Word: klerk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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South Africa's relatively few remaining segregated beaches are among the targets of the three-month-old "defiance campaign" being waged by black activists. But when State President F.W. de Klerk last week called on municipalities throughout the country to integrate their beaches, it was less a response to those protests than another move to make good his election promise of change...
...Klerk also called for chucking the Separate Amenities Act, a pillar of apartheid since 1953 that has given local authorities the power to keep blacks out of selected parks, libraries, swimming pools and other public facilities. He is given a strong chance of winning repeal of the law when Parliament reconvenes next Feb. 2. De Klerk's moves were in keeping with his gradualist approach to reducing racial discrimination. He made no mention of changing laws that maintain segregation in most schools and housing...
...core, the A.N.C. position is equally nonnegotiable, calling for a swift transfer of state power from whites to blacks. The exiled organization stands unwaveringly for one-person, one-vote majority rule in a unitary state. Such an arrangement is "unfair" and unacceptable, says De Klerk. "Afrikaners won't agree to that until they are militarily defeated," says a senior diplomat in Pretoria, "and the balance of power in the country right now does not favor revolution...
...domestic Mass Democratic Movement are in a quandary: they tend to favor negotiations because the process might lead to government concessions that are unforeseen now, but they do not want to go to the table if their presence offers nothing but a public relations success for De Klerk by making him look like a peacemaker. Ramaphosa, head of the black National Union of Mineworkers, concedes that the government does appear to be seeking change. "One could say they are willing to usher in a new South Africa," he says, "but some of us have serious doubts because they are still...
...change, and that "the struggle in all its aspects" should continue. That remains the consensus among black leaders, who say that protests, boycotts and strikes will go on -- with the full blessing of Nelson Mandela -- and the A.N.C. will work to rebuild its organization inside South Africa. If De Klerk is to get negotiations on track, he will have to offer more concessions to prove that reconciliation rather than image building is his goal...