Word: soweto
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...violence. Almost every day has seen reports of townships in upheaval, and bloody confrontations between blacks and armed police have become chillingly routine. Last week, as the total number of black deaths since September passed 450, the political brush fires spread to a place with an ominously familiar name: Soweto...
...country's largest black township (pop. an estimated 1.2 million) began on Wednesday. Hundreds of students stormed aboard six municipal buses and demanded to be taken to a magistrates court where 105 black youths were being charged with holding an illegal demonstration at the home of Edward Kunene, Soweto's mayor. The students sang and chanted outside the courthouse until mounted police cleared the area with tear gas and rubber bullets. About 500 of the protesters were arrested but then released after the bus company declined to press hijacking charges. The students soon joined thousands of other Sowetans...
Botha's crackdown, however, suggests that those demands will not be met anytime soon. Indeed, if history is an accurate guide, South Africa's blacks may be in for tough tunes. In 1960 and 1977, in the wake of the Sharpeville and Soweto uprisings, the government halted the orgy of violence by arresting antiapartheid leaders and outlawing most opposition organizations. In both instances, the silencing of black leaders ended the crisis. Whether the new crackdown will have a similar effect remains to be seen. Last week the Financial Mail, a Johannesburg newsweekly, ran a cover story titled "The Townships...
DIED. GIBSON KENTE, 72, revolutionary South African playwright considered the founding father of black-township theater; in Soweto. The first to bring the realities of township crime, poverty and politics to the stage--often using African gospel and jazz--Kente produced more than 20 plays, including Manana, the Jazz Prophet, and the antiapartheid piece How Long. Last year he defied his country's taboos about AIDS by acknowledging publicly that he was HIV positive...
...DIED. GIBSON KENTE, 72, revolutionary South African playwright considered the founding father of black-township theater; in Soweto. The first to bring the realities of township crime, poverty and politics to the stage - often using African gospel and jazz - Kente produced more than 20 plays, including Manana, the Jazz Prophet and the antiapartheid piece How Long. Last year he defied his country's taboos about aids by acknowledging publicly that he was HIV positive...