Word: xhosa
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Mandela's talent for leadership traces back to his tribal heritage as the son of a royal family of the Thembu tribe of the Xhosa people. After earning a law degree from the University of the Witwatersrand, he joined the A.N.C. With classmate Oliver Tambo, he set up the first black law practice in South Africa in 1952. Defiantly working from a whites-only downtown neighborhood, they specialized in representing blacks who failed to carry the passes that were required of blacks in white neighborhoods...
Ironically, this newly gained stature comes at a time of deepening militancy on the A.N.C.'s part that would ordinarily discourage feelers from the West. Last January the A.N.C.'s military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation, in Xhosa), called for a full-scale "people's war" against the white rulers of South Africa. Having confined its guerrilla strikes in the past mainly to government buildings and military installations, the A.N.C. warned that now "civilians will get caught in the cross fire...
...supported national radio station tried to ban Wonder, but gave up after his fans began tuning in to his songs on foreign stations. Still, it is not so keen on the final entry on Stevie's current album. Delivered in both English and the South African tribal tongue of Xhosa, the song is called It's Wrong (Apartheid...
...same evening, Botha appeared on television channels that broadcast in the Sotho, Tswana, Xhosa and Zulu languages and told their predominantly black viewers, "The time has come for us South Africans to join together to negotiate the structures that we want." From its headquarters in neighboring Zambia, however, the A.N.C. dismissed Botha's overtures, which it said demonstrated that he was "committed to the maintenance of white-minority domination...
...downtrodden descendants of the ancient Xhosa tribe, it was an unfamiliar and perhaps unfathomable exercise. At countryside polling places in Ciskei, a Delaware-size tribal territory on the southeast coast of South Africa, women in bright bandannas and beads danced and sang the words Enkululele kweni (Go forward to independence). Since many of the voters could neither read nor write, election officials, under the close scrutiny of local police, showed them how to mark their ballots. The outcome was never really in doubt: by a lopsided vote of 295,891 in favor and only 1,642 against, the tribesmen chose...