Mr Vorster's success

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33521, 30 April 1974, Page 12

Mr Vorster's success

The most significant unanswered question about the General Election in South Africa is what the Prime Minister, Mr Vorster. had in mind when he called it. A probable part-answer is that he hoped the voting would ’demonstrate that the extreme Right-wing of the ruling Nationalist Party, the Herstigte Nasionale group, wields much less influence within the Government, and throughout the electorate generally. than it claims to do. It was contesting, in its own right. 50 of the 171 seats at stake, including all six of the Namibian (South-West African) seats. Four years ago. when it was regarded as a serious threat to Nationalist unity, its candidates forfeited their rb posits in all but one of the 84 seats contested. Mr Vorster may not say so publicly, but he is likely to be gratified that this trend has continued, without endangering the solidarity of the more moderate elements that he leads. The Right-wingers had campaigned, with rabid vigour, against any watenngdow n at all of apartheid theory. Indeed, they accused the Government of abandoning it. and condemned its Bantustan policy on the grounds that it amounted to giving South Africa to the “kaffirs”. Mr Vorster will now have the complete answer to Right-wing intransigence. Since the Nationalists have increased •heir Parliamentary strength, while the Right-wingers hate lost ground, he will be able to say that such modifications of apartheid as the Government has introduced, including the progressive development of the semi-autonomous Homelands, clearly have the approval of most of the white voters.

National security, as in the past, was the central theme of the campaign, with special reference to white anxieties over the spread of guerrilla activity in neighbouring countries. Mr Vorster can now move <i, Li ly towards a wider recognition of African rights. Mill deal rirmly with internal disaffection. His attitude toward' a critical press may soon be more t rplv defined he said plainly before the campaign started that he would impose new curbs on w'gaper freedom when Parliament convened in August. For the n*t it is of interest that the Progressive Party represented in the last Parliament by only one ■.oer the courageously-outspoken Mrs Helen suz iro been joined by several — probably five m<>re Parliamentary colleagues. The Progressive t arty s -u ie«e« were achieved at the expense of the I t d Party which has been divided over leadership and policy for a long time. It has lacked the firmness f the Progressives in opposing apartheid; and it may well be that an increasing number of Englishspeaking South Africans now feel that the internments slowly-modifying approach to Bantu i laims for equality of status is the safest and. indeed, the inly practicable course to pursue. According to a correspondent of the " Economist ” in Pretoria. Mr \or->r made a point of appealing to these voters ' n <»me across to the laager of once-exclusive •' Afrikaner nationalism. so that the whites might ‘ ;r< <( t a united front to a hostile world ". It is rea'onable to suppose that the accretion of '. .tionalist strength may largely be explained in those terms.