Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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That brave repudiation of a regime bent on perpetuating white hegemony in South Africa earned Mandela a lifetime's incarceration, while his jailers pressed on with their megalomaniac construct called grand apartheid. At the same time, his stance just as surely launched South Africa on the road to democracy. Last week the country took an irreversible step forward when black and white political leaders declared that every citizen will be able to vote to choose the government. With that historic agreement, Mandela and South Africa's 28 million blacks will be able to savor the success of their freedom struggle...
...blacks, the long-awaited vote will formally end the humiliation, injustice and injury of the past four decades and complete the dismantling of apartheid, that pervasively dysfunctional experiment in political and social engineering. The balloting will allow the pariah state to regain a place in the community of nations. And the voters will almost certainly reward Mandela's stoic struggle by conferring on him the leadership of his country...
...elections will not usher in a ready-formed New South Africa. Even as most South Africans delight in the prospect of free elections, they are beginning to sense that the immediate future holds much hardship and that the three years of turmoil following De Klerk's decision to dismantle apartheid and release Mandela is a taste of things to come. "The pattern has already been set," warns Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party. "It is going to be turbulent, no matter who is at the helm...
...South Africa may be rich in gold and diamonds. It may again qualify for international aid and may even succeed in luring back foreign investors kept out by sanctions or scared off by violence. But it will still take years of patient reconstruction to undo the damage of the apartheid era and break the cycle of violence. Nor will it be easy to find jobs for a fast-growing work force that cannot be absorbed by a capital-starved economy...
...turn of events, time for the far right is running out. The setting of an election date should significantly strengthen the country's < growing political center. With progress like that, the diehards may be no match for the majority of South Africans, including most whites, who want to put apartheid -- and conflict -- behind them...