Word: zulu
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Call it the theater of revolution. Five plays, put on by some 30 black actors, directors and playwrights, storm the U.S. with urgent bulletins from the townships of their native South Africa. Last week Asinamali! (Zulu for "we have no money") opened the first festival of black South African drama ever to play outside its homeland. Mbongeni Ngema's group portrait of five prisoners, together with four other plays of protest, will run for four weeks in New York City and Washington. The series is entitled Woza Afrika! (Rise Up, Africa!), and the exclamation point is not redundant. Mixing shouts...
Tutu plays a complex role in the South African freedom struggle. He does not have a huge political following, nothing comparable to that of Nelson Mandela, the long-imprisoned black nationalist leader, or Mangosuthu Buthelezi, chief of the 6 million-member Zulu tribe. Tutu calls himself an "interim leader," saying that he would be less important if Mandela and others were released from prison. The archbishop is most popular among the small group of educated, middle-class blacks, but he has proved to be effective in calming angry crowds in the black townships...
Black South Africans who reject sanctions, like Zulu Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, are finding their position increasingly difficult. Last week he denounced President Botha's confrontational "Boer War diplomacy" and warned of a "time when the government's actions (will) demand that I revise my & position." This week Botha will address an important federal congress of his ruling National Party in Durban. Speaking in the same city last year, Botha gravely disappointed Western governments by failing to include in his address a list of widely anticipated racial reforms. This year Botha was simply expected to hang tough, and so there...
...indaba, or meeting, between whites and blacks to discuss guidelines for creating in his home state of Natal the country's first completely multiracial government. If the proposals are ever accepted, Buthelezi, who has steadfastly refused government offers of independence for KwaZulu, the territory within Natal designated as the Zulu homeland, could become provincial governor, the first black ever to hold such a post. Some observers suggest that the innovative power-sharing plan could serve as a model for the country as a whole. Indeed, if apartheid were to be totally dismantled and black South Africans were politically free, Buthelezi...
Buthelezi's political base is the 1 million-strong Inkatha, the Zulu movement he leads. On May Day, when militant black union leaders who favor divestiture spearheaded a nationwide walkout, Buthelezi staged a rally to launch a new labor organization to challenge them. "Why are they so persistent to push disinvestment even with the knowledge that we blacks, whom they purport to be helping, are the ones who will suffer most?" he asks...