Word: sasolburg
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...began to bite in the 1970s, Sasol became integral to the survival of an isolated South Africa--and a frequent target of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) guerrillas. In 1980 the ANC's military wing, the Umkhonto we Sizwe, blew up parts of Sasol's plants in Sasolburg and Secunda, both south of Johannesburg. In 1983, '84 and '85, the rebels returned to launch rocket attacks on the plants. (The rockets missed, but the attacks are commemorated to this day in an ANC song whose chorus goes, "Whoosh! Whoosh...
...Sasolburg, an oil and coal center south of Johannesburg, a pamphlet was distributed with a message that was provocative even by South African standards. Referring to a white man who had married a "colored" woman after miscegenation laws were repealed last June, it asked: Do you want the Van den Bergs living on your street? Do you want their children going to your school...
...pamphlet was credited with helping its sponsor, Louis Stofberg, win last week's by-election in Sasolburg. The ultra-right-winger thus became the first candidate of the Herstigte (Reconstituted) National Party to capture a seat in Parliament. Stofberg was the beneficiary of a surge of right-wing reaction against the halting racial reforms of the National Party government of State President P.W. Botha. In five districts holding elections, the National Party won one handily, lost in Sasolburg and won in the other three by margins much reduced since the last local balloting...
...reform, the fiercer the international campaign against us," he said. At week's end the government imposed restrictions on press coverage of strikes, riots and other social unrest. Even before the voting, the ever cautious Botha government was trying to deflect right-wing attacks. At a public meeting in Sasolburg, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha responded to the furor over the Van den Bergs, who now live in a mixed-race trailer camp, by saying that housing rules would have to be reviewed. That sort of equivocation did not impress voters on either side of the race question. Said Frederik...
...most destructive and audacious act of sabotage in South Africa's history. In a series of coordinated nighttime raids against petroleum complexes in the small oil towns of Sasolburg and Secunda, black nationalist guerrillas cut their way through chain-link fences surrounding two adjoining refineries in Sasolburg and then planted several limpet mines with expert precision. The explosions destroyed a total of eight fuel storage tanks and set off towering fires that raged for nearly two days. A third installation at Secunda, 90 miles east of Johannesburg, was rocked by seven bomb blasts but suffered only limited damage...