painted a very distorted picture of the situation of Soviet Jews. I think that there has been so many cliches around and you people here have been quite comfortable with those cliches. And, you know, for me to even begin to penetrate that curtain of cliches in a couple of minutes' time would be impossible.

LEHRER: Let's just go through the specifics. You heard what the ambassador said. What about the specific points that he made?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: Well, in the first place, the religious rights. I think there is an enormous obfuscation here because you refer to Jews as not just an ethnic group but also a religious group. Now, we understand we look on the Jews as, a) one of the ethnic groups in the Soviet Union. So --

LEHRER: So when Mr. Gorbachev was talking about the Jews in the Soviet Union, he meant them as an ethnic group and not as a religious group?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: Yes. He was referring to them as an ethnic group, which may or may not have -- some members of which may be religious; others may be non-believers. Ambassador Toon was describing the situation as if every Jew in the Soviet Union is a fervent believer in God, while I know, from my knowledge, that most of the Jews in the Soviet Union are atheists. In fact, very many of them are members of the Communist Party and in general Jews in the Soviet Union occupy very prominent positions in Soviet society. In fact, I think that the record of the Soviet government in overcoming the vestiges of discrimination against Jews, a very real discrimination that existed in old Russia when, you know, the Jews lived beyond the pale, they couldn't enter -- go to universities, they couldn't get good jobs. Most of them were blue-collar workers. What the Soviet government has done for the Jews in Russia, now in the Soviet Union, I think is a very impressive record.

LEHRER: Are you all talking about the same world, Mr. Ambassador?

Amb. TOON: Doesn't seem that way. We obviously disagree, but I think the evidence, submitted primarily by Jews themselves in the Soviet Union and those that have left, simply doesn't accord with what Mr. Plekhanov says. May I say a word about Gorbachev's treatment of the whole question of Jackson's appearance? I think you can't fault Gorbachev for doing this. I think Mr. Reagan, for example, if he'd been faced with the possibility of receiving the leader of the opposition in the Soviet Union -- when and if there is one -- would have taken advantage of that opportunity. So he can't be faulted for that. I think it can be argued that he perhaps went beyond the bounds of the ban on speaking outside the precincts of the conference when he endorsed Jackson's plea for an all-out test ban, comprehensive test ban, and abolition of SDI. I think that perhaps can be argued to be somewhat in violation --

LEHRER: Violating the news blackout? Do you see it that way?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: No. In the first place, Mr. Speakes spoke about that a few hours ago and he denied -- I mean, he just brushed aside suggestions that Mr. Gorbachev's talking to Mr. Jackson and other peace activists from the United States was in any way inconsistent with the understanding that there is there. And there is one more important point. It was not only Mr. Gorbachev that the U.S. peace activists addressed with their plea. They also addressed President Reagan. President Reagan chose not to receive them. It was, I believe, a deputy secretary for--

LEHRER: Deputy assistant secretary of state. that's right.

Mr. PLEKHANOV: Deputy assistant secretary of state who received them, so it was not a unilateral gesture directed at the Soviet Union.

LEHRER: Do you think that Mr. Gorbachev decided to receive Jesse Jackson, though, as an attempt to embarrass Mr. Reagan --

Amb. TOON: Of course --

LEHRER: -- for not having seen him himself?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: No, and I don't think that Mr. Reagan sees it this way. You see, it was a unique thing. A million and a half signatures, petitions from the United States, about 50 peace activists from the United States who have traveled all the way here in order to plead for peace addressing the leaders of the two countries. I think it's a very significant event. And it's quite natural that Mr. Gorbachev chose to speak to those people and to receive their plea. I don't see anything wrong with it, whatsoever, and the important thing is that the Reagan team here in Geneva doesn't see anything wrong with it.

Amb. TOON: Well, I don't see necessarily anything wrong in it on the part of Mr. Gorbachev, but certainly he could see considerable profit, it seems to me, in receiving warmly one of the harshest critics of Mr. Reagan's foreign policy.

LEHRER: What about just the simple PR thing? I remember Speakes was asked today at the briefing by American reporters, "Hey, look, hasn't Gorbachev gotten himself on all the nightly news programs in America tonight when there is a blackout on news, by doing this very thing?" Of course he got himself on our program, just extensively here for five minutes. Is that -- is that what's going on here, Mr. Plekhanov?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: There was no blackout on any news about the summit. It was decided by both sides that details of a negotiation, the course of negotiations, whatever is discussed between the two leaders, should not be disclosed to the public. And the contents of Mr. Gorbachev's conversation with the U.S. peace activists did not go beyond that. I mean, they didn't really go into that.

LEHRER: We don't know what these two men talked about today, the two men meaning Gorbachev and Reagan, talked about today. But they did have their two hours of privacy. What is that -- does that say anything to you, Ambassador Toon?

Amb. TOON: Well, it could be an encouraging sign. Certainly it was in January when Mr. Shultz met with Mr. Gromyko. They had the same sort of blackout. And, as you know, Gromyko and Shultz arrived at an agreement, to the surprise, I think, of a good many people. I don't know whether --

LEHRER: You mean on --

Amb. TOON: On setting up and resuming the arms control talks in Geneva.

LEHRER: Right.

Amb. TOON: And I don't know whether we should interpret this, read this as a similarly optimistic sign. I think that -- my own feeling is that both sides see considerable advantage to not let the conference fail. On the other hand, it seems to me that if you want to have a resounding success from this conference, then you've got to have a good deal more flexibility, frankly, on the part of both sides, if that is a viable option. My own feeling is that you'll probably wind up with something in between, with both sides agreeing to meet again, perhaps, and perhaps they will approve some, what I would call confetti agreements -- important, but not the sort of thing that should command the attention of people like Gorbachev and Reagan.

LEHRER: Do you think we should read anything special into the fact that they spent two hours in private today?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: I think it was a good thing that they spent more than they planned, but it's too early to tell. The dialogue, I think, is a difficult one. There is willingness on both sides to talk frankly and in a businesslike manner. But just considering the difference between the positions of the two sides --

LEHRER: But you get the feeling that this was the significant fact of this day, that they spent two hours in private, they walked to the poolhouse, they sat down at the fireplace that just happened to accidentally be on, and, as Speakes later said at a briefing, is one of those that just is always on 24 hours a day, of course, as a joke, obviously. But does that not now create an expectation -- "Oh, my goodness, these two guys are really hitting it off and something really significant may happen?"

Amb. TOON: I think if they had not had extended private talks, then I think the assumption would have been that the conference was heading for a failure. But I tend to agree with my Soviet colleague, that it's too early to tell whether in fact something big and substantial is going to come out of this.

LEHRER: And you agree that the privacy thing is not that big a deal?

Mr. PLEKHANOV: We'll have to wait and see.

LEHRER: There has been already much discussion about whether or not there is going to be a joint statement here or whether or not the two of them are just going to go away on Thursday morning, each one of them giving their own assumptions. The question about having private talks was, when there's nobody else there, is there a danger that one of them may hear something one way and the other one might hear it another and you create even a larger problem, Mr. Ambassador?

Amb. TOON: Well, that certainly has happened in the past. I can recall when President Eisenhower had his stroll in Camp David with Khrushchev. Regrettably he took only a Soviet interpreter, and so we never really knew what happened between the two --

LEHRER: You mean Eisenhower's recollections were different than Khrushchev's?

Amb. TOON: According to the Soviets, President Eisenhower agreed with Khrushchev when Khrushchev said that Berlin is an unfortunate problem, an unfortunate situation. And that was construed by some people that Eisenhower agreed that this was abnormal situation and we should resolve it. And that caused us a good many problems. Now, I hope that that sort of misunderstanding will not arise from this sort of thing. I hope that we have adequate records on both sides. It depends, really, on whether there was simultaneous interpretation or not. If there's simultaneous translation there is no possibility of having any adequate record. But if it was consecutive translation then the interpreters could take good notes and you'd have good records.

LEHRER: Yeah. What do you think? Are you --

Mr. PLEKHANOV: I don't think that we should be really afraid of misunderstandings or widely different misinterpretations of those things. They have good interpreters and they have their delegations quite near them. And --

Amb. TOON: They weren't there.

Mr. PLEKHANOV: Well, they weren't there when they were in private, but they are meeting, too, and they are discussing things.

LEHRER: Okay. And they of course begin again tomorrow. There are two sessions tomorrow and the plan is for it to be over tomorrow night, unless there are other developments. And we shall see what they are. Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Plekhanov, thank you both for being with us.

Mr. PLEKHANOV: Thank you, Jim.

LEHRER: Robin? Missouri: A View From A Launch Site

MacNEIL: And we round off our special summit coverage tonight with an essay by Jim Fisher, columnist with the Kansas City Times.

JIM FISHER [voice-over]: Late fall has come to western Missouri. The burst of Indian summer color has faded. With the leaves mostly gone we can see what's really here. Oh, there's a soybean field or two still waiting for the combines. The yellow school buses still deliver their precious cargos, and folks shop on a rainy day. And nuclear weapons are poised beneath the earth.

Here you can get a real idea of what Mr. Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev are talking about in Geneva this week. On back roads there are little clearings in the brush or open places in pastures. Those places are marked with sterile, coated signs: M-4, M-11 or F-1. White letters on a nice blue background. The signs mark Minuteman missile sites, rockets aimed at the Soviet Union, each with several warheads, warheads big enough to vaporize a city the size of St. Louis. Warheads, rockets, cities; the simple equation.

There are 150 such sites in western Missouri, and surely in some equally bucolic part of Mother Russia, similar and equally effective weapons are aimed at the United States. That means we're all targets in a nuclear war. [on camera] But here you can almost feel it, close up. This is what the summit is really all about, to us, the people who read the papers and watch the televisions or who just want to get along.

[voice-over] A year ago, members of a peace group went over one of the fences and into one of the missile sites. They carried a jackhammer. Members of that group got prison sentences ranging from eight to 18 years. So here in western Missouri you don't fool with Minuteman sites. But really, people don't pay the sites that much mind. The Minutemen are just here. People are used to them. They have been here a quarter of a century.

Jim Houx remembers when they came.

Do you think people ever think about what's really inside those things?

JIM HOUX: I don't think very many do. We of course are aware that we're a prime target here if nuclear war should break out. But I suppose you wouldn't be much better off in Kansas City.

FISHER [voice-over]: Most Missourians don't expect this summit or even several summits will mean the end of the missiles. They don't expect that much, and the missiles remain, poised beneath the earth, with their letters and numbers and white paint on a blue background.

Odd how numbers and letters are used today. The terror now isn't the Gatling guns or the grand-slam bombs or the Big Bertha artillery pieces. Now it's just simple letters and numbers, like M-16 or AK-47 rifles or T-72 or M-60 tanks, or C-4, a terrorist's plastic explosive. Or numbers in white letters on a blue sign on a xMDissouri background marked simply M-4.

MacNEIL: James Fisher. Still to come on the NewsHour, a newsmaker interview with the chief of South Africa's biggest tribe, Gatsha Buthelezi, and a documentary on the overcrowding crisis in Tennessee prisons. Another Voice: Gatsha Buthelezi

MacNEIL: Our next focus is South Africa. Today it was disclosed that 186 U.S. companies doing business with South Africa have urged Prime Minister Botha to move forward with reforms. A message sent by the companies urged him to start by lifting restrictions on black schools. The State Department welcomed the companies' intervention. Charlayne Hunter-Gault has a different perspective on the mounting pressure for reform in South Africa. Charlayne?

CHARLAYNE HUNTER-GAULT: Robin, inside South Africa the violence continued across the country today. Five blacks were killed there, four in confrontations with police. The aim of many of the rioters, along with the main anti-apartheid guerrilla group, the outlawed African National Congress, has been to make South Africa ungovernable through violent acts that weaken the state security forces. But not all black leaders inside South Africa support such a strategy. Among them, Gatsha Buthelezi, hereditary leader of the Zulus, the country's largest ethnic group. Chief Buthelezi's base is Kwazulu, one of 10 sprawling government-created separate black homelands. He is also head of his own political movement, Inkatha, one of South Africa's largest legal black organizations. I asked Chief Buthelezi how much real influence he has today, given the escalating violence in black townships.

GATSHA BUTHELEZI: In the first place, there are two divisions amongst blacks. There are those who will say they are going to seize power in South Africa through revolutionary means, and I belong to the second category that says that I'm prepared to negotiate a future. But I would also go further to say that the issue of whether time for talking is past or not is often mishandled in the sense that if the question is put like that, it implies that violence itself has not been tried and now its time has come, whereas in point of fact our brothers in the [unintelligible] of ANC have been trying violence. It has not succeeded.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, then, what's the answer?

Chief BUTHELEZI: I believe myself that we are on a good path, you know, if we pursue non-violence, because I believe that because of economic interdependence between black and white in South Africa I think that blacks have developed a bargaining power in the area of the economy of the country, which can in fact become very integral to bargaining. I believe that black worker power and also consumer power can be used effectively, either to force whites to come to the conference table or to their knees. So I don't think that I've abandoned the struggle in the area of non-violence, because I don't think that it has failed. If people lose lives and lose property and there are no returns, then they are bound to see that that kind of strategy is not the kind of strategy they should pursue. So that I think that this thing must be seen in its own correct perspective, because there are various levels of violence. It's not just a level of violence where black and white, in effect, are fighting. In fact, very few whites lives are lost, and most of the people that have died have died either because they were killed by the police, because they use these brutal methods in dealing with black people, and secondly, many black people have lost lives because other black people killed them. People have been killed for reasons that have nothing whatsoever to do with the struggle, which have been based on political one-upmanship, if I may put it like that. Where people are competing for power.

HUNTER-GAULT: And you're saying apartheid has nothing to do with that, or the South African government has nothing to do with that?

Chief BUTHELEZI: Basically I would say that there are two levels. Apartheid has a lot to do with what is going on in South Africa, the violence, too. In the final instance they are responsible for it. But having said so, I think that -- I try to be analytical, and I would say that therefore there is also a violence which has nothing to do with what I call -- with apartheid, to where blacks slay other blacks for political reasons because of the one-upmanship game, as I say.

HUNTER-GAULT: Well, you said the other day that you felt black politics would destroy South Africa unless black leaders could get together. Just how far apart are they?

Chief BUTHELEZI: These brothers of mine are prepared to talk to -- even to Afrikaners, even to members of the National Party, and yet they're not prepared to talk to me, who is their black brother. I mean, it boggles my mind. That there are people, for instance, who would say, you know, taking their cue from either [unintelligible] of ANC or from some UDF patrons in South Africa. They would say, like Allan Boezak, who make it a habit to lambast me for no rhyme or reason. They would say of me, oh, I'm a flunky of the government. You know, if they don't accept the logic of my case, then they try to discredit me before the American public by denigrating me.

HUNTER-GAULT: Do you see this kind of internecine struggle getting worse?

Chief BUTHELEZI: I see it as getting worse, and what bothers me, my sister, is that it worries me because it seems to be a political disease which blights the whole of southern Africa.

HUNTER-GAULT: In the past you've been very critical of economic sanctions and disinvestment, and yet in recent months more and more countries have been doing it, or advocating it. Are they just wrong?

Chief BUTHELEZI: I can understand their position. Now, from the position of these countries I suppose when they see what we've been talking about on their screens, people being killed by the police and so on, brutally, I think that revulsion is inevitable, and that therefore in their desperation to do something, they then want to do something, regardless of what it is. But I think then they should not pretend that they are doing it in the interests of oppressed people, because if it affects oppressed people adversely then it would really be hypocritical to say that they are applying sanctions because they are troubled about the plight of the oppressed in South Africa, because if it worsens the position of the oppressed, then of course it can't be said to be applied in their interests.

HUNTER-GAULT: What's youV r basic attitude toward U.S. policy at this time? Are you basically satisfied with it?

Chief BUTHELEZI: One thing that I think is admirable from my point of view is the fact that it seems to me that President Reagan, for the first time, is trying to wrestle with the prickly nettle of apartheid in the sense that in the 'ast nothing was ever done for blacks in South Africa, because everyone said that, you know, the country is rich enough to do it for blacks. We as black people of South Africa don't get any money which comes from any of the agencies of the United Nations, and no countries help us with any money. And yet our situation is definitely a Third World situation where there are enormous deprivations, enormous backlogs in education, in health, in everything. So therefore I think that, from my point of view, when he applied, for instance, the partial sanctions recently, I thought it was a very good thing, because I think that in view of the feelings in America, he needed to do something to demonstrate the feelings of Americans about apartheid in the first place. But at the same time, he balances this to me admirably when at the same time he steps up humanitarian aid to black people. Because you see you don't help the oppressed by doing something when you are trying to rake the racist regime in Pretoria over the nettles, and in the process pulverize the very victims of apartheid.

HUNTER-GAULT: So many of the assessments we hear today about South Africa's at least immediate future are very gloomy. You even said there was going to be a race war if reforms didn't proceed a lot faster. How do you feel about the immediate future?

Chief BUTHELEZI: Well, my prognosis for the immediate future is that the South African situation must be accepted by all of us as an area of very great tension, so that outbreaks of violence on a sporadic basis is the scene that -- is the kind of scenario we must get used to, because as long as the solution has not been found, it should not surprise anyone that in this area of great tension there are these outbursts of violence. That will be the scene for a long time. But I would say that Mr. Botha should be careful, that people should not, you know, lose any hope, you know, because I think that while all of us are very disappointed about the situation now and are very troubled by it, there are those of us who have not abandoned hope that this country can still be salvaged. Packed Prisons

MacNEIL: Finally tonight our focus is back here in the U.S. Prison overcrowding has become a fact of life across the country in recent years. Tougher sentencing laws admit more inmates, but new prison building hasn't kept pace. At the same time the federal courts have insisted that states limit overcrowding. We have a documentary report on one state system that has now reached that limit, the prisons of Tennessee. It's a fascinating political and legal struggle, and Kwame Holman has our report.

KWAME HOLMAN [voice-over]: Thse men are waiting to go to prison. They all have been convicted of crimes; they all have been sentenced. But there is no room for them in the Tennessee prison system, so up to 120 men, men convicted of shoplifting and men convicted of child molesting, have been living together for months in this gymnasium, the gymnasium at the East Tennessee Classification Center. Inmates usually come to this classification center for a short time while awaiting assignment to appropriate prisons. Usually they are put into cells, but even these temporary cells are full.

[interviewing] What's it like living in the gymnasium?

GARY KILGORE: It's all right if you like being around a bunch of crazy people. You have to sit on top of your things because they get stolen.

KENNY PHILLIPS: And then they got people in here that raped their own kids and stuff.

GENE RUCKER: You never know what the next man is thinking, you know. You're living around a bunch of people, you have to be on your p's and q's all the time.

Mr. PHILLIPS: They've had bugs in here, them crabs, what they call them. Had them in here! It's just nasty 'cause everybody's using the same restroom.

DAVID NEWBERRY, prison official: Any time you put that many inmates in one large area with short staff, you know, you can have a potentially explosive situation.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Last month a federal judge stepped in. He ordered the state to stop taking in new prisoners until such overcrowding stopped, until these prisoners-in-waiting could be given cell space. This is not the first time that the Tennessee Department of Corrections has been on the wrong side of the law. The state has been in court for the past 10 years because its prisons have been filled with too many people and not enough vocational and education programs.

Past court actions have made a difference. For example, before the courts acted, this 23-square-foot cell housed two prisoners. Now, for 23 hours a day, it's home to one inmate and assorted cockroaches. The worst kind of overcrowding, as seen in this footage from 1977 and 1982, no longer is allowed to exist, but such court actions also have led to the crowded gymnasium, because the judges have effectively reduced the number of cell spaces available. Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander.

Governor LAMAR ALEXANDER, (R) Tennessee: The federal courts have, in effect, raised our standards and taken away from us 1,400 spaces that we were using over the past few years.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Despite the lack of space, despite another court order demanding that the priso popula Qtion be reduced by the end of the year, the Tennessee prison system has been adding 3.3 prisoners each day. Now that the prison doors have been barred, where will each day's new felons end up?

TERRY ASHE, president, Sheriff's Association: The lighting in here is not very good --

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Many of them are going to county jails.

Sheriff ASHE: There's two state inmates in this cell right here. They're the state's problems. They shouldn't be a local county sheriff's problem.

HOLMAN: And why are you in this institution now?

PRISONER: I'm wanted on charges of armed robbery and parole violation from Arkansas, and I have two armed robbery charges here, escape and attempted escape.

Sheriff ASHE: The county jails just are not equipped to handle a man with this much expertise on the other side of the law.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: According to Sheriff Terry Ashe, county jails don't have the necessary programs or facilities to house long-term prisoners. Adding state prisoners to their usual load of local offenders and drunk drivers is making the county jails as crowded as the state prisons.

Sheriff ASHE: Every county jail, probably, in the state of Tennessee is going to be overcrowded by December 31st. Every sheriff in the state of Tennessee in six months will probably be under a federal mandate just like the state has. Because of the overcrowding situation, we're having to spend a lot of time going through our jail books every day and trying to get the people out of jail who really don't need to be here. So we're taking those people to court, asking the judges to maybe release them on their own recognizance or whatever, to try to get them out of the jail. We're effecting ourselves as parole officers and we're expecting ourselves to be judge and jury a lot of times now, just trying to ease the overcrowding problem.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The effects of the state's overcrowding problems now are being felt at the local level, so there is statewide pressure to weed out the root causes of the overcrowding, to find a long-term solution. Sheriff Ashe's legislator is State Senator Robert Rochelle. He says politicians planted the seeds of their own destruction.

ROBERT ROCHELLE, (D) State Senator: Democratic and Republican legislators and governors have played the macho game over the years. In the '70s it became popular to put long sentences on people. That's a valid policy decision to make. Where we've been having problems in the past is that we make that decision without knowing how much it's going to cost and without providing the funding for it.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Governor Alexander continued that tradition. He requested the legislation that effectively increased sentences and required that certain capital offenders serve all their time in maximum security cells. Such prisoners would not be allowed probation or sentence reductions for good behavior. Under these rules, the number of prisoners was increasing at a rate that would have filled a new prison every six months. But the money was not budgeted for all those new facilities. Attorney Gordon Bonnyman has been fighting the state prison system in court for 10 years.

GORDON BONNYMAN, attorney: Well, I think it's like giving somebody who's a compulsive spender a Mastercard or a Visa card, and that's what we did 10 years ago and six years ago when we passed these very long sentencing laws and changed parole eligibility.

HOLMAN: And now?

Mr. BONNYMAN: And now the chickens are coming home to roost. The bill, the Mastercard bill, is out there in the mailbox.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The eventual expense of housing more prisoners wasn't the only consideration that was ignored. Also not considered was the effect of the new laws on prisoners. Hugh Lee, who killed his wife and wounded her lover, was told he'd have to serve 25 years before he would be eligible for parole.

HUGH LEE, model prisoner: There is no incentive for a Class X prisoner to be good because he's going to do the same amount of time no matter what. They look around and they say, you know, when am I going home? When is somebody going to leave? When are we going to see a light at the end of the tunnel? And they don't see that, So they're hopeless, and when you put -- when you take hope away from an individual it's dangerous, but when you take hope away from a group of people, then you really have problems.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The problems came in the form of riots last summer. The question being asked is, why didn't politicians predict the impact of their law and order legislation?

[interviewing] When you proposed those tougher sentencing laws, couldn't you have foreseen that it would result in prison overcrowding?

Gov. ALEXANDER: Well, if we'd been perfect foreseers, we wouldn't have a problem. We would have built more prisons. We would have kept more of the short-term prisoners in the local jails, and when we passed our sentencing laws we would not have lengthened sentences. So if we had been able to see the future perfectly we would not have this problem. But we weren't the only ones who guessed wrong. There are 36 states under court order because of overcrowding.

Gov. ALEXANDER [Nov. 5, 1985]: Tennessee has a prison problem that must be solved right here, right now. State laws and policies must change.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Now politicians from the governor on down think it is time for a change. Governor Alexander called a special session of the Tennessee legislature and said that states no longer can afford to mortgage their futures to build more prisons. Alexander asked the legislature to consider alternatives to lengthy sentences.

Gov. ALEXANDER: We would put the prison terms back the way they were. You suggested more parole officers, punishing non-violent offenders locally, thoroughly reviewing all sentencing laws. That's a part of the proposal.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: There used to be what was termed a liberal position on corrections and a conservative position. Now there seems to be only a pragmatic financial position.

Gov. ALEXANDER: We have a management job and the toughest decisions in a management job in government are setting limits. And we have to set some limits on how many people we're going to lock up in $51-a-day state prisons.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The governor and the legislature do have one more option to consider. A private corporation has offered to buy and run the entire state prison system. Tom Beasley of the Corrections Corporation of America seems to be offering the state a prison utopia.

TOM BEASLEY, prison entrepreneur: We are guaranteeing by contract to provide better bed space, better recreation, better work programs, better education programs, better training for the employees than 99 of the public sector.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Corrections Corporation of America does run this prison facility in Chattanooga, but critics point out that CCA never has run a maximum security facility, and they worry that contracting out the prison system only mortgages future state budgets. Ultimately, they say, the state will have to pay for all the facilities built by a private company.

Sen. ROCHELLE: It's so like a fella that comes up and tells you he's going to sell you a tractor that you can convert into an automobile. For the first 15 minutes that sounds wonderful. It's that second 15 minutes when you start asking, how you going to do it, how's it going to work? That's when the doubts start arising.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: Prison guards and civil libertarians have threatened lawsuits if CCA does get the prison contract, but there is a lot of political support for at least giving CCA the job of building and running the two new prisons needed to replace this old one. But to Gordon Bonnyman, all such talk is premature. He says nobody can run the prison successfully until the sentencing laws are changed.

Mr. BONNYMAN: Arguing about whether you've got a private contractor or public officials running the system is a little bit like arguing about who's the engineer when the train is already headed off the side of the trestle. The system is out of control, and it's out of control for reasons that have to do with the way our sentencing laws are written, the way our parole has worked, the way our classification system has been restricted by statute. Those are things over which no manager is going to have control, regardless of whether he's working for a private corporation or working for the state.

HOLMAN [voice-over]: The ball now is in the Tennessee state legislature's court. The politicians will have to find some solution to reduce the number of inmates by a court-ordered deadline of December 31st. Whether they will also decide on a long-term solution is questionable. Good corrections programs, they say, don't translate into votes or ratings.

Gov. ALEXANDER: There is no political gain in corrections. The people of the state aren't that interested in it, and I don't remember a speech I've made to the General Assembly that was carried by fewer television stations. You've got to persuade people to spend money on something they don't want to spend money on, to meet standards they don't agree with for the benefit of people they're mad at.

MacNEIL: Now tonight's Lurie cartoon, which looks at Mikhail Gorbachev's meeting with Jesse Jackson.

[Ranon Lurie cartoon -- Gorbachev takes ladder from high peak where Reagan stands to join Jesse Jackson on a lesser peak and fly the banner of public relations.]

Once again the main stories of the day. In Geneva, President Reagan and Secretary Gorbachev held unexpectedly long private meetings but imposed a news blackout on what was said. The Reverend Jesse Jackson met Gorbachev for 45 minutes. A Republican-controlled committee of the Senate rejected President Reagan's nominee as head of the humanities agency. A Houston court ordered Texaco to pay Pennzoil over $10 billion in damages for spoiling a merger. Good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin. We'll see you tomorrow night from Geneva and elsewhere. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.