De Klerk Restricts Covert Operations
President Frederik W. de Klerk, facing mounting criticism over killings of political opponents, has put covert operations of the South African military under civilian control and pledged that they will be kept to “an absolute minimum.”
Announcing the move Thursday night, De Klerk said the action was necessary in the interests of justice and because charges of official involvement in killings of anti-apartheid activists were threatening his political reform plans.
De Klerk pledged that any official found to be implicated in political assassinations would be brought to justice.
Hours later, the first African National Congress members to return home to South Africa since the president lifted a ban on the guerrilla organization arrived Friday to a hero’s welcome.
Veteran activists Ray Alexander, 76, and her 83-year-old husband, Jack Simon, were greeted at Johannesburg’s Jan Smuts airport by about 500 ANC supporters and family members, many of whom they had not seen for a quarter of a century.
During his years in exile, Simon has been a key figure in formulating the ANC’s constitutional guidelines for a post-apartheid South Africa.
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