Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Such praise from a South African head of state would, not so long ago, have been unthinkable. For nearly 40 years, Gordimer has spoken out against apartheid, that crazy quilt of laws and restrictions that enabled the white minority to control and suppress the country's black majority. She has done so in her fiction, although subtly and without tub thumping; she portrays the strains of racial divisiveness and oppression by monitoring their effect on individual characters, recognizable lives. As a private citizen, Gordimer has often engaged in more direct opposition to her government's policies...
Speakers at the reception placed emphasis on the importance of continuing sanctions. "It is difficult to bring the house of apartheid down. It might be even more difficult to create an edifice of freedom," said Joey Moikangoa, a former ANC representative to the United Nations...
...Klerk was pulling no punches. In a speech before his governing National Party in the conservative stronghold of Ventersdorp last week, he accused right-wing groups like the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (A.W.B.) of "looking for trouble." Even as he spoke, local A.W.B. extremists who oppose his dismantling of apartheid were doing just that. Hundreds, clad in khaki, marched on the hall where he was appearing and clashed with police in a melee that left at least three dead and 53 injured...
President F.W. de Klerk is often hailed for his boldness in ending apartheid, but South Africans also regard him as a cautious man. Last week he displayed both traits as he appeared to end stonewalling on "Inkathagate," the scandal over disclosures that Pretoria interfered in black politics by secretly funding Inkatha Freedom Party, a rival of the African National Congress. Denying that he had a double agenda, De Klerk nonetheless sidelined two Cabinet members at the center of the doubts about the government's integrity: Defense Minister Magnus Malan and Law and Order Minister Adriaan Vlok. But rather than dismiss...
...disclosures of secrecy and subterfuge undermined De Klerk's credibility at a critical moment. After destroying the pillars of apartheid and persuading the U.S. and other countries to drop their sanctions against South Africa, De Klerk must try to get the A.N.C. and other black groups to the negotiating table to write a new constitution that would extend voting rights to the black majority. "Inkathagate," as the press dubbed the affair, may delay the start of an all-party conference, originally planned as early as September, where the major political groups will decide how to structure negotiations. Use of secret...