S. African election will come down to fight for Right

Press, 21 January 1987, Page 14

S. African election will come down to fight for Right

From a correspondent for the “Economist” in South Africa

Two things seem sure about the General Election for whites which South Africa’s President Botha has promised to hold in the first half of this year. The first is that the ruling National Party, which hold 127 of the 178 seats in the white chamber of Parliament, will be returned to power.

The second is that its majority will be reduced. By how much depends on whether the ultraRight parties can patch up their differences enough to merge, or at least form an electoral pact. The election is likely to be held in April or May, and. will be first since a group of National Party members of Parliament, protesting against Mr Botha’s mildly reformist policies, broke away in 1982 to form the Conservative party under Dr Andrites Treurnicht. The Ultra-Right, spearheaded by the Herstigte Nasionale Party, captured a third of Afrikanerdom’s votes in the election of 1981. This time the H.N.P. will be reinformced by the Conservatives. If the two parties forge an alliance, they could increase the number of seats they control. Getting together will not be

easy. The Conservative Party has called on all “true conservative” to attend a unity conference in Pretoria on January 24 to discuss merging the two parties. But the H.N.P. leader, Mr Jaap Marais, says the Conservatives want to hijack his party and has urged its loyalists to stay away._„_ Still, Mr Marais is keen on some sort of alliance, because the H.N.P., with one seat in ’ Parliament and 3 per cent in the opinion polls,, will be the chief beneficiary. Although opinion polls give the National Party nearly 50 per cent of the white votes — against less than 20 per cent in all for the far-Right parties — Mr Botha is clearly nervous. No ruling party in South Africa has ever lost an election by tilting too far Right. But the far Right wants to restore the uncompromising apartheid of Hendrik Verwoerd. If it stays split, it will do more than help the National Party to keep its losses small: it will also boost the chance that reforms will be cautiously resumed once the election is over.

A good showing by the

National Party may give Mr Botha a chance to bow gracefully out of power. If he did step aside, the betting now is that the presidency would go to Mr Chris Heunis, the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning or to Mr F. W. de Klerk, the Minister of National Education. But there are signs that Mr Botha has lately recovered his appetite for power. He has brought an elderly ally, Mr Alwyn Schlebusch, back into the cabinet — probably to keep would-be successors at bay. If Mr Botha stays on, more reforms are certainly possible. These could include repeal of the Separate Amenities Act and relaxation of the Group Areas Act. The separate amenities law provides for racially separate — and in practice unequal — public facilities, including beaches, swimming pools, and cinemas. The Group Areas Act, one of the pillars of apartheid, makes residential segration compulsory. It could be relaxed by giving whites in each locality the option of desegregating their own area if they wished.

Copyright — The Economist.