Robert Smit
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Robert Smit
Robert van Schalkwyk Smit was an economist and parliamentary candidate for South Africa's National Party (South Africa), National Party, tipped as a future Minister of Finance. He was murdered, along with his wife Jean-Cora, on 22 November 1977. No arrests have ever been made, and there was little evidence in the case, but the murders are widely suspected to have been politically motivated. Cabinet Minister Pik Botha described it as "one of the most haunting criminal mysteries in our country," and the police investigation remained open as of November 2012. Life and career Smit attended Pembroke College, Oxford, on a Rhodes Scholarship and received a doctorate in economics from Stellenbosch University. He was a member of the National Party (South Africa), National Party, which governed in South Africa throughout apartheid, and in 1967, aged 34, he was appointed Deputy Secretary of Finance. From 1971 to 1975, he was South Africa's ambassador to the International Monetary Fund in W ...
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Brackets
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'right' bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the Writing system#Directionality, directionality of the context. Specific forms of the mark include parentheses (also called "rounded brackets"), square brackets, curly brackets (also called 'braces'), and angle brackets (also called 'chevrons'), as well as various less common pairs of symbols. As well as signifying the overall class of punctuation, the word "bracket" is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified word "bracket" refers to the parenthesis (round bracket); in the United States, the square bracket. Glossary of mathematical sym ...
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Information Scandal
The Muldergate scandal, also known as the Information Scandal or Infogate, was a South African political scandal involving a secret propaganda campaign conducted by the apartheid Department of Information. It centred on revelations about the Department's use of a multi-million rand secret slush fund, channelled from the defence budget, to fund an ambitious series of projects in publishing, media relations, public relations, lobbying, and diplomacy. Most ambitiously, the fund was used to establish a new pro-government newspaper, the ''Citizen'', and in attempts to purchase both the '' Rand Daily Mail'' and the ''Washington Star''. The projects, involving a total amount of at least $72 million (over $300 million in 2021 terms), aimed primarily to counter negative perceptions of the South African government in foreign countries, especially in the West. The scandal broke in 1977 and implicated the Prime Minister, B. J. Vorster. Also centrally involved in "Project Annemarie" were Esche ...
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People Murdered In South Africa
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts. In addition to the question of personhood, of what makes a being count as a person to begin with, there are further questions about personal identity and self: both about what makes any particular person that particular person instead of another, and about what makes a person at one time the same person as they were or will be at another time despite any intervening changes. The plural form "people" is often used to refer to an entire nation or ethnic group (as in "a people"), and this was the original meaning of the word; it subsequently acquired its use as a plural form of per ...
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National Party (South Africa) Politicians
National Party or Nationalist Party may refer to: Active parties * National Party of Australia * Bangladesh: ** Bangladesh Nationalist Party ** Jatiya Party (Ershad) a.k.a. ''National Party (Ershad)'' * California National Party * Nationalist Party of Canada * Kuomintang or ''Chinese Nationalist Party'', in Mainland China (1919–1949) and Taiwan (since 1949) * National Party (Denmark) * National Party (Ireland) * National Party of Honduras * Hong Kong National Party * Homeland Party (Libya) or ''Libyan National Party'' * Basotho National Party, in Lesotho * Nationalist Party (Malta) * Frisian National Party, in the Netherlands * New Zealand National Party * Pakistan: ** Awami National Party ** Balochistan National Party (Mengal) ** National Party (Pakistan) ** Kalat State National Party * National Party (Papua New Guinea) * Nacionalista Party, in the Philippines * Plaid Genedlaethol Cymru or ''The National Party of Wales'' * Samoa National Party * Scottish National Party * ...
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Assassinated South African Politicians
Assassination is the murder of a prominent or VIP, important person, such as a head of state, head of government, politician, world leader, member of a royal family or CEO. The murder of a celebrity, activist, or artist, though they may not have a direct role in matters of the state, may also sometimes be considered an assassination. An assassination may be prompted by political and military Motive (law), motives, or done for contract killing, financial gain, to revenge, avenge a grievance, from a desire to acquire fame or infamy, notoriety, or because of a military, security, insurgent or secret police group's command to carry out the assassination. Acts of assassination have been performed since Ancient history, ancient times. A person who carries out an assassination is called an assassin or hitman. Etymology The word ''assassin'' may be derived from ''wikt:أساسي#Arabic, asasiyyin'' (Arabic: أَسَاسِيِّين‎, ʾasāsiyyīn) from أَسَاس‎ (ʾasās, " ...
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1977 Deaths
Events January * January 8 – Three bombs explode in Moscow within 37 minutes, killing seven. The bombings are attributed to an Armenian separatist group. * January 10 – Mount Nyiragongo erupts in eastern Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo). * January 17 ** 49 marines from the and are killed as a result of a collision in Barcelona harbour, Spain. * January 18 ** Scientists identify a previously unknown bacterium as the cause of the mysterious Legionnaires' disease. ** Australia's worst railway disaster at Granville, a suburb of Sydney, leaves 83 people dead. ** SFR Yugoslavia Prime minister Džemal Bijedić, his wife and 6 others are killed in a plane crash in Bosnia and Herzegovina. * January 19 – An Ejército del Aire CASA C-207C Azor (registration T.7-15) plane crashes into the side of a mountain near Chiva, on approach to Valencia Airport in Spain, killing all 11 people on board. * January 20 – Jimmy Carter is sworn in as the 39th Preside ...
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Truth And Reconciliation Commission (South Africa)
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was a court-like restorative justice body assembled in South Africa in 1996 after the end of apartheid. Authorised by Nelson Mandela and chaired by Desmond Tutu, the commission invited witnesses who were identified as victims of gross human rights violations to give statements about their experiences, and selected some for public hearings. Perpetrators of violence could also give testimony and request amnesty from both civil and criminal prosecution. The TRC was seen by many as a crucial component of the transition to full and free democracy in South Africa. Despite some flaws, it is generally (although not universally) thought to have been successful. The Institute for Justice and Reconciliation was established in 2000 as the successor organisation of the TRC. Creation and mandate The TRC was set up in terms of the ''Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act'', No. 34 of 1995, and was based in Cape Town. The hearing ...
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Bureau Of State Security
The Bureau for State Security ( af, Buro vir Staatsveiligheid; also known as the Bureau of State Security (BOSS)) was the main South African state intelligence agency from 1969 to 1980. A high-budget and secretive institution, it reported directly to the Prime Minister of South Africa, Prime Minister on its broad national security mandate. Under this mandate, it was at the centre of the Apartheid state's domestic intelligence and foreign intelligence activities, including counterinsurgency efforts both Internal resistance to apartheid, inside South Africa and in neighbouring countries. Like other appendages of the Apartheid security forces, it has been implicated in human rights violations, political repression, and extra-judicial killings. For most of its existence, BOSS was headed by General Hendrik van den Bergh (police official), Hendrik van den Bergh, who, while special Security Adviser to Prime Minister John Vorster, was instrumental in its establishment. The Truth and Reconc ...
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South Africa And Weapons Of Mass Destruction
From the 1960s to the 1990s, South Africa pursued research into weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons under the apartheid government. Six nuclear weapons were assembled. South African strategy was, if political and military instability in Southern Africa became unmanageable, to conduct a nuclear weapon test in a location such as the Kalahari desert, where an underground testing site had been prepared, to demonstrate its capability and resolve—and thereby highlight the peril of intensified conflict in the region—and then invite a larger power such as the United States to intervene. Before the anticipated changeover to a majority-elected African National Congress–led government in the 1990s, the South African government dismantled all of its nuclear weapons, the first state in the world which voluntarily gave up all nuclear arms it had developed itself. The country has been a signatory of the Biological Weapons Convention since 19 ...
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John Vorster
Balthazar Johannes "B. J." Vorster (; also known as John Vorster; 13 December 1915 – 10 September 1983) was a South African apartheid politician who served as the prime minister of South Africa from 1966 to 1978 and the fourth state president of South Africa from 1978 to 1979. Known as B. J. Vorster during much of his career, he came to prefer the anglicized name John in the 1970s. Vorster strongly adhered to his country's policy of apartheid, overseeing (as Minister of Justice) the Rivonia Trial, in which Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage, (as Prime Minister) the Terrorism Act, the complete abolition of non-white political representation, the Soweto Riots and the Steve Biko crisis. He conducted a more pragmatic foreign policy than his predecessors, in an effort to improve relations between the white minority government and South Africa's neighbours, particularly after the break-up of the Portuguese colonial empire. Shortly after the 1978 ...
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Slush Fund
A slush fund is a fund or account that is not properly accounted, such as money used for corrupt or illegal purposes, especially in the political sphere. Such funds may be kept hidden and maintained separately from money that is used for legitimate purposes. Slush funds may be employed by government or corporate officials in efforts to pay influential people discreetly in return for preferential treatment, advance information (such as non-public information in financial transactions), and other services. The funds themselves may not be kept secret but the source of the funds or how they were acquired or for what purposes they are used may be hidden. Use of slush funds to influence government activities may be viewed as subversive of the democratic process. In accounting, the term ''slush fund'' describes a general ledger account of commingled funds to which all manner of transactions can be posted, with debits and credits cancelling each other. Examples Richard Nixon's "Che ...
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Johannesburg
Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Demographia, the Johannesburg–Pretoria urban area (combined because of strong transport links that make commuting feasible) is the 26th-largest in the world in terms of population, with 14,167,000 inhabitants. It is the provincial capital and largest city of Gauteng, which is the wealthiest province in South Africa. Johannesburg is the seat of the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa. Most of the major South African companies and banks have their head offices in Johannesburg. The city is located in the mineral-rich Witwatersrand range of hills and is the centre of large-scale gold and diamond trade. The city was established in 1886 following the discovery of gold on what had been a farm. Due to the extremely large gold de ...
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