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- <text id=89TT1211>
- <title>
- May 08, 1989: World Notes:South Africa
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1989
- May 08, 1989 Fusion Or Illusion?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- WORLD, Page 48
- World Notes
- SOUTH AFRICA
- Food for Thought
- </hdr><body>
- <p> Apartheid is alive and more than a little absurd in the
- South African town of Boksburg (pop. 106,000). Ever since
- rightists took over the town's city council last year, they have
- been strictly enforcing the whites-only laws that had fallen
- into disuse. They began by barring blacks from all municipal
- facilities, including the local park and lake. The obsession
- with racist regulations took on surreal dimensions last week
- when the council voted 10 to 7 to grant the transfer of a lease
- for the Golden Lake Chinese restaurant from W.G. Ho to another
- Chinese woman, S.Y. Yip. The only catch: a provision in the new
- lease that barred nonwhites -- including Chinese -- from dining
- at the restaurant.
- </p>
- <p> The silly decision is but the latest in a series of
- apartheid measures that have led blacks to boycott the town's
- business district. As a result, commercial sales are down 40%
- to 70%, but the council has refused to budge, despite pleas by
- the Boksburg Chamber of Commerce to reconsider. The
- Conservatives did make one small concession to common sense:
- they will allow Yip's children to eat at the Golden Lake.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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