Word: botha
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...things I have learned from activism is that people like Bok and Reagan and Botha have a lot of resources at their command. They have law, tradition, inertia, and if all else fails, clubs and guns on their side. That's where the heart of all this talk of goverance is--these people have a lot of power. I don't have to apologize for trying to be innovative and resourceful, for trying to find new ways of changing things. Being in a riot isn't enough; forceful and militant tactics are only one part of what must of necessity...
South African Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha responded with something less than an outright denial of Pretoria's complicity, saying merely, "The South African government cannot be held responsible for this deed." He suggested, without offering any proof, that "serious arguments" among antiapartheid organizations may have led to September's killing. Supporters of the nonracial A.N.C. have indeed been caught up in deadly battles with other political groups, including the blacks-only Azanian People's Organization and the Zulu-based Inkatha organization. Factional disputes also exist inside the A.N.C. French police, however, disclosed no evidence linking any group, of whatever...
Though the outcome scarcely threatened Botha's control of Parliament, where his National Party holds 133 seats, vs. 22 for the Conservatives, it signaled a gathering white backlash. The extremists want to force all blacks to become citizens of tribal homelands, rather than of South Africa, and would reinstate the infamous pass laws that until two years ago determined where blacks could live and work. They also want to abolish the four-year-old tricameral system that permits Asians and people of mixed race to sit in Parliament, and seek to restore the ban on interracial marriage, repealed...
...elections approached, Botha went out of his way to appeal to right-wing voters. Last month he banned 17 antiapartheid groups, including the United Democratic Front, an antigovernment umbrella group with some 2 million members. Just two days before the election, Cape Town police arrested Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, two dozen other churchmen and more than 100 parishioners as they marched from St. George's Cathedral to Parliament to protest the ban. Yet when the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, an extreme-right group that advocates an all-white South Africa, marched in Pretoria two weeks ago clad in brown shirts...
...Botha called the Transvaal vote a "temporary disappointment," blaming it on "foreign interference." He has reason to worry. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 1989, and if last week's results were any indication, it is no longer inconceivable that victory would go to a right- wing opposition that makes Botha's Nationalists look moderate...