The remaining seven members of the South African Rugby National Football Union yesterday rejected an ultimatum from the National Sports Council (NSC) to resign, declaring that their en masse resignation would contravene the union's constitution.

But in a move calculated to placate the African National Congress-leaning NSC, the union resolved at its extraordinary meeting to personally communicate its apologies to President Nelson Mandela for its role, however indirect, in the decision of a High Court judge to summon him before the court.

In another move calculated to strengthen its position the union co-opted the four black members who resigned last week back onto its executive. The four men, including the union's senior vice-president, Silas Nkanunu, resigned last week to signal their disgust when former SARFU president Louis Luyt refused to heed an informal vote in calling on him to step down.

Luyt - who was identified as the symbol of Afrikaner obscurantism and who was blamed for the alleged racism, nepotism and malfeasance in the union - decided to resign at the weekend. He telefaxed his resignation to the union on Monday.

The union formally accepted it yesterday, thanking him for his services to rugby. The refusal of the union's remaining executive members to resign surprised most observers yesterday.

The general anticipation was that they would resign, thus satisfying the NSC's formal demand for their resignation, only to be re-elected to their positions at a later meeting. It was not clear last night what the NSC's reaction would be: before Luyt's resignation it had threatened to press ahead with its campaign to isolate South African rugby if the entire executive did not resign.

The union, however, expressed the hope that the NSC would understand that it had to honour its own constitution. Judging from the reaction last night of NSC chief executive office Mvuso Mbebe, the NSC was not unsympathetic to the union's position.

Referring to a scheduled meeting between the union and the NSC today, Mbebe told the Irish Times: "We will listen to what they have to say. Then we will move forward from there."

The union had earlier signalled that it wished to parley and arrive at a settlement by mandating its management committee - to be headed by the white-haired Nkanunu - to negotiate with the NSC.

The ANC yesterday contributed to the creation of an atmosphere congenial to a solution when it called on the NSC and "all rugby-loving South Africans" to save the pending tours of South Africa by Irish, Welsh and English teams, as well as the Tri-Nation series between South Africa, New Zealand and Australia.

The election of a successor to Luyt will take place at a special union meeting in three weeks' time. Nkanunu is a favourite for the position. But Nkanunu has potential challengers: former Springbok captain Morne du Plessis and former provincial rugby player and opposition leader during the apartheid era, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert.

In the prevailing climate, however, the odds would appear to favour Nkanunu, a softly-spoken black man who succeeded NSC president Mluleki George as the union's senior vice president last year.

In a separate development yesterday, Brian van Rooyen, a coloured rugby administrator who unsuccessfully challenged Luyt for the presidency of the Golden Lions Rugby Union, alias the Transvaal Rugby Union, in late 1996, gave said he will try to oust Luyt from the provincial union.

As the richest provincial union, the Golden Lions Rugby Union and its president are powerful players in South African rugby. But, according to Anthony Mackaiser, of the SA Rugby Football Union, Luyt is planning to step down from as president of the Golden Lions next year. To launch a frontal attack on him now may therefore create more problems than it solves.

An IRFU spokesperson yesterday confirmed that contact had been made between the South African National Sports Council and the Union, and that "the indications were that the tour would go ahead unless something unforeseen happens in the next day or two."