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- <text id=92TT2293>
- <title>
- Oct. 12, 1992: Talks, at a Price
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Oct. 12, 1992 Perot:HE'S BACK!
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- THE WEEK, Page 26
- WORLD
- Talks, at a Price
- </hdr><body>
- <p>A deal freeing terrorists brings the A.N.C. back to the table
- South Africa.
- </p>
- <p> Robert McBride, 29, killed three white women with a car bomb
- outside a Durban pub. Barend Strydom, 27, gunned down seven
- blacks in downtown Pretoria. Once condemned to death, McBride
- and Strydom walked free last week when President F.W. de Klerk
- released 150 prisoners in a deal to entice Nelson Mandela's
- African National Congress back to the negotiating table. Most of
- the convicts had been serving time for violent acts in the anti
- apartheid cause, but Strydom's release was an obvious sop to
- whites: as leader of the ultra-right White Wolves, he had become
- a hero for some militant Afrikaners. Nonetheless, many blacks
- and whites were appalled.
- </p>
- <p> But De Klerk's gamble paid off, up to a point. Citing the
- prisoner releases and other "substantial" moves by De Klerk to
- curb violence, the A.N.C. voted unanimously to resume
- negotiations with the government and scale back its "mass
- action" campaign of marches and strikes. Unfortunately, this new
- coziness prompted a sometime De Klerk ally, Mangosuthu
- Buthelezi, leader of the Inkatha Freedom Party and the KwaZulu
- homeland, to angrily announce his own boycott of the talks and
- warn of possibly more violence to come.
- </p>
- <p> Buthelezi's objections raised doubts about whether
- multiparty talks could resume by the end of the year as De Klerk
- and Mandela hoped. The peace process has managed, however, to
- survive despite the Sept. 7 killing of 29 A.N.C. protesters who
- marched on the "independent" homeland of Ciskei. In findings
- released last week, Justice Richard Goldstone criticized A.N.C.
- officials for exposing their followers to danger but reserved
- his strongest condemnation for Ciskei authorities, saying "their
- indiscriminate shooting at innocent demonstrators was morally
- indefensible."
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
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