Word: soweto
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...South Africa's future." McWhirter interviewed Minister of Justice James Kruger on the Stephen Biko affair, and has met with Afrikaner students, Boer families, colored leaders and young black militants. "One disheartening thing that has happened in the past few months," he says, "is the growing suspicion in Soweto, the black ghetto outside Johannesburg, toward all whites. When I first arrived, a black friend was enough, then a press card, then an American accent. Today it is difficult to gain their trust...
...unanswered question is how long the regulatory machinery of government, which many white South Africans fear is turning their country into a police state, can control unrest. In June 1976, student-inspired riots broke out in the sprawling black suburb of Soweto, outside Johannesburg; urban black unrest has continued sporadically across the country ever since, taking more than 600 lives. Two months ago, a young black leader, Stephen Biko, 30, died mysteriously in prison. An inquest is still pending, but there is widespread suspicion that prison beating contributed to his death. The Biko case produced further disorder...
...what Novelist Nadine Gordimer (A World of Strangers) calls the "dreadful calm" of white society. So distant do such events seem, in fact, that most whites only learn of them from their newspapers. Of Johannesburg's white population of 600,000, precious few have ever set foot in Soweto, although it is a scant eight miles away. And to the farmers who live in the flat reaches of the Orange Free State and the lush valleys of the Cape wine country, Soweto rioting seems almost as remote as U.N. oratory...
...poor white neighborhoods near Johannesburg, where the red brick row houses resemble those of Soweto, people are equally apprehensive. Says Mrs. Hestor Nortje, a widow: "We can live with the blacks, but can they live with us? There is so much suspicion, you don't know whether a man is going to kill you or not. If you live in the same area, the blacks will take the attitude they are better than the whites and take over...
...voluntary arms embargo against South Africa has been on the U.N.'s books since 1963, but as recently as two years ago, the U.S., Britain and France voted against a Third World effort to make the embargo mandatory. Resentment against South Africa has been building, however, since the Soweto riots began 17 months ago. It has been further fanned by the death in September of the imprisoned black political leader Stephen Biko. An autopsy, still to be released, reportedly finds that Biko's death was caused by "extensive head injury of unknown origin," and an inquest begun...