Word: natalic
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Conference participants included moderate business, church and political groups, as well as officials of the all-white Natal provincial council and blacks from largely self-governing KwaZulu. The ruling National Party sent observers but did not participate in the sessions. The meetings in which the reforms were drawn up became known as the Indaba, the Zulu word for meeting...
...looked to many like the last, best hope for peaceful change in racially tormented South Africa. Since last April delegates from 39 groups of blacks and whites from a wide political spectrum had been meeting in Durban, the main city of the coastal province of Natal, to find a way to transform the province from white minority rule to some form of multiracial government. In a land where passions run high and tempers are often short, they thought that successful power sharing in Natal might become a model for a national solution...
Last week, only two days after the conference issued a 33-page proposal for constitutional reforms, the prospect of change received a crushing blow. Stoffel Botha, Natal's ruling National Party boss, rejected the reforms, saying they failed to protect Natal's whites from "domination" by blacks. The last, best hope seemed destined to meet the same fate as so many other attempts to achieve racial harmony. The white opposition Progressive Federal Party, which had participated in the conference, termed the rejection "a reaction from bigots who seem to have a death wish for South Africa...
...Natal conferees had proposed a merger of white-dominated Natal and black-ruled KwaZulu, the government-designated Zulu homeland that is located inside Natal's borders. The area would then be ruled by a two-chamber parliament. One body would be based on "one man, one vote," which would mean black control and result in a black prime minister. The other would guarantee an equal number of seats to blacks, Indians, English speakers and Afrikaans speakers. Provisions to safeguard white rights, while allowing for eventual black rule, were also included. Dr. Oscar Dhlomo, a black delegate to the congress, called...
White and black South Africans who believe that racial change is inevitable had hoped to demonstrate in Natal that apartheid could be dismantled by ballots rather than bullets. The province, although it has a low proportion of whites, seemed an auspicious testing ground. Relations between the 569,000 whites, 6 million blacks, 675,000 Indians and 95,000 mixed-raced coloreds are better than in South Africa's three other provinces. A majority of Natal's whites are of British background and are generally regarded as more liberal on racial issues than Dutch-descended Afrikaners. Moreover, many whites respect...