Word: reformer
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...consultant with the Rand Corporation in Washington. "The triumph of the carrier was in World War II. We made the same mistake back then when we concentrated on battleships at first. The Japanese proved us wrong at Pearl Harbor." Senator Gary Hart, founder of the congressional military-reform movement, argues that the submarine, not the carrier, is the capital ship of the future, and points out that the Soviets have 300 attack subs to the U.S. Navy's 100. In a nuclear conflict, he insists, the carrier fleet would be vaporized in a matter of minutes...
After months of halting, halfhearted gestures toward racial reform, South Africa last week finally took a step that may significantly alter its detested system of apartheid. The government announced proposals to abolish the pass laws, a complex web of 34 regulations and proclamations that have severely restricted the ability of blacks to move freely within the country. The laws, said an official white paper announcing the reform, are a "relic of the past" and will be replaced by a non-discriminatory program of "planned, positive urbanization." Declared State President P.W. Botha: "Today we have arrived at the emancipation from guardianship...
...Washington, the Reagan Administration hailed the proposed reforms as a "major milestone on the road away from apartheid." But public reaction inside South Africa was mixed. Business groups and other moderates cheered the news. The government's actions, said John Kane-Berman, director of the antiapartheid South African Institute of Race Relations, rank along with the legalization of black trade unions in 1979 as "the most important reform in South Africa since World War II." Many black activists, on the other hand, viewed the measure--welcome as it is--as too little, too late. "Apartheid cannot be reformed," says Patrick...
...sweeping decision to repeal the patchwork of influx laws comes after the country has endured 20 months of violent protest against apartheid in which nearly 1,500 people, most of them black, have been killed. Had the reform come earlier, it might have been hailed more widely as an attempt at peacefully easing the country's racial difficulties. Indeed, the proposed changes fall far short of now clamorous black demands for full political representation. Nor do they threaten the legally enshrined principles of racial segregation, which include separate schools and residential areas for different racial groups. All this prompted some...
Nonetheless, the reform measures will have considerable impact on the country's 24 million blacks, who make up 73% of the population. The pass laws were stitched together in piecemeal fashion over the past 70 years in an effort to control the flow of blacks into the country's predominantly white cities. Repealing them, observed the Sowetan, the major newspaper in the large black township outside of Johannesburg, will "affect the person who matters most--the man in the street." Under the old system, the government refused to recognize blacks as citizens of South Africa, pretending instead that they were...