Word: vorster
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Prime Minister John Vorster kicked off his National Party's campaign last week in what is being billed as the country's "crisis election." Looking rather like a grumpy air-raid warden, Vorster warned a rally of party faithful in the eastern Transvaal that only a National landslide on Nov. 30 could hold back the "swart gevaar" (black menace). Vorster has every reason to expect an overwhelming mandate from South Africa's 4.3 million whites. (The country's 18 million blacks, 2.5 million mixed-blood "coloreds" and 850,000 Asians cannot vote.) The latest polls indicate...
...despite Vorster's campaign thunderbolts, there are signs that the Prime Minister wants to moderate both the leadership and direction of his party. One hint of a future change: the resignation last week of Michiel C. Botha as Minister of Bantu Administration. An unbending Afrikaner, Botha was responsible for enforcing the education, housing and labor laws that cover the country's blacks. He was a main target of black wrath during last year's violent riots and in the current strike of teachers and students that has paralyzed the school system in Soweto...
...death. The most recent reports in one of South Africa's largest daily newspapers, The Rand Daily Mail, based on interviews with six doctors who examined Biko a week before his death, suggest he showed no medical signs of being on a hunger strike-a strike that the Vorster government has claimed was the cause of Biko's death. The Mail also indicated that Biko had already suffered extensive brain damage, possibly as the result of severe beatings on the head...
...showdown in the 200-year-old cultural and political war between South Africans of English descent and the Dutch-descended Afrikaners. The Afrikaners' ability and willingness to adapt, if only to survive, are yet to be tested. But knowledgeable observers believe that a convincing electoral victory would allow Vorster to relax the apartheid laws and work toward peaceful settlements in Namibia and Rhodesia-much as Charles de Gaulle was able to pacify the French right and yet also end the Algerian War. One promising sign: Vorster has already warned Smith to accept two senior emissaries if, as expected...
...Vorster well knows that the pressure for change is growing, particularly in South Africa's business community. Since the Soweto riots of June 1976, the country's credit position has been badly hurt-losing some $115 million monthly on short-term capital accounts. As a result of deepening recession, black unemployment ranges up to 40%, and some 200,000 eligible black workers are out of jobs in Johannesburg alone. The government has discouraged business investment by scare talk of "total war" and an "economy of survival." One survey of white Johannesburg university students showed that 72% of them...