Word: transvaalers
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...almost everyone calls him, is a fourth-generation Afrikaner nationalist. A descendant of the Calvinistic Voortrekkers, who valued independence more than enlightenment, he was raised in the northern Transvaal, the heart of the most conservative area of South Africa. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were National Party politicians, and his uncle J.G. Strydom was a Prime Minister. He was twelve years old in 1948, when his father became a Member of Parliament and the National Party rose to power on the platform of Grand Apartheid. While he modeled himself on his stern and unyielding father, his brother Willem...
...Strijdom served as Prime Minister from 1954 to 1958. The family often vacationed at Strijdom's summer estate in the Kruger National Park. The brothers' indomitably conservative father Jan de Klerk played a pivotal role in the Nationalists' dramatic victory in 1948 as the party's secretary in the Transvaal. F.W. was only twelve at the time, and his father's passion for electoral politics made an indelible impression...
...conservative farm belt of South Africa's eastern Transvaal, Jotham Zwane, a local black leader and successful hauling contractor, was becoming a problem for whites in neighboring Amsterdam. After leading a protest in his township, he was arrested and released. But later, when his home and three trucks mysteriously burned one night, he was rearrested, convicted of being "idle and undesirable" and banished from the area. The local authorities then moved to seize his land and what was left of his house...
Botha, 73, had been on sick leave for two weeks when he astonished the country on Feb. 2 by giving up his leadership of the National Party. After the Transvaal province leader, Frederik W. de Klerk, 53, was elected to succeed him on the same day, puzzled party chiefs finally concluded that Botha was signaling his intention to retire. So they were shocked once again by Botha's televised announcement that he would be returning to work on March 15. In a rapid series of meetings, the Nationalists resolved that the positions of party leader and State President should...
...caucus quickly elected Frederik W. de Klerk, 52, to replace Botha. Party leader of the populous Transvaal province and Education Minister in Botha's Cabinet, De Klerk has been heir apparent for the past seven years. He is a conservative and an apartheid advocate, a younger, more articulate version of P.W. Botha and, like him, happy with a glacial pace of "reform" that nonetheless maintains minority white control...