Items

• Violence Hits Central Johannesburg after Execution of Moloise

  International outrage and violent demonstrations in the centre of Johannesburg followed the execution yesterday in Pretoria of Benjamin Moloise, a black South African poet. The execution - carried out in spite of pleas from around the world for clemency - prompted an angry response from Commonwealth heads of government, meeting in Nassau. Efforts are under way there to draw up a joint policy aimed to end apartheid in South Africa. [Article continues to describe Margaret Thatcher's involvement, and the meeting of the Commonwealth leaders/how they plan to work to end apartheid.]
• Sportsman and Poet

  A statement issued yesterday by Maindy Msimang, administrative officer of the African National Congress in London, said: "News of the attempted murder of Dennis Brutus by the trigger-happy South African police, who are reported to have fired two shots at him at close range, will shock millions of people in South Africa and abroad, who have known him as a former weightlifting champion but also, and more particularly, as a dauntless opponent of racial discrimination in South African sport. A gifted young poet, who recently won the Nigerian award in a competition of African poets, Dennis Brutus has been hounded and persecuted by the South African Government."
• Pretoria judge delays hanging

  A three week stay of execution was granted last night to Benjamin Moloise, who was due to be hanged shortly after dawn today for the murder of a black security policeman... Moloise, a poet and upholsterer, aged 30, was convincted in November 1983 of the murder of Warrant Officer Phillip Selope, who was shot in an ambush in a township outside Pretoria a year earlier. The African National Congress has said it ordered the "execution" of the policeman for his part in the arrest of three ANC guerrillas who were later hanged in Pretoria, but that Moloise had no part in it.
• Eng. Lit. Expands

  [Excerpt]: "...In Africa, what is past or passing or to come makes up the contemporary community: and the modern African writer often reacts violently against it. Wole Soyinka in his plays belabours it like a latterday Yeats dethroning Irish nineteenth-century political rhetoric; George Awoonor-Williams in his poems hopes for a continuation of its wisdom in a materialistic rootless society; the late Christopher Okigbo measured the loss, the complete cancelling out. In Chinua Achebe's profound novels comes the most skilful handling of the theme: the bridging of time between village and city, all illuminated with a variety of tone, a subtlety of speech, which is only now being recognized, and which needed the critical understanding of John Pepper Clark, the Nigerian dramatist, to make the social nuances of its characters clear to the non-African reader..."
• Black poet will hang on Friday after Botha rules out retrial

  President Botha of South Africa turned down a petition yesterday for a retrial of a black man sentenced to death in June 1983 for the murder of a security policeman, also black, seven months earlier. The convicted man, Benjamin Moloise, aged 30, a poet and upholsterer by trade, who has been in "Death Row" in Pretoria Central Prison since his conviction, will be hanged on Friday. No further appeal is possible. ...Fears have been expressed that the execution could provoke a violent reaction from blacks at a time of serious unrest. A partial state of emergency has been in force in South Africa since July 20. [Article continues to describe other instances of violent unrest.]
• Black poet reprieved

  Lawyers won a 21-day stay of execution for black South African poet Benjamin Moloise who was due to have been hanged in Pretoria this morning for killing a policeman.
• Black poet defiant in face of death

  The mother of Benjamin Moloise, the poet convicted of killing a black security policeman, yesterday sang the song he intends to chant as he is led to the gallows in Pretoria Central prison today... Mrs. Moloise said her son gave a clenched fist black nationalist salute as he was led from the interview room back to his cell... The ANC said that if Moloise goes to the gallows his death would be avenged "in every corner of our land."
• The Sick Mind of China

  "Halfway through the play the murder of Patrice Lumumba was announced."
• Lumumba Stamp

  "Moscow Tuesday.--New Soviet stamps include one bearing the potrait of Patrice Lumumba, the murderd Premier of the Congo."--Reuter
• Provocative view of Hammarskjold

  "He accuses him of bungling in the Congo and of being responsible for the death of its Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba."
• The Week Ahead

  "King Badouin of the Belgians, treated to a bitter anti-colonial tirade by Patrice Lumumba when he visited Leopoldville for Congo's independence, returns to the city now Kinshasa, for 25th anniversary celebrations."
• We're sorry, say Russians

  "The Soviet Government has appologiised and promised to pay for damage caused by demonstrators who attacked the Belgian embassy in Moscow last month after the murder of Patrice Lumumba."
• Little Women in Africa

  "If there is a heroine in this story--and in a way, all the women, even Rachel, are heroines, it is Ruth who marries and Africa, endures his imprisonment, the corruptions that follws the murder of Patrice Lumumba and the exhausting daily struggle against hunger and disease."
• Indomitable spirit

  "The murder of Patrice Lumumba realeased a tide of violence and terror, white women were raped, civillians were murdered."
• Points

  "But if there is real "evidence" from the role played by senior memebers of the secretariat, with coperation from US officials, in bringing about the downfall of Patrice Lumumba, or indeed anything else of interest, let us hear it".
• Coming in from the cold

  "American soldiers keep watch as the Berlin wall is extended."
• A Legend in the Making

  "Above: JFK is told by the UN ambsador that the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo has been assasinated."
• The most hated African in Africa

  "The reasons why men have gone to great lengths to bring Moise Tshombe to face his death sentence in Congo rest on a simple fact: Tshombe's six-year long and undisputed rating as the most hated African in Africa."
• The daddy of them all

  "On a 1960 tour of Africa, Armstrong's All Stars played in Leopoldville in the Congo four days after Patrice Lumumba was assasinated."
• The clouds of official unknowing

  "Brian Urquhart certainly knows more about the United Nation than any living person."
• Human vultures move into rotten heart of Zaire

  "The grandiose steel and concrete needle that should have been a memorial to the nation's icon, Patrice Lumumba, the Prime Minister that was murdered and martyred in 1961 has been forgotten, and the gardens at its base have been submerged in a wilderness of weeds."
• Not playing the game

  "But there is no mention of the CIA's assassination in 1961 of Congo's first democratically elected president, Patrice Lumumba or the montrouss dictator with whom they replaced him with, Mobutu Sese Seko."
• Rocky ducks questions on Cia role in death plans

  "But the church is also investigating alleged plots against Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and President Diem of South Vietnam."
• Obituaries

  "Larry Devlin, who has died age 86, was a CIA spy during the cold war and was once ordered to assassinate the republic of Congo's Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba with a tube of poisoned toothpaste."
• Land of Sorrows

  "Early on, Patrice Lumumba, Congo's first democratically ellected leader was murdered with Belgian and CIA connivance, his dismembered body dissolved in sulphuric acid."