Word: pretoria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Apartheid. Nearly everyone deplores it. Divestment. It is a way to fight apartheid by withdrawing U.S. investments from South Africa, so who can be against it? That may be an oversimplification, but leaders of the movement to apply economic pressure on Pretoria's white government are making dramatic progress in the U.S. with that argument. Even though its impact is sharply debated, divestment has become a new buzz word of social protest on college campuses, at shareholders' meetings and in legislatures across the country. Said Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley: "The issue of divestment has really caught fire...
...export area, the Reagan Administration can claim that its cooperative approach has achieved mild success. Last year South Africa assured Washington that it would administer its nuclear program in line with the "spirit, principles and goals" that underpin the nuclear suppliers' trigger list. The Pretoria government promised that it would not supply nuclear technology, materials or equipment to any other country without International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards or the equivalent provided by the European atomic community, known as EURATOM...
Another candidate for bomb-in-the-basement status, South Africa, announced in 1970 that it had developed a new process for uranium enrichment. Since then the government in Pretoria has fiercely protected its putative breakthrough from virtually all curious foreign eyes. In 1977 the Soviet Union, apparently acting on evidence received from one of its spy satellites, notified the U.S. of an installation in South Africa's Kalahari Desert that resembled a nuclear test site under construction. Washington used one of its own satellites to inspect further. Four months later, under pressure from the U.S., South Africa stopped work...
Signs that Pretoria might be taking two steps backward for every reformist step forward challenged Washington's belief in the Botha government's commitment to real change. Since 1981 the Reagan Administration has steadfastly pursued a line of "constructive engagement," under which the U.S. refrains from openly criticizing the South African regime and hopes instead, through diplomatic pressure and behind-the-scenes negotiation, to coax it toward easing the strictures of apartheid. While making it clear that U.S. policy was not going to change, Washington officials publicly warned that last week's show of force "cannot help prospects...
...apartheid. But Botha's supporters claim that he is trying to defuse "revolutionary elements" before negotiating with black moderates and point out that the fist of short-term law enforcement is by no means incompatible with the open hand of long-term conciliation. Nonetheless, said U.S. Ambassador to Pretoria Herman Nickel, "The plain fact is that images of repression will always blot the more complicated story of reform...