Word: pretoria
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...light brown imbuia wood paneled Supreme Court chamber in Pretoria's imposing Palace of Justice was crowded with black spectators and white plain-clothes officers last week as Judge Charl Theron entered the room. Guilty of high treason, said Theron, referring to the three young black men in the dock, all members of South Africa's long-banned black liberation organization, the African National Congress (ANC). The sentence: death by hanging...
...courtroom where South Africa's harsh justice was meted out last week was the same in which, 17 years earlier, ANC Leader Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for acts of sabotage, including the 1962 bombing of a Cabinet minister's office in Pretoria. The charges against last week's prisoners were graver-an index of how the ANC, long ago an advocate of peaceful change, now reaches for the gun. Moise was charged with the 1980 bombing of fuel storage tanks at South Africa's SASOL coal liquefaction plant, the most spectacular guerrilla attack...
...lines, power stations and shopping centers have been the most frequent targets for the ANC, though damage in almost all cases so far has been slight and human injuries have been minor. Two weeks ago, ANC militants fired four 122-mm artillery rockets into the Voortrekkerhoogte military base outside Pretoria: three failed to explode and only one person was hurt. But the attacks have proved 1) that the ANC insurgents, however badly trained they may be on the whole, are well armed and can handle heavy weapons and explosives, and 2) that they do not shy away from inflicting civilian...
...encampment near Cape Town and trucked 1,300 homeless black men, women and children off to jail, before sending them to rural reservations. On the military front, Defense Minister Magnus Malan has warned South Africans that "the revolutionary effort against us has reached an extremely dangerous phase." The Pretoria government two weeks ago raised the defense budget by 30% to an all-time high of $2.6 billion. Said Finance Minister Owen Horwood: "In light of recent developments in and around South Africa, defense must remain one of our very highest priorities...
...nicely, while developing its coal and nuclear power. Within two years, thanks to conservation measures and its growing program to convert coal to oil, South Africa will meet 60% of its needs for oil and gasoline. Nor are international economic sanctions likely to give pause to the rulers in Pretoria. One ironic reason: although neighboring black nations would want to go along with a boycott, they could not for long because they depend so heavily on South African trade...