Word: botha
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...demanding an end to the government policies of racial separation. The U.S., Britain, France and scores of other governments have called for Mandela's release as a sign that the white minority government is serious about negotiating with the black majority. Yet in February, when State President P.W. Botha offered to free him if he would forswear political violence, Mandela refused, saying, "Only free men can negotiate; prisoners cannot enter into contracts...
...Botha could afford to ignore the demands for Mandela's unconditional release, it was because, for all the anger and unrest, he knew that racial revolution was not imminent: the armed forces and police retain overwhelming power. In July the Botha government imposed a state of emergency in many black districts, sending in waves of police to restore order, break up public meetings, block processions and frighten protesters into submission. Then it effectively banned journalists from covering the unrest in the townships, in the futile hope that the protests would die when the images faded from the world's television...
...course of the year, the Botha government made a few concessions. It repealed the laws forbidding mixed marriage and sexual relations between whites and nonwhites. It promised that blacks living in urban areas would be entitled to some sort of South African citizenship (instead of being "citizens" merely of poor but ostensibly "independent" homelands). It also said it would consider scrapping the hated pass laws controlling the movement of blacks. These steps were notable departures from doctrinaire apartheid, but to millions of angry and unemployed young blacks in the townships, they were too little and too late...
...were killed when their truck hit a land mine as they drove along a road near the Zimbabwe border. The A.N.C. admitted that it had planted the device, as well as six others that have killed seven and injured eleven since November. Predictably, the government of State President P.W. Botha promptly blamed the A.N.C. for the Sanlam bombing. But the organization's silence has led some analysts to speculate that the incident may have been the work of a militant A.N.C. offshoot...
Members of the right-wing Conservative Party hotly denounced the attacks and called for Botha to retaliate by cracking down on the rebels and their supporters. Later in the week Lesotho, one of the neighboring countries the South African government has long accused of harboring A.N.C. rebels, claimed that its territory had been raided by South African commandos who gunned down nine A.N.C. members and sympathizers. Officially, Pretoria denied any involvement, but, warned the State Security Council, South Africa's neighbors "must be urged to realize that if this menace is allowed to continue, all the people of southern Africa...