Word: klerk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...elections will not usher in a ready-formed New South Africa. Even as most South Africans delight in the prospect of free elections, they are beginning to sense that the immediate future holds much hardship and that the three years of turmoil following De Klerk's decision to dismantle apartheid and release Mandela is a taste of things to come. "The pattern has already been set," warns Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party. "It is going to be turbulent, no matter who is at the helm...
...blueprint for the country's political future has been drawn, and in the coming weeks negotiators hope to complete the details. The next move should be the appointment as early as this month of a multiparty Transitional Executive Council that will have no executive authority but will oversee De Klerk's government policies to ensure their nonpartisan nature. When South Africans finally go to the polls, they will elect a bicameral legislature that will serve during a five-year transitional period and double as the constituent assembly responsible for drafting a postapartheid constitution. The party receiving the largest number...
...most serious sticking point remains De Klerk's demand for permanent power sharing, which the A.N.C. regards as an effort to deprive blacks of the chance for true majority rule. During the period of Mandela's national-unity government, De Klerk proposes that real power be invested in an Executive Committee made up of party leaders and that the presidency become a largely ceremonial job. He is also demanding up-front guarantees of power-sharing in the final constitution, although he rejects suggestions that he is trying to secure a permanent white veto...
...back up demands in the current negotiations for an independent white state comprising about 16% of South Africa's territory. It would correspond roughly to the old Boer republics of the Transvaal and Orange Free State, which became part of the Union of South Africa in 1910. Neither De Klerk nor Mandela will accept such a state, since it would require the forced removal of millions of blacks or a return to apartheid-style discrimination against them...
...transitional government, warned Groenewald, that could force whites to secede from South Africa. He refused to rule out leading an insurrection. It is an open question, he added, whether white-led government security forces would obey orders to suppress a white rebellion. That prospect worries many. Last week De Klerk acknowledged that he was only informed after the fact when the police cracked down on the militant Pan Africanist Congress and arrested 73 of its leaders. This move nearly threw negotiations off course again...