July 8, 1991

The African National Congress emerged today from its first national conference inside South Africa in three decades brimming with new confidence and determination to defeat the white-minority Government at the negotiating table. Although it refuses to call itself a political party, the congress progressed in just over five days from a self-described liberation movement to a more mature and focused political organization, displaying a pragmatism that augurs well for talks with the Government.

It was a sorry sight on a glorious summer day. There he was, the imperious Boris Becker, his shoulders slumped and his bowed head leaning against the stanchion of the vacant umpire's chair as another man paraded around the most hallowed of Wimbledon's lawns carrying tennis's most prestigious trophy. "I just didn't have it today. It's as simple as that," Becker said after the first all-German final in the Grand Slam tournament's 114-year history. Becker, a three-time Wimbledon victor, could not remember not "having it" in so important a match.

A year ago, the idea of the "grand bargain" -- radical Soviet political and economic reform in exchange for tens of billions of dollars in Western aid -- would have been dismissed as an insult by the Kremlin and as a waste of money by the White House. Now, the impossible seems at least plausible, and the issue of how much aid should be promised under what conditions may overshadow all others at the London economic summit meeting later this month.

California's big banks are being hit with some big shocks, and the state's slumping economy is just one of them. A Labor Department report issued on Friday, showing that California's unemployment rate surged in June to its highest level in seven years, underscored the difficult economic climate facing the state's four largest banking companies: the BankAmerica Corporation, the Security Pacific Corporation, Wells Fargo & Company and the First Interstate Bancorp.

Gov. Lowell P. Weicker Jr. today ordered all state employees in Connecticut to report back to work beginning Monday, ending the six-day partial government shutdown that he imposed last week but bringing the state no closer to a resolution of the budget impasse that led to the shutdown. Mr. Weicker said he would allow a temporary budget resolution to become law without his signature, thereby restoring all state programs through at least the end of this week.