Word: botha
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...towns and cities, stopping at this house and that. A man was pulled out here, a woman there. The security forces arrested political activists, church workers, students, labor organizers, youthful militants--anyone, it seemed, who might conceivably lead a protest against the white minority government of State President P.W. Botha. At times the detentions seemed carefully planned, at others indiscriminate: near Johannesburg, 22 bus passengers were taken into custody as they returned from a funeral. Virtually all those arrested in police actions were black...
Thus last week the most densely populated areas of stricken and divided South Africa fell under an iron-like state of emergency. The crackdown by the Botha government came after ten months of black protest against apartheid, the country's rigidly enforced structure of racial separation, and followed earlier, ineffective repressions by the government. Almost 500 people, practically all of them black, died during that extended and bloody period of confrontation, some at the hands of fellow blacks, the majority as the result of police action to put down the unrest. Botha's proclamation of the emergency was intended...
...bishop's warning that the images of bloodshed would be used against the black protesters was soon borne out. In the face of the international furor over the government's harsh crackdown, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha (no kin to President Botha), sounding a theme that would be invoked repeatedly by the government, declared that South Africa would not allow its future to be decided by "perpetrators of violence who burn people alive...
...same time, President Botha made it clear how strongly he disagreed with criticism from overseas. Sputtering that he was "speechless" at the steps taken by France, Botha said, "It amazes me that a Western government that takes an interest in Africa and in the interests of black people can take exception to a government that restores order when Communist powers and Communist-inspired powers murder black people and try to disrupt the normal life of black communities...
...Behind Botha's obdurate stand is the tacit admission that his tentative reforms over the past two years have been less than successful. His white constituents, the majority of them Afrikaners, whose African roots go back to the landing of Dutch settlers in Cape Town in 1652, are more split than ever. A verligte (enlightened) faction, which forms a significant part of Botha's ruling National Party, is aware that some form of political accommodation with blacks must come eventually. A verkrampte (literally "cramped," or hard-line) breakaway group is determined to keep things as they are, if by sjambok...