Word: botha
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...year-old government of Prime Minister P.W. Botha has been edging cautiously toward reform of South Africa's rigid system of enforced racial separation. It has advocated the abolition or modification of many so-called petty apartheid regulations, such as the hated pass laws that restrict blacks' movement, and those forbidding racial mixing in public places such as restaurants and sports facilities. Botha has also floated vague promises of better conditions for the country's blacks and has granted some tangible concessions: legalized black labor unions and increased spending on black education. Limited as such reforms have...
...major right-wing challenge to Botha came from the twelve-year-old Herstigte (Reformed) Nasionale Party, which strongly advocates continued white privilege, black subjection and rigid racial segregation. Though the H.N.P. was unable once again to gain a single parliamentary seat in the election, its adherents more than quintupled their vote totals, to 191,000, and cut painfully into National Party majorities in many districts. H.N.P. Leader Jaap Marais, for example, challenged Nationalist Andries Treurnicht, the political boss of the Transvaal, and came within 1,500 votes of unseating...
...same time the moderate Progressive Federal Party (P.F.P.) attracted voters who regard Botha's cautious moves as a series of improvised compromises that will neither placate blacks nor ultimately prevent armed confrontation with them. P.F.P. Leader Frederick van Zyl Slabbert called Botha "an illusionary figure of reform" and his promises "vague mumbo jumbo." The P.F.P. gained nine seats in the new parliament, bringing its total to 26. They also dealt the Nationalists their worst single blow, defeating Minister of Industries Dawie de Villiers in his Cape Town constituency. It was the first time an incumbent National Party minister...
Throughout his campaign, Botha concentrated on limiting the challenge from the right. He emphasized his hard-line anti-Communist foreign policy, recalling the capture of a Soviet spy last year, and the suspension of preferential trade relations with neighboring Marxist-led Zimbabwe in March. He also played on the considerable comfort the Nationalists have derived from their hopes of rapprochement with the U.S., as manifested by such gestures as Foreign Minister Roelof Botha's forthcoming visit to Washington later this month. That process has been helped along by U.S. participation, with Britain and France, in vetoes...
...Soweto home of outspoken black Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu, one of the country's most influential civil rights advocates, and seized his passport. Tutu's apparent transgresssion: a recent tour of the U.S. and Europe during which he tried to bring foreign pressure to bear on the Botha government for an end to South Africa's apartheid policies. Said the unrepentant Tutu after politely handing over the travel document: "Nothing the government does will stop us from becoming free. Sooner or later-perhaps sooner than he thinks-the Prime Minister will be begging me to take back...