Word: pretoria
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...with the ultimate aim of destabilizing the Mugabe government. South Africa dismissed the charge as ridiculous, but diplomats in Harare are not sure. Says a Western official: "It's not in South Africa's interest to have an unstable Zimbabwe, but I don't know if Pretoria agrees. They certainly don't like Mugabe, a Marxist who they think is a wolf in sheep's clothing...
...dawn announcement in Pretoria, General Constand Viljoen, chief of the South African Defense Force, explained that the raid, unofficially named "Operation Blanket," had been a pre-emptive strike against A.N.C. militants who had come to Lesotho over the past few months. According to Viljoen, the A.N.C. members were planning attacks in South Africa against political leaders in the black "homelands" of Transkei and Ciskei. South African defense officials displayed a rocket launcher, rifles and some grenades of Communist-bloc origin that they said had been captured in the raid...
...Minister of Foreign Affairs, Charles D. Molapo, labeled the attack "murder" and asked for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council. Given the landlocked country's economic dependence on South Africa, however, the raid was not likely to lead to a break in relations with Pretoria...
While the legislature is willing to sustain a small financial loss in order to send a powerful message of condemnation to Pretoria, many of the bill's sponsors are hopeful that divestment will not cost the state a dime. The Massachusetts Coalition for Divestment from South Africa--a coalition of more than 100 religious, civic and labor organizations that promoted the bill--has calculated that the state may even be able to make several million dollars in the process of divestiture. This prediction is probably overly optimistic. But by judiciously spreading the required sales over the three-year period allotted...
President Bok likes to portray divestiture as an impractical gesture, favored only by college students and other romantics. Yet the legislature's move is practical as well as symbolic. It serves notice to Pretoria that apartheid must go. And it encourages more than 30 American firms to reconsider both the moral and financial wisdom of maintaining businesses in South Africa. If the Bay State's action reveals a romantic outlook, it is a romanticism that the University would be wise to adopt...