Word: klerk
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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When F.W. De Klerk took his oath of office one year ago, few predicted that the cautious and conservative lawyer would move so quickly toward ending the scourge of apartheid. But since then De Klerk has been cheered by blacks during a tour of Soweto and booed by right-wing white students at the University of Pretoria...
...Klerk's meeting with President Bush this week -- the first such visit by a South African leader in 45 years -- is the latest measure of how far he has brought his pariah nation. Bush invited De Klerk as a gesture to encourage reform; De Klerk welcomed the chance to put his best case forward, knowing that sanctions will not be lifted until he finally meets the various congressional requirements for doing...
Because De Klerk's steps have been as substantive as they have been swift, he deserves respect when he pledges a new deal for the country's 28 million blacks. Having freed Nelson Mandela, De Klerk has agreed to release hundreds of other political prisoners and has ended the state of emergency in much of the country. Most important, he and his National Party have started down a road that made De Klerk's predecessors tremble: toward negotiations on a new constitution that will finally enfranchise blacks. If everybody votes in the next election, this son of Afrikanerdom could...
...Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi's Inkatha movement. Last week the bloodshed reached a numbing climax, when black men rampaged through a Soweto-bound commuter train with guns, pangas and knives, killing at least 26 people. The violence poses a threat to the fundamental change promised by President F.W. de Klerk, whose efforts to dismantle apartheid nonetheless achieve an important milestone next week when he meets with President Bush. Not since Jan Smuts visited the U.S. in 1945 -- three years before De Klerk's National Party wrote racism into the statute books -- has Washington deemed it appropriate to receive a South African...
Most remarkable of all is the case of the President himself, F.W. de Klerk, who on the morning of my visit to the Security Police was shown on national television greeting blacks in Soweto with the black-solidarity handshake -- palm enclosing palm, thumb and then palm again -- and being applauded by black bystanders of all ages...