African National Congress

VENTERSDORP, South Africa — A top member of a South African white supremacist group said yesterday that the slaying of its leader was “a declaration of war’’ by blacks against whites, as the president appealed for calm amid growing racial tensions in the once white-led country. Andre Visagie of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement said that the group would also urge soccer teams to avoid the upcoming World Cup tournament in South Africa out of safety concerns. He said the group would avenge the death Saturday of leader Eugene Terreblanche, but did not give details.

Feb. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Former South African President Nelson Mandela isn't in any danger and may be discharged as early as tomorrow after being hospitalized due to a "long- standing" abdominal complaint, the country's presidency said. Mandela, 93, is "fine and fully conscious and the doctors are satisfied with his condition," after a diagnostic procedure, the presidency said in a statement on its website today. "He was in good health before admission in hospital but doctors felt the complaint needed a thorough investigation," the presidency statement said.

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s governing party says the king of Nelson Mandela’s Thembu clan has died. In a statement, the African National Congress said King Zwelenkosi Lwandile Matanzima “worked tirelessly to improve the lives of his people and rural communities in general.’’ He was 39. No cause of death was reported. Local news reports said he had recently been hospitalized frequently and died Saturday in a hospital in East London, in southeastern South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG - The governing African National Congress pushed a bill through South Africa's Parliament yesterday to protect state secrets, despite strong objections from opposition politicians including white conservatives and black nationalists who were enemies under apartheid. Opponents, who include church and business leaders and Nobel laureates, say the measure will keep government corruption under wraps, stifle whistle-blowing, and undermine the hard-won democracy created with apartheid's end 17 years ago. But the ANC says South Africa needed to update...

JOHANNESBURG -- A prominent South African mining entrepreneur, African National Congress supporter, and cultural philanthropist, Brett Kebble, whose business dealings had come under scrutiny, was found shot to death Tuesday night in Johannesburg. Police opened a murder investigation into Kebble's death, according to a statement posted yesterday on a website devoted to Kebble's grant program for South African artists. Kebble, 41, was found shot several times in his car on a highway overpass, the South African Press Association quoted police as saying.

WASHINGTON - The House, saying it was correcting a longstanding injustice, voted yesterday to drop apartheid-era travel restrictions and terrorist designations given Nelson Mandela and other African National Congress people who fought white minority rule. "Despite recognizing two decades ago that America's place was on the side of those oppressed by apartheid, Congress has never resolved the inconsistency in our immigration code that treats many of those who actively opposed apartheid in South Africa as terrorists and criminals," said Representative Howard Berman, a...

PRETORIA - Jacob Zuma took power yesterday in the culmination of an extraordinary political comeback, pledging to Nelson Mandela and the nation to renew the spirit of commitment and hope of South Africa's first black presidency. Zuma was once imprisoned under apartheid and spent years in exile before surviving corruption and sex scandals and a party power struggle to reach the nation's highest office. He has been embraced by many South Africans with a fervor usually reserved for Mandela.

JOHANNESBURG - The governing African National Congress pushed a bill through South Africa's Parliament yesterday to protect state secrets, despite strong objections from opposition politicians including white conservatives and black nationalists who were enemies under apartheid. Opponents, who include church and business leaders and Nobel laureates, say the measure will keep government corruption under wraps, stifle whistle-blowing, and undermine the hard-won democracy created with apartheid's end 17 years ago. But the ANC says South...

JOHANNESBURG -- Strini Moodley, one of the founders of the Black Consciousness Movement during South Africa's anti-apartheid struggle, died yesterday after a brief illness, his family said. He was 60. Mr. Moodley was one of nine activists convicted on terrorism charges in 1976 and sentenced to six years in prison, which he served at South Africa's notorious Robben Island prison. He was a friend of Steve Biko, the Black Consciousness leader who died in police custody in 1977 after a beating.

JOHANNESBURG — Kader Asmal, a prominent member of South Africa’s governing African National Congress who pressed his party to keep its democratic promises, died yesterday, the ANC said. He was 76. In a statement, the party said Mr. Asmal died in a Cape Town hospital. No cause of death was given. Mr. Asmal led antiapartheid protests as a high school student in rural eastern South Africa. He later left for Britain and Ireland, where he continued antiapartheid activism, and studied and taught law. He returned to South Africa in 1990 and...

JOHANNESBURG — Kader Asmal, a prominent member of South Africa’s governing African National Congress who pressed his party to keep its democratic promises, died yesterday, the ANC said. He was 76. In a statement, the party said Mr. Asmal died in a Cape Town hospital. No cause of death was given. Mr. Asmal led antiapartheid protests as a high school student in rural eastern South Africa. He later left for Britain and Ireland, where he continued antiapartheid activism, and studied and taught law. He returned to South Africa in 1990 and participated in...

Anyone who was in college in the 1980s remembers the songs, posters, and T-shirts urging divestment from South Africa and freedom for its most celebrated political prisoner, Nelson Mandela. Those who watched his inauguration in 1994 as the first democratically elected president in his country’s history will recall the feeling of triumphant joy. But Mandela’s story is more complicated than the happy, heroic narrative that has risen up around him. The elder statesman, now so respected for his peaceful perspective, was once a young revolutionary, a lawyer willing to go outside the law...

PRETORIA, South Africa — South Africa’s murder rate, one of the highest in the world, has dropped by 8.6 percent to its lowest level in nearly two decades, according to statistics released yesterday. Authorities credited better policing for the decline. Officers had increased their efforts in preparation for the World Cup in June and July, when South Africa hosted hundreds of thousands of foreign visitors. Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said the number of murders had dropped below 17,000 for the first time since authorities starting keeping...

JOHANNESBURG — South Africa’s governing party says the king of Nelson Mandela’s Thembu clan has died. In a statement, the African National Congress said King Zwelenkosi Lwandile Matanzima “worked tirelessly to improve the lives of his people and rural communities in general.’’ He was 39. No cause of death was reported. Local news reports said he had recently been hospitalized frequently and died Saturday in a hospital in East London, in southeastern South Africa.

VENTERSDORP, South Africa — A top member of a South African white supremacist group said yesterday that the slaying of its leader was “a declaration of war’’ by blacks against whites, as the president appealed for calm amid growing racial tensions in the once white-led country. Andre Visagie of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging movement said that the group would also urge soccer teams to avoid the upcoming World Cup tournament in South Africa out of safety concerns. He said the group would avenge the death Saturday of leader Eugene Terreblanche, but did not give...

South Africa in the mid-1980s was a land of relentless violence and conflict. As a foreign correspondent based in Johannesburg in those years, I moved from one burning black township to the next, and then on to the huge, tense funeral marches to bury the fallen. Amid states of emergency, crackdowns by the white-minority rulers, and battles among black factions, it often felt like no outcome was possible other than all-out war between whites and the exiled African National Congress.

JOHANNESBURG - Frans “Ting-Ting’’ Masango, a former guerrilla activist once sentenced to death for treason against the apartheid government, has died, South Africa’s ruling African National Congress party said yesterday. He was 51. Mr. Masango died in Pretoria Friday after battling diabetes, the party said. “We dip our revolutionary banner in honor of this distinguished cadre and a selfless combatant who sacrificed immensely to the democratic order we live in today,’’ the ANC said.

STANDERTON, South Africa - Ellen Mgaga’s high school final exams start next week, but her school is closed as protests against the government’s failure to improve lives of poor South Africans have intensified. The rioting - with police firing rubber bullets yesterday to disperse rampaging crowds - evokes images of antiapartheid protests. Some believe such tactics must be jettisoned in a developing democracy. More than 150 people have been arrested in protests that have spread from Standerton, about 90 miles southeast of Johannesburg, to at least four other towns in eastern...