Word: zulu
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Skipping one last stone across the Rio Grande, I started inland across flat, marshy country where clumps of sable palms stand out like the befeathered scouts from a Zulu impi. Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, and Brownsville, in Texas, are the first of a score or more twin towns strung along the frontier. The poverty that prowls much of the country's southern border like a hungry coyote sits back on its haunches and howls in Brownsville. "This is the poorest part of the U.S.," says Tony Zavaleta, a Brownsville sociologist. "We have whole suburbs without electricity, sewerage...
...ever took a close look at Mardi Gras could come away with the impression that it's merely a straightforward American spectacle in the tradition of, say, the Indianapolis 500 or the Pasadena Tournament of Roses. In 1964 I was in New Orleans to do a piece on the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club, a black burial society whose members traditionally paraded on Mardi Gras in blackface, wearing grass skirts and tossing coconuts to the crowd. A week before Mardi Gras, I watched cheerfully drunk white longshoremen boogie down the street for hours in women's clothing behind...
...tongue is! Baaa, baaa, baaa," exhorts the teacher, an ivory- skinned redhead, hammering on a piano key with her index finger. The kids imitate the sound and start giggling. "Don't laugh at each other! We're here to learn!" scolds the redhead. Silence. Then a few whispers in Zulu. "Heee, heee, haaa, haaa!" sings the teacher. More giggles. When class is finally dismissed, the kids clatter up a narrow staircase, whistling and ululating. The doors are plastered with bumper stickers: KIDS ZONE, BABYLAND BLVD, I LOVE MY BOYFRIEND...
Despite the teen trappings, a sense of mission infuses Sarafina!, a portrait of repression and rebellion at a Soweto high school. During "notes," a 15- minute discussion of finer points in the performance, the kids jump up to argue with the assistant director, Mali Hlatshwayo, in rapid-fire Zulu. He thumps his chest. "Emotion," explains one of the cast. At the stage door, starstruck American youngsters gather for autographs, but the kids of Sarafina! don't preen like the show horses of your average chorus line. The girls are mostly hefty. The boys tend toward skinny. Plain faces, remarkably ordinary...
...this deed." He suggested, without offering any proof, that "serious arguments" among antiapartheid organizations may have led to September's killing. Supporters of the nonracial A.N.C. have indeed been caught up in deadly battles with other political groups, including the blacks-only Azanian People's Organization and the Zulu-based Inkatha organization. Factional disputes also exist inside the A.N.C. French police, however, disclosed no evidence linking any group, of whatever political stripe, to September's murder...