Word: speech
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, one of the country's more moderate black leaders, dismissed the Port Elizabeth speech as "bitterly disappointing." Dr. Nthato Motlana, a senior civic leader in Soweto, South Africa's largest black township, branded Botha's remarks an "absolute waste of time." Leaders of the outlawed African National Congress, delivering their assessment from Zambia, called the proposals "meaningless amendments of the apartheid system," while the Sowetan, South Africa's largest black daily, editorialized: "The unified South Africa only reflects another glorified system of homelands . . . (Apartheid) cannot be dressed up in false colors. We are not that...
Even the Reagan Administration seemed unimpressed. The day after the speech, President Reagan acted on his Sept. 9 pledge to apply economic sanctions against South Africa and ordered a ban on U.S. imports of Krugerrands, effective Oct. 11. A day later, Secretary of State George Shultz declared that apartheid was "doomed." In an interview with the New York Times, he argued that apartheid "is not only wrong in our view, but, at least in my judgment, it is over." Shultz encouraged the South African government to "signal" its willingness to negotiate with blacks by releasing imprisoned A.N.C. Leader Nelson Mandela...
Botha was scalded by the poor reviews. "More than any other national leader, I went out of my way to create an attitude of justice toward other groups," he said to party members in Port Elizabeth two days after the speech. "There is no sign of any appreciation for this spirit of justice." Paradoxically, both statements are true. Botha has been more of a reformer than any of his predecessors: he has eliminated such petty indignities of apartheid as bans on marriage and sex across the color line, and he has introduced a tricameral legislature that gives limited powers...
...Botha's Durban speech failed to live up to its advance billing remains a subject of intense speculation. The initial explanation was that there had been a right-wing rebellion within his Cabinet. Diplomats, businessmen and journalists reject that theory, however, noting that the high-level officials who previewed the speech stressed that it had already been approved by a special Cabinet committee. One top official told TIME that the reforms would become "government policy" unless Botha himself revised the draft. South Africans suggest three more plausible explanations. Botha may have changed his mind at the last minute...
...major speech to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia and an interview with TIME, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger stressed that Moscow is "very far along" in missile-defense R. and D. President Reagan, in impromptu comments to the press on Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's criticism of SDI, ventured the surprising estimate that "the Soviet Union is about ten years ahead of us in developing a defensive system." To buttress such arguments, the Pentagon and State Department jointly released a 27-page pamphlet summing up what Washington knows about the Kremlin's version of Star Wars. Briefing journalists...