Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Freedom has come for Mandela, and it may be nearing for all blacks who long to rule in their own land. But the youth are emerging as apartheid's saddest and potentially most dangerous legacy: as many as 5 million young people, from their early 30s down to perhaps 10, mostly school dropouts who are unable to get jobs and unprepared to make constructive contributions to society. They are the deprived, activists, layabouts or thieves. They live in bleak urban townships, where the standard four-room house shelters an average of 10 people. They are often murderous supporters of rival...
...they called themselves, battled the state's security forces for control of the townships, rooted out informers and sellouts, and spearheaded worker stay-aways and consumer boycotts. It was their militancy and surging growth, as much as anything else, that finally convinced the white government in Pretoria that apartheid's days were numbered...
...Apartheid, by robbing black community and family life of all authority and cohesion, is to blame. But so, to some extent, is the type of fight that blacks chose to wage against white oppression. For years parents have been standing back while their children moved to the front trenches of the freedom struggle...
Blacks will have the vote and a right to equal opportunity. The new political system will presumably be a democracy. The black middle class of entrepreneurs, lawyers and other professionals that has sprung up under apartheid will grow. There is a reasonable chance for racial harmony, since even the most militant blacks accept the right of whites to be fellow South Africans...
...Worse, the mass-action campaign includes attacks on black municipal councilors and black policemen -- part of apartheid's crumbling system -- that encourage the perpetuation of black-against-black violence. In 1990 there were more than 400 recorded attacks on black councilors and policemen, resulting in at least 25 deaths. How will the young react when black politicians and police are representing a black government...