In parliament portraits of the old NP leaders have been removed from the main foyer

In parliament, portraits of the old NP leaders have been removed from the main foyer but they have been rehung in siderooms. Today, many blacks still believe there has been too much pussyfooting around. This week the grandson of Enoch Sontonga, composer of the liberation anthem “Nkosi Sikelel iAfrica”, said it was time for the music to stand alone as the National Anthem and that the Afrikaans’ “Die Stem”, which was tagged on for the sake of unity, be dropped.But, so far, that has not been the ANC way. In the interests of reconciliation the President has opposed wholesale toppling of the symbols of the past.In the early days, some blacks wanted to storm Pretoria’s austere Voortrekker Monument, erected as testament to the Afrikaners’ conviction that they were God’s chosen people. The ANC is deliberately tip-toeing through the cultural minefield. On Monday, his bust, overshadowing the entrance to the notorious Johannesburg police station which took his name, was removed to a police museum in Pretoria to claps and sarcastic shouts of “go well” from a crowd.Today, to mark National Heritage Day, the John Vorster tower block, from which a succession of black activists “fell”, will be renamed Johannesburg Central.But such removals have been few.

It is a delicate business because the resentment of the deposed, as the rare act of vandalism shows, simmers just beneath the surface.As Biko went up this month, John Vorster, the late former National Party leader, came down. Now its threats that blood would flow before Afrikaners relinquished power have come to nothing, the extreme right seems to have turned towards more petty forms of resistance.
Mr Biko’s memorial, unveiled earlier this month, is part of what Themba Wakashe, an arts ministry director, describes as the levelling of South Africa’s lopsided heritage; a cultural terrain, which after four decades of Afrikaner nationalism, is still carpeted with monuments and memorials to “Volk” heroes and dead National Party presidents.”There was a time when you drove through this country and looked at what was preserved and you would never have guessed you were in an African country,” says Mr Wakashe, who is at the forefront of the campaign to redefine South African culture. For as Biko’s image was being defaced the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was hearing the testimony of five security policemen who have confessed to causing his death 20 years ago. The towering bronze statue of the late Steve Biko did not remain unscathed for long. Just hours after it was unveiled by President Nelson Mandela, the signature of the AWB, the right-wing Afrikaner paramilitary organisation, was spray painted at the feet of the liberation hero

The timing made it a particularly vicious act.

China, Korea and other countries in eastern Asia are wary of any offensive use of Japanese forces in the region despite tight restrictions in Japan’s constitution against such deployment – Reuters. The United States and Japan announced yesterday that they had approved the first changes in their regional security cooperation arrangements in almost 20 years. Under the new guidelines Japan agreed in principle to give key military support to US forces in an Asian crisis, including access to bases, while maintaining its ban on the use of offensive military might. The discovery was a victory for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who challenged Yasser Arafat’s claim that the assailants came from abroad. Israel said the four were on a list of 88 activists it had handed to the Palestinian Authority with the demand they be arrested AP. Four of the five Islamic militants who blew themselves up in two recent suicide bombings in Jerusalem were Hamas activists who lived in the West Bank village of Assira, the Israeli authorities announced yesterday.