On Second Thought …

DURING ITS 45 YEARS IN POWER, SOUTH AFRICA’S governing National Party has routinely detained, deported and denied blacks their right to vote. Now that it must soon share power with blacks, the white regime is undergoing what one white M.P. sarcastically called a “deathbed conversion.” Officials unveiled a postapartheid bill of rights aimed at preventing a black government from ever carrying out similar abuses against the white minority. The African National Congress swiftly denounced the proposal as a blatant move “to protect the haves against the have-nots.”

Johannesburg, meanwhile, was virtually shut down by a violent taxi-driver strike. The protesters, whose minibuses daily shuttle thousands of blacks between the city and adjacent townships, claim they are constantly harassed by traffic police. Gasoline-bomb attacks against government-owned buses and a blockade of city streets led to pitched battles with security forces, during which at least two people were killed and 100 injured.