Word: pretoria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...South Africa earns $7 billion a year from its sales of gold, priced at about $350 per oz., to other countries. The British magazine the Economist has suggested that countries holding large amounts of gold in their central banks could merely issue a threat to sell significant quantities unless Pretoria eased some of its repressive measures, and then "private hoarders from Bombay to Brittany would be rushing to sell their gold at crashing prices." The U.S. is well positioned to do this, since it owns more than a fourth of all such banked bullion. Such an act, of course, would...
...continue playing for time. Reagan is scheduled to make a major speech outlining his Administration's policy toward South Africa. In addition, Secretary of State George Shultz will go before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to defend the Administration's program of relying on quiet diplomacy to nudge Pretoria toward making changes in its apartheid system...
Meanwhile, Thatcher will pursue her last-ditch diplomatic initiative in an attempt to tame insistent calls for sanctions within the 49-member Commonwealth. Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe will head to Pretoria with a two-pronged message for Botha: release imprisoned Black Leader Nelson Mandela and lift the ban on the African National Congress. Though Botha has agreed to meet with Howe, the flurry of diplomacy is not expected to change the State President's position. Warned Botha last week: "We are a strong, proud nation with the faith and ability to ensure our future. We are not a nation...
...South Africa's national state of emergency. It stated that 33 community groups, student organizations and labor unions in Johannesburg were forbidden to hold any indoor meetings, their outdoor meetings having already been banned in June. An immediate storm of protest broke loose, the kind that usually inspires the Pretoria government to dig in its heels. Instead, two days later, the Bureau for Information, the sole official outlet of news on the emergency, announced that the government was making an about-face. "Errors" had been made in the original order, the statement said, and the ban on indoor meetings...
...government's backdown reflected the growing strength of South Africa's black labor movement. Pretoria may have the military and police power to quell any serious civil disorder. Last week, for example, the government announced that ten more suspected terrorists had been killed. But prosperity in the country depends in large part on the labor of 6 million black workers. Many of them have become organized just in recent years, and their unions are now the closest thing to black political parties that exists in South Africa. In all, black and black-dominated unions have nearly doubled their membership since...