Racial Relations South Africa

South African anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela ended a three-day visit here Saturday after an unhesitant embrace of Cuban President Fidel Castro's Communist revolution, which he called "a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people." "We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious, imperialist-orchestrated campaign," Mandela told a rally at which he was Castro's honored guest.

Efforts to "Africanize" the names of this country's provinces, towns and streets have stirred controversy among blacks seeking to break with a past marked by white domination and Afrikaners insisting that the moves amount to "ethnic cleansing." The latest flare-up came last month, when legislators voted to change the Northern Province's name to Limpopo, the most popular suggestion from a short list submitted by the public.

Twenty-one years after it was expelled from Olympic competition for its racially discriminatory policy of apartheid, South Africa won readmission from the International Olympic Committee here Tuesday, opening the door for South African athletes to participate in the 1992 Olympic Games. The historic decision, based largely on the South African Parliament's repeal of key apartheid statutes in June, is expected to give a big boost to the reform movement of South African President Frederik W.

South African President Thabo Mbeki vowed Friday to intensify his government's fight against the country's AIDS epidemic, restore land to thousands of families evicted under apartheid, and work to ensure a fair presidential election in neighboring Zimbabwe. In an hourlong "state of the nation" address to mark the reopening of Parliament following its holiday recess, Mbeki promised concrete programs that would help improve the lives of South Africans.

Imagine conducting a movie research screening with Nelson Mandela as the test audience. As far as Arsenio Hall figured, who other than the African National Congress leader could best judge the authenticity of "Bopha!"--the talk show host's debut film as an executive producer--than someone who has lived, breathed and fought apartheid all his life. "I knew he was coming to Los Angeles.

Parliament on Tuesday repealed a major apartheid law used for decades to segregate South Africa's public facilities ranging from restaurants to libraries to buses. The repeal of the Separate Amenities Act was the latest in a series of reforms by President Frederik W. de Klerk since he came to power last year. The changes have angered conservative whites, who oppose the idea of sharing power with the black majority.

About 1,270 companies from 20 Western countries are doing business in South Africa but 188 companies from seven countries have pulled out, according to a survey published Monday. The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions survey said Britain led the field with 374 companies still operating in South Africa. It said the United States led the countries that pulled out with 134 companies.

President Bush, declaring that South Africa is making "irreversible" progress toward racial equality, lifted U.S. economic sanctions against the white-ruled nation Wednesday despite strong objections from its best-known black leader and many American liberals. The action, which had been anticipated for months, is of less economic importance than symbolic, as a mark of international acceptance of the once-outcast regime. Although U.S.

The South African minister of home affairs ordered government censors Monday to reconsider their approval of "Cry Freedom," Richard Attenborough's film about black activist Steve Biko, which was set to open Friday in 36 theaters nationwide. Stoffel Botha's tersely worded directive, published in the Government Gazette in Pretoria, came as United International Pictures (UIP), which is distributing the film in South Africa, was preparing to go ahead with the once-delayed premiere.

In the controversial film "JFK," an Academy Award nominee for best picture, director Oliver Stone explores the shadowy machinations of a burgeoning military-industrial complex. It is a world with which the picture's executive producer, a jet-setting Israeli businessman named Arnon Milchan, has more than a passing acquaintance.

Facing questions about dozens of alleged civilian deaths, Pentagon officials said Monday that they would investigate the bombing in eastern Afghanistan of a complex of caves and tunnels where terrorist leaders are believed to be hiding. Afghan villagers and local officials have alleged that U.S. forces flattened hamlets near Jalalabad while systematically bombing the suspected hide-outs of leaders of the Al Qaeda terrorism network. Pentagon officials insisted that they had no evidence to support the allegations, and they suggested that the accusers may be secret supporters of Al Qaeda or that the deaths may have been caused by Taliban forces.

When Nicky Liddle announced that she was going to stay with a black family in one of this city's toughest townships, friends and family thought she was crazy. But the 21-year-old white woman from the suburbs would not be deterred. Her hosts, the Tukwayos, lived in Khayelitsha township in a clapboard and corrugated steel house with no running water. She shared a bed with the Tukwayos' 26-year-old daughter.

At the entrance to this city's newest museum, visitors are given a ticket randomly assigning them a skin color, then ushered through one of two doors, marked "White" and "Non-white." Once inside, they file past enlarged copies of identity papers and into a so-called Hall of Classification. There, they confront a placard inscribed with a historic and central piece of South African legislation: the Population Registration Act of 1950, which categorized and segregated the people of this nation.

Four white police officers received prison terms of four to five years Thursday for setting their dogs on three black Mozambican immigrants in an animal training exercise described by a high court judge as cowardly, brutal and cruel. "They completely disregarded the humanity of the three victims," Judge Willie van der Merwe said as he passed sentence. He accused the South African officers of abusing their authority while regarding the incident as a joke.

Marc Beavon is 31, unemployed and hasn't washed himself or his clothing in a very long time. He would be homeless and hungry, too, if Doris Mnengi hadn't taken him in. Beavon the tenant is white. Mnengi the landlady is black. They both are poor but are finding their way, together, in post-apartheid South Africa.

On one side are Zulus who say they were unjustly evicted from their land under apartheid. On the other, descendants of a Scotsman who became a white Zulu chief and then the patriarch of a mixed-race family that still controls vast acres of sugar cane. A contentious blend of legal claims, racial privilege and ancestral attachments is threatening to erupt in this fertile coastal region of South Africa.

South African President Frederik W. de Klerk will be on the hot seat today when he makes a statement on a political scandal threatening to undermine crucial all-party talks on the troubled country's future and possibly to unseat De Klerk himself. The government now admits that it secretly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to a Zulu-based conservative black union and the allied Inkatha Freedom Party--a rival of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.

When Peter Jacobs enrolled at the University of the Western Cape a decade ago as a prospective teacher, he was already deep into the struggle against apartheid--deeper than even he realized.

A black teenager in northern South Africa is beaten to death by nine white men while trespassing on private land. A white drama professor is shot and wounded by a black student demanding the staging of African rather than European productions. White farmers vow to defend themselves in the wake of a spate of slayings allegedly committed by blacks.

South Africa withdrew the first post-apartheid order to force the sale of a white farmer's land for black resettlement, saying it wanted to give negotiations over the property's value another chance. Transvaal Agriculture Union spokesman Theo Wassenaar said the Agriculture and Land Affairs Ministry had withdrawn the order to expropriate Willem Pretorius' land after the farmer applied to have the order annulled.