The narrow streets of downtown Johannesburg were strangely silent last week. Black workers and shoppers who normally jam the district by day were nowhere to be seen. Stores did desultory business; restaurants closed their doors. In ( Soweto, the sprawling black township outside Johannesburg, residents remained inside their homes.
For three days, 2 million to 3 million black South Africans stayed away from their jobs and classrooms in what was perhaps the nation's biggest and longest general strike. Organized by the Congress of South African Trade Unions, a 700,000-member black umbrella group, the walkout proved that Pretoria's two- year-old state of...
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