Word: soweto
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Since last June's protests South African authorities have moved efficiently to chop at the roots of black resistance. A year ago, The Children had power enough to force the resignation of Soweto's 41-member Urban Bantu Council for being too subservient to white control and to close most of the ghetto's secondary and high schools in a student-led boycott. They even helped speed the resignation of M.C. Botha, an archconservative who was South Africa's Minister of Bantu Administration. Since then, however, The Children have been shadowed, jailed and harassed...
...trip is almost a parody of a see-the-stars'-homes guided tour through Beverly Hills. Visiting VIP'S may now enjoy government-sponsored minibus excursions through Soweto, the sprawling black ghetto on the southwestern rim of Johannesburg that is home to 1,500,000 urban blacks...
Tour guides point out the homes of Soweto's black leaders (most of whom are, or have been, detained for antigovernment activities). The visitors also see the charred remains of buildings burned during the riots of 1976. Presumably, the tourists also note such sights as unemployed blacks drinking at Soweto's government-sponsored beer halls, or youths-rebellious dropouts from inadequate, segregated schools-furtively passing marijuana joints back and forth on dusty street corners. The object of the tours is to show foreigners that Soweto is "peaceful" again, following the epochal riots that began there two years...
...government measurements, perhaps, Soweto is peaceful once more. A year ago, the militant young blacks who launched the antiapartheid protests in 1976, and who became the community's dominant political force, orchestrated an impressive commemoration. "The Children," as they had come to be called, decreed a two-day general strike. They shut down the beer halls and suspended sports events so that Sowetans could gather in churches to honor the dead with hymns extolling black power...
...recent past, foreign capital, in particular American capital, could defend its presence in South Africa by claiming it followed progressive employment practices that set a standard for others. In the pre-Soweto period when most South African blacks could visualize only a gradual process of improvement in their status, this argument carried weight. Advent of black consciousness, especially among urbanized young and dissatisfaction with pace of events has brought a shift in attitudes. Measures which only relieve hardships like marginal raises, subsidized meals, school fee allowances, and personal loans are seen as panaceas which evade question of basic rights...