Word: township
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...early as 6 a.m., the streets of Soweto were mobbed with mourners determined to bury their dead. Militant black youths roamed the sprawling township outside Johannesburg, enforcing a work stoppage that had been called to honor the 24 Sowetans felled a week earlier by police gunfire. Wielding sjamboks, or plastic whips, the young radicals chased commuters from bus stops and train stations and pelted moving vehicles with rocks. One bus was halted and burned on the spot. Security forces moved in rapidly, spraying the streets with tear gas. By 10 a.m., thousands of blacks had congregated outside the locked gates...
Last week's violence in Soweto seemed virtually inevitable. Two days before the mourners gathered, authorities had announced restrictions clearly designed to derail township plans for a mass funeral for those who had died in the previous week's police crackdown on rent strikers. When outraged Sowetans defiantly ignored the ban, even sacred burial grounds were transformed into battlefields...
...reason the boycott has been so widespread is that many people have been persuaded or coerced by the young activists to join the strike or suffer the consequences. To many of the township's residents, the choice is between paying the rent and risking retaliation by the militants or withholding the rent and facing eviction...
...violence in Soweto left blacks more embittered than ever. Black leaders maintained that the number of deaths was closer to 30 than the 20 the government claimed and called for the resignation of the township council. Said the Rev. Frank Chikane, a Sowetan civic leader: "We are appalled by this cold-blooded massacre of our people. This was one of the darkest days in our history." The South African Council of Churches criticized the Soweto councilors for their eviction policy, pointing out that the rent issue had become a "political time bomb" that could "explode in townships throughout South Africa...
Aware of the problem, the Soweto council has set up an office in Johannesburg, where township residents can supposedly pay the money without intimidation. But even those who would prefer to do this have heard rumors that such offices are full of spies for the comrades back home, and so in many cases they do nothing. For others, the issue is not just the rent but the sense of being forced to pay tribute to support the apartheid system...