SOUTH AFRICA: Back with a Thud

Shivering under the biting wind that whistled through Bloemfontein's sports stadium, more than 30,000 South Africans watched the husky, white-haired man with two fresh scars on his face and neck hold aloft a small white dove. "This is our messenger of good will," he cried. But, as the crowd sat in stunned silence, the bird fell to earth with a small, feathery thud, declining to fly. With such inauspicious symbolism did South Africa's Prime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd return last week to public life, two months after an assassin's attempt on his life.

In his absence, scores...