The World - News from Oct. 16, 1986

Johannesburg’s city council, in an extraordinary political slight to the country’s chief of state, canceled plans to honor South African President Pieter W. Botha. The council’s management committee, deciding that Botha’s policies are too controversial and that he has become too divisive a figure, dropped “with regret” its plans to make him a “freeman” of Johannesburg at a banquet celebrating the city’s centenary next month. The embarrassed committee then canceled the banquet as well.