Word: reform
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Washington." Waving his arms, Botha insisted, "South Africa is the scapegoat of America's bad conscience, ((but)) the South African government is not prepared to surrender." Some 2,000 Afrikaners leaped to their feet, applauding wildly. Carrying his campaign to restive Stellenbosch last week, Botha claimed that "reform, change and ( renewal" run "like a golden thread" through the history of the National Party. Those who thought otherwise, he declared, "should be ashamed of themselves." Student hecklers in the back howled and jeered at Botha, and one of them asked when he would retire. "If I feel like I do tonight...
Botha's talk of reform pleased few. Black rioting, predictable under the law of rising expectations, became so widespread and bloody that he imposed a harsh state of emergency last June. An estimated 20,000, mostly blacks and many of them children, have been detained without trial since the beginning of the state of emergency; some 4,500 of them are still under arrest. But black leaders refuse even to negotiate with Botha unless he agrees to legalize the A.N.C. and begin negotiations on a new and democratic constitution. Some Afrikaners, on the other hand, reacted to all talk...
...chairman of the South African Broadcasting Corp. "The government is never prepared to admit mistakes. It will not dismantle apartheid. The National Party is an Afrikaner party, and it intends to keep power not just in white hands but in Afrikaner hands. It was never in favor of real reform. That was just cosmetic, to prolong Afrikaner control...
...professors but also for a growing number of professional people, doctors, businessmen, the young. "People are not only yearning for new ideas. They also want a new political style, a rhetoric which is conciliatory. Unhappiness with the National Party and its leadership does not simply concern the pace of reform. It is concerned with the nature, goals and strategies of reform itself...
Worrall emphatically rejects such reasoning. "All remnants of apartheid must be abolished," says he. "The government is misreading the public's readiness for fundamental change. The country yearns for a shared vision of the future, but the government's reform program has shut down. White South Africans of all parties are tired of the government not facing its task. Only the abolition of apartheid will create the environment for negotiations...