Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions given below:
A few moments later we all lifted our eyes in awe as a
spectacular array of South African jets, helicopters and troop carriers roared
in perfect formation over the Union Buildings. It was not only a display of
pinpoint precision and military force, but a demonstration of the military’s
loyalty to democracy, to a new government that had been freely and fairly
elected. Only moments before, the highest generals of the South African defence
force and police, their chests bedecked with tibbons and medals from days gone
by, saluted me and pledged their loyalty. I was not unmindful of the fact that not so many years before they would
not have saluted but arrested me. Finally a chevron of Impala jets left a smoke
trail of the black, red, green, blue and gold of the new South African flag.
The day was symbolised for me by the playing of our
two national anthems, and the vision of whites singing ‘Nkosi -iAfrika’ and
blacks singing ‘Die Stem’, the old anthem. of the Republic. Although that day
neither group knew the lyrics of the anthem they once despised, they would soon
know the words by heart.
On the day of the inauguration, I was overwhelmed with
a sense of history. In the first decade of the twentieth century, a few years
after the bitter Anglo-Boer war and before my own birth, the white-skinned
peoples of South Africa patched up their differences and erected a system of
racial domination against the dark-skinned peoples of their own land, The
structure they created formed the basis of one. of the harshest, most inhumane,
societies the world has ever known. Now, in the last decade of the twentieth
century, and my own eighth decade as a man, That system had been overturned
forever and replaced by one that recognised the rights and freedoms of all
peoples regardless of the colour of their skin.
Questions:
(a) Write about the display of the South. African
jets, helicopters and troop carriers that took place In this occasion?
(b) What could the highest generals have done to the author earlier?
(c) Name the two national anthems played.
(d) When was the inauguration taking place?
(e) Whathad happened after the Anglo-Boer war?
(f) What was the new system of governance?
