Word: soweto
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Typical of the week's victims was a widow, Mary Ndhovu, the mother of five children, who used to run a fleet of three taxis left to her by her husband. One cab was hijacked and burned out by black youths at the beginning of the Soweto disturbances in June. Last week, fearful of breaking the boycott, she kept her remaining taxis at home. But at midweek a youth, fleeing a Zulu gang, ran through the garden of her home. The enraged Zulus, thinking she had given him refuge, kicked down her front door, smashed her furniture and windows...
Later in the week, other residents in Soweto formed their own vigilante groups to protect themselves. Police, at first delighted by the Zulu backlash, were belatedly ordered to move in and separate the black combatants. Police admitted killing 14 of the week's victims and wounding dozens of the others with small-size buckshot-a tactic ordered by Justice Minister Kruger to keep the death toll down...
...week's end the boycott was over, but thousands of blacks were still staying home to guard their property against arson and looting. "You are well out of that mess," a black policeman told a white reporter who tried to enter Soweto. "They have all lost their minds...
...safety of "white" Johannesburg, employers declared that the boycott had been largely ineffective. No vital services had been disrupted, and only about a third of the Soweto work force had stayed home for all three days. Some employers considered docking the pay of absentees, but others urged their colleagues not to retaliate in any way. "A money-earning black is a happy black," counseled one executive. "Deprive him of livelihood, and you lose a potential ally when the crunch comes...
Similarly, some whites exulted that the anti-white thrust of the black activists in Soweto had been blunted by the Zulu warriors. Others knew better. "Sooner or later they'll get back to confronting the white Establishment," observed a white businessman in Johannesburg. "When they do, it will be much worse than before. Right now the problem is tribal, but in the long run it's strictly racial." He concluded by citing the statistic that no white man in South Africa ever needs to be told: the country has 18 million blacks and only 4 million whites...