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Thursday, April 28, 1994
NATION/WORLD UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
South Africa's elections surviving setbacks
Bombing spree, shortage of ballots did not deter 'great tide' of voters
The Associated Press
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Police said they crushed a right-wing bombing spree Wednesday, but South Africa's historic election came under threat of collapse from mile-long lines of voters and a shortage of ballots.
Police announced they had arrested 31 white extremists suspected of being behind a bombing spree that has killed 21 in recent days. The latest bomb exploded yesterday at Johannesburg's Jan Smuts airport, injuring 18.
But nothing could stop the great tide of voters on the second day of the three-day elections, nor the euphoria felt by many Blacks as they cast the first ballots of their lives. On Tuesday, handicapped, elderly and expatriate voters had their turn.
Responding to the floods of voters, the government began printing millions of new ballots, saying it would have 5 million more ready by this morning. The army sold it would help print and transport ballots, which never arrived at some
stations. And the government was discussing extending the vote by a day.
At 7 a.m., African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, 75, was able to cast the first ballot of his life, declaring it "the beginning of a new era" after dropping his ballot into a simple brown box in Durban.
Fifteen minutes after Mandela's vote was broadcast live nationwide, a bomb detonated inside a sedan parked outside the international terminal at Johannesburg's Jan Smuts Airport. Eighteen people were wounded.
By-now-familiar scenes of panic, twisted metal, broken glass and bloodied pavement repeated themselves. But this time police were quick to announce they had apprehended a suspect, a tall white man wearing the khaki clothing favored by the white right-wingers. He is believed to be behind a spate of bombs that exploded this week aimed at derailing the election.
The bigger threat yesterday came from the sheer numbers of voters.
Some sites ran out of invisible ink applied to voters' hands so that they could not vote twice. The ink is read with an ultraviolet lamp. Other polling spots lacked either lamps or electricity to run them.
carrying ballots to voting stations in Katelehong was hijacked — not an unusual event in those parts.
With lines stretching more than a mile in places and political parties getting angrier, the Independent Electoral Commission agreed late yesterday to postpone poll closings from 7 p.m. to midnight. Today was declared a holiday so that more people could miss work and stand in line.
The commission pledged that polling stations would remain open as long as needed to accommodate everyone in line at 7 p.m. today.
Election officials admitted that there might simply be more South African voters out there than they had estimated based on previous censuses. Judge Johann Kriegler, overseeing the vote, ordered the printing of 9.3 million additional ballots, with 5 million to be completed by this morning.
Despite the problems, many polling sites were festive.
In Mondeur, outside Johannesburg, entrepreneurs sold pizzas and hot dogs to people in a four-hour queue. "We have ANC Cokes, we have Democratic Party Cokes and we have Nationalist Cokes," called out one hawker trolling for business across the political divide.
In Ventersdorp, perhaps the most far-right
South Africa's new flag
S. A. Moore/KANSAN
town in the country, whites and blacks voted together peacefully less than two blocks from heavily barricaded AWB headquarters.
"If even two years ago, you had told me Blacks and whites would be voting together in Ventersdorp. I would have told you it was a dream," said Rob Van der Velde, the Methodist pastor.
It was also clear that farm workers were not being intimidated from voting.
In several cases, reporters saw Blacks driving tractors pulling flatbed trucks carrying as many as 80 Black voters to the polls. Asked where they got the tractors from, they said the white bosses had lent them and given them the day off.
Study shows format change needed to attract readers
The Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO — To recapture younger readers, front pages need to be more of a menu of the day's news than a showcase for top stories, and coverage needs to be briefer, a newspaper researcher said.
"It is time to get rid of some sacred cows," said Kristin McGrath, president of MORI Research, during a panel discussion at the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America.
McGrath studied attitudes of people ages 25-44 who demographically ought to be loyal readers but only read newspapers three days or less a week.
The most successful ideas will be tested this summer at six newspapers, and a report will be issued about their performance, said Gregory Favre, executive editor of the Sacramento Bee, which participated in the research.
As part of the study, 15 newspapers designed new prototype sections aimed at young readers. Readers then told editors and researchers what they liked and disliked.
Other participants in the panel discussion were Sandra Mims Rowe, executive editor of the Oregonian, and Richard Cheverton, managing editor of planning and strategy for the Orange County Register.
The young adults said they found most news repetitive and irrelevant, said McGrath.
"The same types of things always seem to be newsworthy: murders, disasters," she said. "The cumulative effect is repetitiveness. Only the names and faces change. The news remains the same."
She also said the traditional front-page format was a turnoff.
("Potential readers) told us over and over again that they would like the front page to be a menu or guide to the day's paper rather than a place to showcase the top five or six stories," McGrath said.
U.N. diplomats look to establish 'safe-zone' area
Stage set for possible Serbian attack
The Associated Press
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — The threat of NATO air strikes forced Bosnian Serbs to back down at Gorazde, but there are signs Serb forces plan a new offensive in the north.
The stage appears set for a battle around Brcko, a Serb-controlled town on Bosnia's northern border with Croatia, where the Serbs want to widen a corridor linking their holdings in east and west Bosnia.
Unlike Gorazde and Sarajevo, Brcko — pronounced BIRCH-ko — is not a Muslim enclave surrounded by Serb besiegers. But the potential for violence is so great that some U.N. diplomats are considering designating the region a "safe area."
A year after the United Nations gave that designation to Gorazde and five other Muslim enclaves, NATO Friday threatened air strikes if any are attacked. Under threat of bombing, Serbs stopped their three-week offensive against Gorazde and withdrew their heavy weapons from a 20-kilometer (12.5 mile) exclusion zone
around the city.
Few diplomats believe the Serbs will defy NATO's threat and attack the safe areas. But there are plenty of other targets in Bosnia not covered by the NATO ultimatum.
The region around Breko is vital to Serb dreams of uniting their territories in Bosnia and Croatia with Serb-dominated Yugoslavia to create a "Greater Serbia."
Signs of a pending offensive around Brcko worry Western diplomats and the United Nations.
The Serbs have moved parts of their elite 1st Krajina Corps into the Brcko area, and weapons withdrawn from around Gorazde this week could be redeveloped there. Armor withdrawn from Sarajevo under a NATO threat in February was believed to have been used to attack Gorazde.
"Of course we are concerned about what could happen" around Brcko, said U.N. representative Cmdr. Eric Chaneron in Sariaevo.
Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said Tuesday on CNN that the Security Council is discussing "the possibility
Recent Serb pronouncements about the Brcko area have been ominous.
of making some kind of a safe-zone area around Brcco.
"There'sbeen a sort of steady propaganda campaign about Brekco," said a senior U.S. official involved in peace talks, speaking on condition of anonymity.
"They always tend to couch it in terms of Muslim aggression, which really means that they're getting ready to do something themselves."
Lt. Col. Milovan Milutinovic, a Bosnian Serb military representative, has declared that "100,000 enemy soldiers are poised for the offensive against the area between Doboj and Breko."
Daily Serb media reports speak of Muslim "onslaughts against peaceful Serb villages and defensive positions."
The tone of the reports is identical to allegations a month ago that Muslim-led government troops were attacking Serbs around Gorazde. The three-week Serb "counterattack," supported by tanks and artillery, resulted in occupation of four-fifths of the enclave.
The immediate military aim around Brcko apparently is to expand the corridor of Serb-controlled land in northern Bosnia, which is only two miles wide at its narrowest point.
Truce ends blood flows in Rwanda
The Associated Press
NAIROBI, Kenya—Dozens of orphans, some maimed in machete attacks, were evacuated from Rwanda yesterday, and fighting raged between army and rebel forces in the capital, U.N. officials said.
The United Nations took 44 orphans to Uganda, including 20 who were seriously wounded. The children were butchered, many with arms and legs cut off, in attacks on an orphanage in Muhura, about 22 miles northeast of Kigali, the Rwandan capital, officials with the U.N. World Food Program said.
The children range in age from a few weeks to 11 years old, said Trevor Page, World Food Program coordinator in Kampala, Uganda.
Page said at least 10 of the children were in critical condition.
The identity of the attackers was not known.
The government said yesterday it was not able to stop the ethnic bloodletting that relief workers estimate has killed 100,000 people and forced 1.3 million to flee their homes. The orgy of violence between Hutu and Tutsi ethnic groups began after the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi — both Hutus — were killed in a plane crash April 1.
The next day, the Rwandan presidential guard, some soldiers and militias began slaughtering government ministers, civilians of the minority Tutsi group and Hutus believed to support the formation of a new government that would share power with the mostly Tutsi rebels.
A new government was to be formed under an August peace agreement that ended a three-year war between the rebels and government.
Intense fighting with heavy- caliber weapons and mortars was reported yesterday near the U.N. headquarters and in the center of Kigali, U.N. representative Abdul Kabia said by telephone from the capital.
Unilateral cease-fires declared by both sides on Monday were broken almost immediately. Neither side had responded to a U.N. appeal for a truce, Kabia said.
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THURSDAY, APRIL 28
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