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Speech At The Opening Of The Parliament Of South Africa, 1990
On 2 February 1990, the State President of South Africa F. W. de Klerk delivered a speech at the opening of the 1990 session of the Parliament of South Africa in Cape Town in which he announced sweeping reforms that marked the beginning of the negotiated transition from apartheid to constitutional democracy. The reforms promised in the speech included the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and other anti-apartheid organisations, the release of political prisoners including Nelson Mandela, the end of the state of emergency, and a moratorium on the death penalty. Background South Africa's ruling National Party had instituted a policy of apartheid in 1948, separating the different ethnic groups into set areas and only giving white South Africans the right to vote. This was opposed by several groups including the African National Congress (ANC) which often resorted to violent means to oppose it. This resulted in most African nationalist groups being banned by the ...
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Houses Of Parliament, Cape Town
The Houses of Parliament of South Africa are situated in Cape Town. The building consists of three main sections: the original building, completed in 1884, and additions constructed in the 1920s and 1980s. The newer additions house the National Assembly (the lower house of the bicameral Parliament of South Africa), and the original building houses the National Council of Provinces (the upper house of Parliament). The original parliament building was designed in a Neoclassical style, incorporating features of Cape Dutch architecture. The later additions have been so designed as to blend with the original building. The Houses of Parliament have been declared a National Heritage Site by the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA) and given grade 1 national heritage status, the highest grade set by SAHRA. Parliament House was severely damaged by a large fire that broke out on 2 January 2022. History Queen Victoria granted permission for the establishment of a parliament ...
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Cape Coloured
Cape Coloureds () are a South African ethnic group consisted primarily of persons of mixed race and Khoisan descent. Although Coloureds form a minority group within South Africa, they are the predominant population group in the Western Cape. They are generally bilingual, speaking Afrikaans and English, though some speak only one of these. Some Cape Coloureds may code switch, speaking a patois of Afrikaans and English called also known as Cape Slang (Capy) or , meaning Kitchen Afrikaans. Cape Coloureds were classified under apartheid as a subset of the larger Coloured race group. At least one genetic study indicates that Cape Coloureds have an ancestry consisting of the following ethnic groups: * Khoisan: (32–43%) * Bantu-speaking Africans: (20–36%) * Ethnic groups in Europe: (21–28%) * Asian peoples: (9–11%) Origin and history The Cape Coloureds are a heterogeneous South African ethnic group, with diverse ancestral links. Ancestry may include European settlers, i ...
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Afrikaner
Afrikaners () are a South African ethnic group descended from Free Burghers, predominantly Dutch settlers first arriving at the Cape of Good Hope in the 17th and 18th centuries.Entry: Cape Colony. ''Encyclopædia Britannica Volume 4 Part 2: Brain to Casting''. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. 1933. James Louis Garvin, editor. They traditionally dominated South Africa's politics and commercial agricultural sector prior to 1994. Afrikaans, South Africa's third most widely spoken home language, evolved as the First language, mother tongue of Afrikaners and most Cape Coloureds. It originated from the Dutch language, Dutch vernacular of South Holland, incorporating words brought from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and Madagascar by slaves. Afrikaners make up approximately 5.2% of the total South African population, based upon the number of White South Africans who speak Afrikaans as a first language in the South African National Census of 2011. The arrival of Portugal, Portug ...
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Koos Van Der Merwe
Jacobus Hercules "Koos" van der Merwe (born 4 August 1937) is a South African former politician. He was a member of the South African Parliament, representing the National Party, Conservative Party and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). He was a member of the House of Assembly and later the South African National Assembly between 1977 and 2014, being the longest serving member of Parliament at the time of his retirement. Personal life Van der Merwe was born on 4 August 1937 in the Orange Free State. He studied at the University of Pretoria before working as an insurer. He then earned a diploma in law from the University of South Africa and later qualified as a lawyer. In the early 1990s, he lived in Johannesburg. Political career Van der Merwe first got involved in politics as a child by helping put up posters for the National Party at the 1948 South African general election. He was elected as a member of Parliament for Jeppe representing the National Party in 1977. He gained ...
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South African Communist Party
The South African Communist Party (SACP) is a communist party in South Africa. It was founded in 1921 as the Communist Party of South Africa (CPSA), tactically dissolved itself in 1950 in the face of being declared illegal by the governing National Party under the Suppression of Communism Act, 1950. The Communist Party was reconstituted underground and re-launched as the SACP in 1953, participating in the struggle to end the apartheid system. It is a member of the ruling Tripartite Alliance alongside the African National Congress and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and through this it influences the South African government. The party's Central Committee is the party's highest decision-making structure. History The Communist Party of South Africa was founded in 1921 by the joining together of the International Socialist League and others under the leadership of Willam H. Andrews. It first came to prominence during the Rand Revolt, a strike by white mine ...
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Pan Africanist Congress
The Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (known as the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC)) is a South African national liberation Pan-Africanist movement that is now a political party. It was founded by an Africanist group, led by Robert Sobukwe, that broke away from the African National Congress (ANC) in 1959, as the PAC objected to the ANC's "the land belongs to all who live in it both white and black" and also rejected a multiracialist worldview, instead advocating a South Africa based on African nationalism. History The PAC was formally launched on 6 April 1959 at Orlando Communal Hall in Soweto. A number of African National Congress (ANC) members broke away because they objected to the substitution of the 1949 ''Programme of Action'' with the Freedom Charter adopted in 1955, which used multiracialist language as opposed to Africanist affirmations. The PAC at the time considered South Africa to be an African state by right an "inalienable right of the indigenous African people" a ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. She was the first female British prime minister and the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. As prime minister, she implemented economic policies that became known as Thatcherism. A Soviet journalist dubbed her the "Iron Lady", a nickname that became associated with her uncompromising politics and leadership style. Thatcher studied chemistry at Somerville College, Oxford, and worked briefly as a research chemist, before becoming a barrister. She was List of MPs elected in the 1959 United Kingdom general election, elected Member of Parliament for Finchley (UK Parliament constituency), Finchley in 1959 United Kingdom general election, 1959. Edward Heath appointed her Secretary of State for Education and Science in his H ...
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Prime Minister Of The United Kingdom
The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, they sit as members of Parliament. The office of prime minister is not established by any statute or constitutional document, but exists only by long-established convention, whereby the reigning monarch appoints as prime minister the person most likely to command the confidence of the House of Commons; this individual is typically the leader of the political party or coalition of parties that holds the largest number of seats in that chamber. The prime minister is '' ex officio'' also First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service and the minister responsible for national security. Indeed, certain privileges, such as List ...
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Thabo Mbeki
Thabo Mvuyelwa Mbeki KStJ (; born 18 June 1942) is a South African politician who was the second president of South Africa from 14 June 1999 to 24 September 2008, when he resigned at the request of his party, the African National Congress (ANC). Before that, he was deputy president under Nelson Mandela between 1994 and 1999. The son of Govan Mbeki, a renowned ANC intellectual, Mbeki has been involved in ANC politics since 1956, when he joined the ANC Youth League, and has been a member of the party's National Executive Committee since 1975. Born in the Transkei, he left South Africa aged twenty to attend university in England, and spent almost three decades in exile abroad, until the ANC was unbanned in 1990. He rose through the organisation in its information and publicity section and as Oliver Tambo's protégé, but he was also an experienced diplomat, serving as the ANC's official representative in several of its African outposts. He was an early advocate for and leader o ...
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1989 South African General Election
General elections were held in South Africa on 6 September 1989, the last under apartheid. Snap elections had been called early (no election was required until 1992) by the recently elected head of the National Party (NP), F. W. de Klerk, who was in the process of replacing P. W. Botha as the country's president, and his expected program of reform to include further retreat from the policy of apartheid. The creation of the Conservative Party had realigned the NP as a moderate party, now almost certain to initiate negotiations with the black opposition, with liberal opposition (the PFP) openly seeking a new constitutional settlement on liberal democratic and federalist principles. Although the National Party won a comfortable majority of seats (94 of 166) in the House of Assembly, the governing party suffered a setback and received only 48% of the popular vote, the first elections since 1961 in which the NP failed to win a majority of the vote. However, the first-past-the-post ...
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Barend Du Plessis
Barend Jacobus du Plessis (born 19 January 1940 in Johannesburg) is a South African retired politician and a former member of the now-dissolved National Party, as well as Minister of Finance in 1984–1992. Early life and education Du Plessis grew up in Boksburg where he began his education at Pioneer Primary School and matriculated at Voortrekker High School in 1956. He obtained his BSc degree in 1960 from the Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education (now North – West University) and in 1961 he completed his Transvaal Higher Education degree. During his studies, he played an active role in the Transvaal Education Training College Union. Although the organisation dealt mainly with students and training issues, it could be seen as his first steps into the political arena. He was elected president of the student council, which enabled him to travel overseas to The Netherlands, West Germany, and Belgium, where he met other student leaders. He also campaigned ...
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