Word: pretoria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Earlier this month the South African government imposed a national state of emergency in an effort to control political protest by those opposed to apartheid. The action, which is one of the most extreme taken by the Pretoria government, has significantly increased the pressure in the United States and Europe for an end to white minority rule of that nation...
...America. With the decline in the flow of information and reports out of South Africa, Americans will be deprived of the vivid pictures and descriptions of violence and protest which egg them on to protest. Congressional interest will dwindle without such public pressure--to the delight of the Pretoria government. As after the Sharpville and Soweto riots, South Africa is plotting to gain time out of the limelight to lick its wounds and quell internal and external dissent...
...attacks, which improbably involved rental cars as well as helicopters and jet fighters, came at a time of sputtering unrest throughout South Africa. Early in the week the Pretoria government announced that it had found a large cache of mines, bombs, rockets, grenades and automatic rifles, supposedly belonging to the A.N.C., somewhere near Johannesburg. Rioting continued throughout the week in the squatter camp of Crossroads, near Cape Town, where gangs of conservative black vigilantes were pitted against hundreds of young antiapartheid activists. At least 32 people were killed, and tens of thousands of shacks were burned, reputedly by the vigilantes...
...unrest, the Botha government's motive in staging last week's attacks was unclear. Even as the raiding parties were carrying out their missions, a Commonwealth negotiating team arrived in Cape Town following talks with A.N.C. leaders in Lusaka. They were trying to set up a negotiating link between Pretoria and the A.N.C. Though the Commonwealth team's leaders, onetime Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and former Nigerian Head of State Olusegun Obasanjo, were reluctant to admit it, their mission had been all but destroyed by the cross-border raids. Criticism was worldwide. The Reagan Administration expressed its "vigorous condemnation...
...Many South Africans regard him as perhaps the only man, white or black, who can bring about a peaceful end to the hated apartheid system. This very prominence makes him a figure of suspicion and even derision among many militant blacks, who dismiss him as a puppet of the Pretoria government. Even so, all sides agree that the Zulu chief is likely to play a pivotal role in the future of the country...