Word: africa
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Cuba? If so, since when, and by how much? What exactly was the Soviet brigade doing in Cuba? Was it merely training Cubans, or did it have a combat role? Did its presence represent a Soviet gesture to support Castro's maintenance of 40,000 Cuban soldiers in Africa? Was it guarding Soviet information-gathering installations that eavesdropped on the U.S.? And if U.S. intelligence did not know the answers to any or all of these questions, why could it not find...
...change in Angolan policy could shift the balance of power in southern Africa. Neto had recently shown a growing independence from Moscow and some openness to the West, backing deals with Gulf Oil and Texaco and seeking to establish diplomatic relations with Washington...
...squadron of South African Impala jets thundered through the skies over the new Independence Stadium in Thohoyandou, as tribal dancers raised clouds of red dust with their rhythmic exhortations to ancestral spirits. At the stroke of midnight, South Africa's top-hatted President Marais Viljoen strode down a red carpet to announce a "great historic event, the birth of a new state." At his side stood Chief Patrick Mphephu, 54, a small, diffident man with a fifth-grade education, who was soon to become the Executive President of the Republic of Venda, a Delaware-sized region tucked...
...most outside observers, that dream seemed more like a mirage. The mango-patch "republic" (pop. 480,000) is unlikely to win recognition from any nation apart from South Africa, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and its fellow black homeland states of Transkei and BophuthaTswana, which obtained "independence" from Pretoria in 1976 and 1977. The fragility of Venda's new status was even reflected in its stage-prop capital, Thohoyandou ("head of the elephant"). Pretoria had hastily fitted out the town for the occasion with a cluster of government buildings, a hotel, a supermarket and the stadium...
...member of that "constellation" of black states envisioned by the late Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd as the keystone to the edifice of apartheid. Enacted into law in 1959, the homelands plan calls for the establishment of ten purportedly independent black states divided along tribal lines and scattered across South Africa. When complete, the scheme would crowd all of the blacks, who make up more than 80% of the South African population, onto a mere 15% of the land. The rest of the country, including most of its mineral wealth and all of its industrial regions, would remain in the hands...