World Notes

For decades, South Africa's policy of apartheid has rested upon a set of rigid laws reserving 87% of the land for the nation's white minority and requiring strict housing segregation. Last week President F.W. de Klerk introduced legislation that would repeal all racial restrictions on land ownership and permit all South Africans to live where they choose.

The right-wing Conservative Party accused the government of having "capitulated" even before it began negotiations with the black African National Congress on the country's future. The Congress, for its part, blasted the program for failing to compensate blacks who lost their land and for codifying "the current state of the dispossessed under the cover of free- market principles." Most white South Africans, though, seemed to support the new policy, believing it will lead to the lifting of international economic sanctions against their country.