Word: boipatong
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...South Africa slips deeper into conflict, it might be traced to a morning in June when President F.W. de Klerk attempted to visit Boipatong, scene of the most recent township massacre. Until then he was often greeted in black communities by chants of "Viva comrade De Klerk!" But in Boipatong angry young men blocked his way and called him a murderer. De Klerk fled in the presidential BMW, consternation written on his face...
...Boipatong furor seems to have shaken De Klerk. His security forces moved with uncharacteristic speed in tracking down the suspected killers. Police commissioner Johannes van der Merwe said the preliminary police investigation showed that "certain residents" of a Zulu migrant-workers' hostel were involved but denied that government forces participated. De Klerk also agreed to allow international jurists to join a continuing independent inquiry into the violence. Yet the A.N.C. will expect a more permanent change of attitude on the part of the government toward halting the violence if reform is to have any hope...
Many South Africans soothed their fears by repeating the comforting aphorism that "there is no alternative to negotiations." The talks will probably resume once the tensions caused by Boipatong cool. But a successful conclusion to the talks may depend as much on whether blacks and whites can break out of their separate worlds. In a sermon after the massacre, Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said, "I hope, somewhere, somehow, it will sink into the consciousness of most of our white fellow South Africans that we are human beings who cry when our children die." As long...
...delicate surgery required to remove the cancer of apartheid was always deemed highly risky. Last week the ambitious operation was put on hold after a bloodbath in the black township of Boipatong set off a searing dispute among South Africa's various parties, black and white...
...breakdown had been brewing since May. But the negotiations, known as the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, collapsed altogether when the African National Congress withdrew from the talks after the Boipatong massacre. The A.N.C. also called for South Africa's team to withdraw from the Olympic Games. The Congress accused the government of negotiating while fostering violence and charged supporters of its rival, the Zulu-dominated Inkatha Freedom Party, with carrying out the massacre with the aid of government security forces. President F.W. de Klerk denied both allegations. But late in the week, a black mine-security guard told...