Word: klerk
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...President F.W. de Klerk is getting jittery, he doesn't show it. In last week's by-election in the Natal district of Umlazi, his ruling National Party barely retained a safe seat against a strong showing by the Conservative Party. Undeterred, the President announced another move, guaranteed to further rile right-wingers: he lifted the four-year-old state of emergency in three of the country's four provinces. The exception: Natal, where largely black-on- black factional fighting recently flared...
...whites and 150,000 blacks had long managed to keep a relatively peaceful if wary distance from the murderous political events that plagued other parts of South Africa. But with the release of Nelson Mandela, the legalization of the African National Congress and President F.W. de Klerk's reform initiatives, racial tensions are rippling across Welkom like an evil wind...
...ominous force behind the tensions is a white right-wing organization of self-styled commandos, the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, or Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Dressed in khaki uniforms, members wear a swastika-like insignia, salute Nazi-style and warn of a "holy war" if De Klerk succeeds in carrying out his program. The A.W.B. has launched a campaign of intimidation against Welkom's blacks and has been accused of nighttime beatings. In early May, when armed squads began strutting in the streets during the day, the civic association in Welkom's black township of Thabong declared a consumer boycott. Suddenly white-owned...
...hard-core right-wing areas like Welkom and rural Transvaal, whites have reacted with shock, anger and fear to De Klerk's reforms. Just last week the government opened segregated public hospitals to all races, a further erosion of the crumbling laws of separation. Changes like these have prompted die-hard whites to organize a militant defense against what they see as a threatened black -- and communist -- takeover of the country...
What troubles blacks is that De Klerk has made no real effort to curb the steady rise of these groups. Terre Blanche claims "tens of thousands" of supporters, though the real number is probably far fewer. De Klerk insists . that "a small band of extremists" will not succeed in derailing his plans for reform...