Word: slovo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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FAULT LINES. Once Mandela's Cabinet is announced, the unity government is likely to show significant lines of stress. It will probably include Communist Party chairman Joe Slovo -- an interesting prospect for white officials who long used the fear of communist encirclement to justify apartheid policies. No fewer than 16 of the top 50 names on the A.N.C. parliamentary election list are members of the Communist Party. While they have forsworn Stalinism, Slovo still argues that "only under socialism could you have a combination of political and economic democracy...
Hani's death moved even hardened veterans of the antiapartheid movement to tears. Nelson Mandela's estranged wife Winnie, one of Hani's closest colleagues, broke into sobs as she visited the crime scene. Joe Slovo, who handed control of South Africa's Communist Party to Hani in 1991 after being stricken with cancer, told a radio station in a trembling voice that he was "shocked and shaken" and needed "time to collect my thoughts...
...government claims that Slovo and other leading communists in the A.N.C. met secretly in the Natal province town of Tongaat last May to discuss a plan code-named Operation Vula to seize power by force if negotiations fail. The meeting, De Klerk suggested, violated the agreement between the government and the A.N.C. to create a peaceful climate for negotiations. Government officials say that in smashing the plot, police uncovered weapons such as rocket- propelled grenades and AK-47 assault rifles...
...year-old Communist Party has influence with the A.N.C. as well as powerful black trade unions, which seems likely to give it a considerable say in negotiations. The party's utopian ideal of economic equality holds a powerful attraction for the millions of blacks disadvantaged ) by apartheid. But Slovo says his first priority is enfranchisement of South Africa's blacks. "I don't believe that communism is on the agenda," he told TIME. He says he now favors multiparty democracy and a mixed economy...
Mandela and De Klerk met to cool the crisis, but De Klerk wants communist Slovo dropped from the A.N.C. delegation. It will be difficult for Mandela to oblige. In the long run, though, the real danger may lie in the government's taking the threat of communism too seriously. Anglo-American Corp. director Bobby Godsell predicted that blacks in South Africa would reject socialism, just as East Europeans have. But this assumes that the government will resist any temptation to slap a new ban on the party. Says Godsell: "Communism has to be defeated in the minds of voting people...