African National Congress

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The victory of the African National Congress was as plain as the headlines on Friday's papers."TALKS AGREE ON APRIL 27 POLL" said The Citizen, a right-leaning tabloid, at the top of its front page. "April 27 set down as date for elections" was the biggest headline in the financially oriented Business Day. "April 27 is target day for election" read the front of The Star, a middle-of-the-road paper, while the black-oriented Sowetan said "Poll date agreed on."Thursday, the ANC had flexed its political muscle to get the so-called multiparty talks, to negotiate the political future of South Africa, to agree on April 27, 1994 for the country's first nonracial, one-person-one-vote elections.

Johannesburg, South Africa -- In December, leaders of South Africa's ruling African National Congress will pick a successor to Thabo Mbeki, the party's current president. The election will have huge implications. In South Africa the dominant political party chooses the nation's president, and the ANC has 70 percent of the seats in Parliament. The party's next leader will almost certainly lead the nation. Another reason it will be huge is that the party is sharply divided over how best to lift millions of blacks out of poverty, 13 years after the end of the racist apartheid system.

Johannesburg, South Africa -- In December, leaders of South Africa's ruling African National Congress will pick a successor to Thabo Mbeki, the party's current president. The election will have huge implications. In South Africa the dominant political party chooses the nation's president, and the ANC has 70 percent of the seats in Parliament. The party's next leader will almost certainly lead the nation. Another reason it will be huge is that the party is sharply divided over how best to lift millions of blacks out of poverty, 13 years after the end of the racist apartheid system.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South Africa's former deputy president was acquitted yesterday of charges of raping an HIV-positive family friend, a verdict that sent thousands of his ardent supporters dancing into the streets, hoping for his political comeback. But Jacob Zuma, deputy head of the ruling African National Congress, who has made clear he still harbors ambitions to lead South Africa, faces a trial on corruption charges in two months. To a growing number of South Africans, the man who once led both the National AIDS Council and its Moral Regeneration Movement looks, despite his rape acquittal, like a man with appallingly bad judgment.

Emile M. Cioran, 84, a Romanian-born writer and philosopher fascinated by the bleak themes of emptiness and death, died Tuesday in Paris. Two of his best-known works were "The Inconvenience of Being Born" and "On the Peaks of Despair."Harry Gwala, 74, a militant leader of the African National Congress who fought for years against rival Zulus, died Tuesday in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. A Communist and 50-year veteran of the ANC, he was in prison with South African President Nelson Mandela.

South African black leader Nelson Mandela will attend the Clinton inauguration at the invitation of Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Baltimore, the new chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus.Mr. Mandela, president of the African National Congress, will be the personal guest of Mr. Mfume. Members of Congress are allowed to invite one guest to the Jan. 20 swearing-in of Bill Clinton."Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress have commited their very lives to the pursuit of the most fundamental elements of participatory democracy," said Mr. Mfume.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The United Democratic Front, whose campaign of mass protests shook South Africa and captured the world's attention in the 1980s, said yesterday that it is going out of business.Coalition leaders said their goals have been achieved now that black political leaders are out of prison, black political organizations have been legalized and the white minority government is holding negotiations toward a new constitution."We are proud to announce that the UDF has fulfilled the major purposes for which it was set up," said Albertina Sisulu, co-president of the broad coalition, an umbrella group for labor, church and human rights groups and other organizations opposed to the apartheid system.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- Jacob Zuma, the deputy leader of the governing African National Congress party who was once seen by many as the potential heir apparent to South Africa's president, appeared in court yesterday charged with raping a family friend after inviting her to his home and offering her a massage. Zuma was removed in June from the post of deputy president in the wake of corruption charges. The populist Zuma was able to rally support in his power base, the ANC Youth League, unions and the South African Communist Party after the corruption charges.

Zephania Mothopeng, 77, who broke away from the African National Congress to help form and lead the militant Pan Africanist Congress, died yesterday in South Africa. He had been suffering from cancer and pneumonia. Mr. Mothopeng lived his last years a few blocks from fellow black nationalists Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu, but his militant stance kept him far from the more moderate ANC leaders. His release from Johannesburg's Diepkloof Prison in November 1988 preceded reforms that included freedom for the ANC leaders and government promises to include blacks in a new constitution.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, who was once exalted as the "Mother of the Nation," was sentenced yesterday to five years in jail with one year suspended after being convicted Thursday of dozens of charges of theft and fraud. Madikizela-Mandela, 66, who immediately issued a statement saying she would resign from Parliament and from posts in the governing African National Congress, had faced as many as 15 years in jail on 43 counts of fraud and 25 counts of theft.

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA -- Jacob Zuma, the deputy leader of the governing African National Congress party who was once seen by many as the potential heir apparent to South Africa's president, appeared in court yesterday charged with raping a family friend after inviting her to his home and offering her a massage. Zuma was removed in June from the post of deputy president in the wake of corruption charges. The populist Zuma was able to rally support in his power base, the ANC Youth League, unions and the South African Communist Party after the corruption charges.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's New National Party, the political force that ran a dictatorship during four decades of apartheid and then ceded power peacefully in democratic elections in 1994, announced Saturday that it was folding for lack of voter support. The leaders and members of parliament from the party will be offered immediate membership in the African National Congress, the majority black party that trounced it in 1994 elections, said NNP spokeswoman Carol Johnson.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Election results showed the African National Congress headed yesterday for a sweeping victory that would give it a two-thirds majority in Parliament and the power to unilaterally change the constitution. Nearly complete returns from Wednesday's voting showed the ANC winning seven of the country's nine provinces and leading in the remaining two, and enjoying even greater support than it did in the historic 1994 vote that ended white-minority rule and brought Nelson Mandela to power.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, the ex-wife of Nelson Mandela, who was once exalted as the "Mother of the Nation," was sentenced yesterday to five years in jail with one year suspended after being convicted Thursday of dozens of charges of theft and fraud. Madikizela-Mandela, 66, who immediately issued a statement saying she would resign from Parliament and from posts in the governing African National Congress, had faced as many as 15 years in jail on 43 counts of fraud and 25 counts of theft.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Residents of South Africa's Northern Province were never entirely pleased by the name of their corner of the country. "Northern" was not descriptive enough to capture the beauty of this land of baobab trees, game parks and sun-filled days, people complained. In fact, it said close to nothing about their home. So provincial authorities announced last month that they would rename the province Limpopo, after the "great, grey-green, greasy Limpopo River," celebrated by Rudyard Kipling, that forms South Africa's border with Zimbabwe.

From the parishioners' colorful, flowing garb to the words of the opening hymn - "Si ya hamb' ekukhanyeni kwenkosi," or "We are walking in the light of God" - it was evident that this church proudly celebrates its roots in mother Africa. African-Americans and African nationals living in Baltimore, Washington and Virginia gathered yesterday in the auditorium of William H. Lemmel Middle School in West Baltimore to plant a new congregation in the city: the Kalafong African Methodist Episcopal Church.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - South Africa's New National Party, the political force that ran a dictatorship during four decades of apartheid and then ceded power peacefully in democratic elections in 1994, announced Saturday that it was folding for lack of voter support. The leaders and members of parliament from the party will be offered immediate membership in the African National Congress, the majority black party that trounced it in 1994 elections, said NNP spokeswoman Carol Johnson.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The opening phase of official negotiations on South Africa's future ended on a high note of optimism yesterday, with the African National Congress predicting that within a year South Africa could have a new constitution enshrining political equality for the nation's black majority."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Ten years ago today Nelson Mandela walked free from 27 years in prison, and this country is now taking stock of the extraordinary transformation that followed. South Africa, for almost half of the past century a bastion of white privilege and racial segregation, has become the continent's most powerful black African state. Formerly a pariah nation, it is at the forefront of a major thrust to turn this continent from post-colonial dependency to 21st century self-reliance, with Africans solving their own problems and engaging in the much-vaunted "African Renaissance."

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- The worst potential labor unrest since the end of apartheid in South Africa is raising tension among the three members of South Africa's governing alliance -- the ruling African National Congress and its partners-in-power, the trade unions and the Communist Party.The 1.8 million-member Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) called on its members yesterday to support a strike Tuesday by 800,000 public-sector workers, including teachers, nurses, police officers and civil servants.