Word: thohoyandou
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...squadron of South African Impala jets thundered through the skies over the new Independence Stadium in Thohoyandou, as tribal dancers raised clouds of red dust with their rhythmic exhortations to ancestral spirits. At the stroke of midnight, South Africa's top-hatted President Marais Viljoen strode down a red carpet to announce a "great historic event, the birth of a new state." At his side stood Chief Patrick Mphephu, 54, a small, diffident man with a fifth-grade education, who was soon to become the Executive President of the Republic of Venda, a Delaware-sized region tucked...
...unlikely to win recognition from any nation apart from South Africa, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, and its fellow black homeland states of Transkei and BophuthaTswana, which obtained "independence" from Pretoria in 1976 and 1977. The fragility of Venda's new status was even reflected in its stage-prop capital, Thohoyandou ("head of the elephant"). Pretoria had hastily fitted out the town for the occasion with a cluster of government buildings, a hotel, a supermarket and the stadium...
...Mphephu and the other members of Venda's political elite, independence will bring immediate perks in the form of government-provided cars, high salaries and elegant new homes like Mphephu's $750,000 mansion on Thohoyandou's Nob Hill. But it remains to be seen whether "independence" will prove a boon to the people of an impoverished backwater area whose per capita income is only $25 a month...
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