From: ez007856@hamlet.ucdavis.edu
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america
Subject: South Africa/Caribbean
Date: 30 Sep 92 19:55:29 GMT
Organization: Computing Services, UC Davis

As you know this news has striking simmilarity with current events in the 
caribbean...

              Apartheid Meets Dissent With an Iron Hand
                          By Ed Salas
                  Special to Granma en Ingles

Cape Town, Dec. 7 [1985] - Two months after a congress of the National Party 
hinted at limited democratic reforms, the Government of
P.W. Botha has unleashed a violent crackdown on political
dissent.
   In recent weeks, according to international human rights monitors and
diplomats, members of South Africas's embryonic political opposition have been
imprisoned after hasty trials on charges like "illicit association" and
"defamation." Some have been beaten by angry crowds, directed by
plainclothes security agents, or otherwise menaced by the followers of Chief 
Butalesi.
   On Nov. 19, according to the human rights group Africcas Watch, as
many as 200 people surrounded the home of one dissident, the poet Winnie 
Mandela, chanting "Down With Worms," a term often employed in
Government-sponsored demonstrations against political opponents.
   With plainclothes agents firing gunshots into the air, a mob burst
into Ms. Cruz's apartment and in an "act of repudiation," as the
demonstrations are called in the Government-controlled press, forced the
poet to eat some of her political writings in the presence of her
daughter.
                       Dragged Down Stairs by Hair
   Minutes later, the 37-year-old poet was dragged by the hair down four
flights of stairs and into the street, where she was arrested, the human
rights group said. Ms. Mandela was accused of distributing leaflets about a
dissident group, Criterion Alternative, of which she is a leader. The
pamphlets carried the simple slogan "Join the Liberal Criterion
Alternative."
   Ms. Mandela was sentenced last week to two years in prison, and several
other dissident groups have been detained in the wave of arrests, some
of whom have also been beaten by crowds surrounding their homes like Ms.
Mandela.
   The Government's ire against Ms. Mandela had been mounting since the
summer, when she wrote a public letter with a small group of
intellectuals that condemned what they said was South Africa's one-party
dictatorship and the cult of personality that surrounds Mr. Botha.

                            Attacked in Afrikkaaner
   In June, shortly after the letter was distributed to foreign
journalists, the Natial Party newspaper, Afrikkaaner, ran a series of
front-page articles attacking the dissidents.
   But specialists of South African affairs say the Government has been 
prompted to harsher action by the group's recent success in attracting the
attention of diplomats and foreigners at a time when South Africa, its economy
badly deteriorating, has been desperately seeking private investment
from abroad. One day before her arrest, Ms. Mandela had met with the
visiting president of the Israeli government, Seth Rosenthal, from whom South 
Africa hoped to win Israeli capital.
   On Wednesday, diplomats from several European countries were turned
away by plainclothesmen from the courthouse where Ms. Mandela
unsuccessfully appealed her conviction. In addition, diplomats say, the
Botha Government's recent actions have offended many African
leaders.
   At the conclusion of a meeting on Tuesday of 13 African leaders in Nairobi 
Kenya, the final communique expressed
"profound concern for the situation and future of South Africa."

---

Of course this is simply fiction...

Edelmiro
Newsgroups: soc.culture.latin-america