World Notes: South Africa

For decades, most of the South Africans arrested for political protest have been black. But now that the government has entered formal negotiations for a new constitution with black political parties, including the African National Congress, President F.W. de Klerk is signaling a more evenhanded approach.

Last week police arrested Eugene Terre Blanche, head of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, and nine of his most senior lieutenants, and charged them with public violence. The government's action followed a lengthy investigation of a violent clash between Terre Blanche's pro-apartheid brownshirts and police last August in which three people were killed outside a meeting hall where De Klerk was speaking.

Terre Blanche, a former policeman, complained that his 10-year-old daughter had to watch him being arrested. Another of the right-wing movement's leaders, Piet Rudolph, seemed unaware of the irony when he said, "This is what one should expect in a police state."