Word: apartheid
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Klerk, a fourth-generation Afrikaner and hence a beneficiary of white privilege under the old system, change has meant revoking the legacy of his forebears. He vehemently denies, however, that he has done so, and he claims that his father, who died in 1979 after serving in three apartheid-enforcing governments, ''would agree with me today.'' Still, De Klerk was not a born reformer. During his rise through the ranks of the National Party, he allied himself with its verkrampte, or ''closed- minded conservative,'' camp. He was a pragmatic politician, eager to press the flesh and do the deal...
...recourse when the other side would not listen. One day in 1986 he sat down and wrote a letter to the government proposing a dialogue on the nation's future. This gesture received a secret but surprisingly willing response from President P.W. Botha, a hard-liner on apartheid who nonetheless had begun to sense his country's escalating dilemma. Apartheid was collapsing of its own inherent absurdity. Moreover, the outlawed A.N.C.'s 1984 call to make South Africa ''ungovernable'' had been answered by a surge of black demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience. To put down such unrest, the government...
...hardly going to bring domestic peace and renewed economic growth. De Klerk also had a natural interest in his own political future. In 1985 he had asked two consultants what he should do to succeed Botha; they both told him to soften his image on the necessity of preserving apartheid. This, cautiously, he began to do. Upon taking office, De Klerk announced, ''Our goal is a totally changed South Africa.'' In December 1989 he convened a historic bosberaad, or bush council, at which he won his Cabinet's authorization to lift the government's ban on the A.N.C...
...take the lead. MANDELA: I found Mr. De Klerk very positive, very bright, very confident of himself, and ready to accommodate the views I expressed. The National Party had announced a ((reform)) program in which they talked about ''group rights.'' I said to him, ''Look, this will introduce apartheid through the back door.'' He replied, ''Well, if you don't like it, then we'll scrap it.'' I smuggled a message to the A.N.C. leadership in Zambia and said, ''I think we can do business with this man.'' I did not expect that he was going to be so positive...
...only exception where the melting pot works. In the rest of the world, nation-states that have clear majorities of one ethnic group within the country have been the pattern. So I say separate development was morally justifiable if you look at it as a constitutional option. When apartheid started, the colonial powers weren't worried about black political rights at all. In America racial discrimination was thriving. MANDELA: The government did not want any form of demonstration from blacks, no matter how disciplined, how peaceful. Any demonstration was regarded as a declaration of war against white supremacy. DE KLERK...