South Africans Archives - MICHAEL O. ALLEN

TAKE NOTE, AMERICANS_Lessons from Across the Sea

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writer | Sunday, April 3, 1994

Saraan Ajaye did not even know South Africa was a country until she took a human rights course a year ago.

Ajaye, a senior at the Bronx alternative high school Schomburg Satelite Academy, now sees the country’s gallop to democracy after three centuries of oppression as a civics lesson.

Never take your vote for granted, she said, pointing out how low turnout of African-American and Latino voters affected the outcome of the recent mayoral election. “As soon as I turned 18, I registered to vote,” she added.

May 10, 2009

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FEAR STALKS THE LAND_‘Whole country has gone mad’

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers, Wednesday | April 6, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—The looming national election has laid a new carpet of fear across this already traumatized and hyper-vigilant society.

With three weeks to go, gun stores and food stores are running out of weapons and non-perishable food, and many whites are bailing out—for the duration of the campaign and its uncertain aftermath, if not for good.

“The whole country has gone mad,” said the owner of a gun store in the seemingly non-violent suburb of Birnam, as he busied himself with customers unhappy to learn that his stock of weapons was practically depleted.

“All I’ve got left are some old M-1 rifles,” he said, as he showed an elderly white man how to load a shotgun the man had brought to the store. “The demand has outstripped my supply. It’s the same all over.”

May 5, 2009

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A TERROR BOMB KILLS NINE: About 100 Hurt in Johannesburg

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers | Monday, April 25, 1994

JOHANNESBURG—A 200-pound car bomb ripped through downtown Johannesburg yesterday, killing nine and terrorizing South Africans two days before the first all-race elections.

“I thought I was dead,” said Tina Dhumess, 42, after doctors patched her head cuts. “I was praying that my soul was going to heaven.”

There was no warning and no one claimed responsibility for the city’s worst terrorist bomb that also wounded 100 people.

But suspicion fell on white extremists—the last holdouts to the election that would usher in black-majority rule.

April 23, 2009

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BLOODIED BUT DEFIANT, SOUTH AFRICANS VOW . . . WE WILL VOTE_BOMBERS DON’T STOP VOTE

By michael o. allenHomepage, New York Daily News, South Africa: The Freedom VoteNo Comments

By GENE MUSTAIN and MICHAEL O. ALLEN, Daily News Staff Writers | Tuesday, April 26, 1994

GERMISTON—Dennis Makubela will vote. Someone almost killed him yesterday, but he will vote.

Mavis Phungula will vote. Someone almost killed her too, when a bomb—the worst of many that exploded across the country yesterday—destroyed a crowded taxi stand in this mining town near Johannesburg. But she will vote.

It is not known if Poppy Skosana will vote. She was too distraught to talk, for the bomb had severed her son Dickson in two and thrown the top half of him, still in the bucket seat of his taxi, 50 yards down Hudson Street.

But Philemon Maseko will vote. He was standing on Hudson Street when half of Dickson Skosana in the bucket seat landed on top of him. He was taken to the same hospital as the others, and he will vote.

April 21, 2009

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