Word: klerk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...President's "Manifesto for the New South Africa" drew a wildly mixed response. In Parliament outraged members of the opposition Conservative Party called De Klerk a "traitor to the nation" before staging the first mass opening-day walkout in the legislature's history. "The fight is on for the survival of white people," asserted Ferdie Hartzenberg, deputy leader of the Conservative Party...
Outside, antiapartheid protesters complained that De Klerk's manifesto did not go far enough. A.N.C. supporters demanded immediate voting rights for 28 million blacks, who constitute 70% of the country's inhabitants but have no representation in the national government. Some 20,000 demonstrators marched before Cape Town's House of Assembly carrying placards that denounced the "racist Parliament." They demanded that Parliament, which is divided into chambers for whites, Asians and people of mixed race, be dissolved and replaced by an integrated constituent assembly. Declared Walter Sisulu, a veteran A.N.C. leader: "We don't have the vote. This...
...Klerk's speech capped one of the most fateful weeks in the long struggle against apartheid. Earlier, the A.N.C. and its major black power rival, the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, moved to end their bloody internecine strife. Mandela and Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi finally met for the first time in 28 years and asked their followers to "cease all attacks against one another with immediate effect." Feuding between the two factions has claimed as many as 8,000 lives since 1984. To underline the message, Mandela and Buthelezi agreed to tour the most violence-torn regions of the country...
Their reconciliation and De Klerk's repeal of apartheid set the stage for the next phase of the black campaign for equality. For years, outspoken | critics of apartheid have argued that even though the legal pillars of discrimination were crumbling, the real test for the nation would come when it finally moved to enfranchise blacks. While the A.N.C. insists that only a one- man, one-vote rule would transfer power from whites to blacks, De Klerk envisions a multiracial government with a system of checks and balances that would give every ethnic group a dominant voice in its own affairs...
...President must now walk a tightrope, maintaining the support of whites while negotiating with black leaders for a new constitution that grants universal suffrage. De Klerk emphasized last week that he had no intention of agreeing to a black-dominated interim government that would oversee the transition to a new regime. At the same time, he reaffirmed plans to convene a multiracial, all-party conference to draft the new constitution...