Word: botha
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Apparently, the recent shift to the right in American perspectives on global politics has convinced the Reagan administration that it can improve relations with the P.W. Botha regime in South Africa without alienating too many liberals or Blacks in this country. The administration has set in motion a new policy of "constructive engagement" with South Africa that government officials say will benefit both nations, while bettering conditions for the racial majority of South Africa. "We can cooperate with a society undergoing constructive change," Chester A. Crocker, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, has said. From this watershed...
...Reagan administration's hopes for constructive cooperation with the South African government rest partly on the country's promise of future stability, but also on the Botha regime's actual commitment to reform of South Africa's apartheid system. It is upon this premise that Reagan's friendly posture toward the divided nation fails. Prime Minister Botha has presented his leadership as an appeal to serious reform of the laws and customs that have restricted Black opportunities and mobility for decades, but changes under his leadership have proven largely insignificant, more a paean to his political rhetoric than an indication...
United States efforts to work with the Botha regime toward any liberal reform in South Africa will have to face an increasingly reactionary white population there. Last month's nationwide election showed a large split in the ranks of Botha's controlling national party with only a small per cent defecting for the Progressive, and almost one third of all Afrikaaners supporting the Herligte National Party, a reactionary splinter group willing to allow no concessions for the nation's Blacks. The whites, perhaps with due cause, fear that their survival as Afrikaaners is at stake, and claim any concerted effort...
...States besides the degree of legitimacy that American backing gives in international circles. Pretoria evidently found the new Reagan administration's support helpful last January when it reneged in its agreement to submit the territory to U.N.-monitored elections. U.S. backing of its puppet government in Namibia bolstered the Botha regime's smug refusal to recognize the Soviet-backed Southwest Africa People's Organization as the best representative for the peoples of Southwest Africa. Reagan and the United States can feel justified in demanding the guarantee of minority rights in Namibia. But past experience indicates that South African foot-dragging...
...speakers. But the changes most of them are willing to allow come nowhere near meeting Black demands. Few whites realize that in the past couple of years, Blacks have come to insist on full equality and freedom. And they want these things right away. In 1979, Prime Minister P.W. Botha declared that apartheid was at an end. South Africans must "adapt or die," he warned. Most Blacks believed him. When his promises of sweeping reform proved to be empty, Blacks were extremely disillusioned--and more bitter than ever. Tofile of the American Cultural Center asserts that many Blacks...