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- <text id=92TT1834>
- <title>
- Aug. 17, 1992: Marching to Pretoria
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Aug. 17, 1992 The Balkans: Must It Go On?
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 15
- WORLD
- Marching to Pretoria
- </hdr><body>
- <p>The A.N.C. sends De Klerk a message--from below his window
- </p>
- <p> In its campaign to take power from the white government,
- South Africa's black majority has two main weapons: mass protest
- and international pressure. Most economic and sports sanctions
- imposed from abroad have now been lifted--as South Africa's
- participation in the Barcelona Olympics attests--so Nelson
- Mandela and his African National Congress have increased their
- efforts at home.
- </p>
- <p> After a two-day general strike by millions of black
- workers last week, the A.N.C. and its allies in the trade unions
- and the Communist Party turned up the heat with marches in
- several cities. Most dramatic was the peaceful turnout in
- Pretoria, the heart of Afrikanerdom and the administrative
- capital of the country, where 70,000 marchers drew up in the
- park below President F.W. de Klerk's office and chanted, "De
- Klerk must go!" Said A.N.C. secretary-general Cyril Ramaphosa:
- "Next time, Mr. De Klerk, we are going to be inside."
- </p>
- <p> In his speech to the marchers, Mandela made it clear that
- the protest was not intended actually to topple the President
- but to press him into faster movement toward a multiracial
- interim government. "We have not come here to gloat," he said.
- "We are here to take South Africa along the road to peace and
- democracy." De Klerk said later he had been talking privately
- with the A.N.C. and was "confident that negotiations will be
- resumed."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-