Word: botha
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...principle of a Botha speech embodying such concessions was adopted, and South African officials began passing the word of an upcoming major announcement. McFarlane and Crocker were briefed by South African Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha at a five-hour meeting in Vienna on Aug. 10; the Minister gave the same message to British and West German representatives. A few U.S. news organizations, including TIME, were given background briefings on the general nature and importance of the upcoming Durban address. Officials in Pretoria emphasized the likelihood that the government would have to pay a political price among its more conservative...
Encouraged by South African officials, the outside world had expected the President to unveil a package of far-reaching reforms aimed at gradually dismantling his white minority government's policies of racial separation. Instead, Botha held out a vague and tentative suggestion of negotiations with the country's disenfranchised black majority as the solution for South Africa's worst crisis in more than two decades. Among other things, he invoked the prospect of unspecified future constitutional discussions involving "all South African citizens," presumably including the country's 24 million blacks. He implicitly admitted the failure of the country's much...
Even while making those oblique concessions, Botha seemed more interested in broadcasting defiance than in stressing the changes that his government would countenance. "I am not prepared to lead white South Africans and other minority groups on a road to abdication and suicide," he declared. He issued a blunt warning to foreign governments pressing Pretoria to change. Said he: "Don't push...
That injunction had a painful ring for the Reagan Administration, which, despite growing criticism, has clung to its soft-spoken policy of "constructive engagement," an attempt to persuade rather than to pressure. In private, Administration officials expressed their disappointment with Botha's speech, though National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane called the Durban address an "important statement." The Administration was studying it carefully, he said, noting that several ideas in the speech "must be clarified." The same message came from Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Chester Crocker, who suggested that Botha's remarks were "written in a code language...
West European governments were cautiously disapproving. A British Foreign Office spokesman declared that there was "considerable disappointment" at Botha's address, but noted that there were "a number of positive features." A similar judgment came from West Germany, while a French official said that the South African situation "continues to disturb...