S.A. Govt retains its hold on power

Press, 8 September 1989, Page 6

S.A. Govt retains its hold on power

NZPA-Reuter Johannesburg The National Party weathered assaults from right and left to win an outright majority yesterday in South Africa’s segregated elections, extending its 41-year hold on white minority rule.

While the National Party leader and acting President, Mr F. W. de Klerk, Was claiming his party’s eleventh straight election victory, riots on the blacks’ exclusion from the voting raged in Cape Town, killing at least one protester. Security forces battled for hours with stonethrowing youths in coloured Cape townships, the scene in recent weeks of the biggest eruptions of anti-apartheid violence since South Africa declared emergency rule in 1986.

An elated Mr De Klerk declined to answer questions about the unrest shortly after the National Party victory was confirmed. “I think the Government handled the socalled defiance campaign

with aplomb and in a very reasonable way,” he said. With only five results 1 outstanding, the National Party won 90 seats of the 166 available.

The far-right Conservative Party maintained its position as the official opposition with 38 seats. The anti-apartheid Democratic Party won 33 seats. Both opposition parties sliced deeply into National Party support. Mr De Klerk faces an uphill struggle to maintain party morale as he launches a programme of apartheid reform which he said would give the 1 voteless black majority a say in national politics. “I regard this result as a clear mandate to the National Party to implement its five-year action (reform) plan,” Mr De Klerk said.

The result highlights the widening rift in white South African politics, which is squeezing the National Party from both

sides, analysts said. The Democrats gained strong favour in Englishspeaking urban areas, while the hardline Conservative stance on apartheid earned votes in rural areas traditionally populated by Afrikaners.

Mr De Klerk’s own seat in the Transvaal town of Vereeniging, which he vacated in anticipation of being confirmed as head of state next week, nearly fell to the Conservative Party candidate. Mr De Klerk’s successor squeaked home by five votes. ' | “There has been a marked polarisation of the electorate,” said a political scientist at Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand University, Lawrence Schlemmer.

National Party nerves were steadied with the

early return of the party’s most senior Cabinet Ministers.

The Foreign Minister, Pik Botha; the Finance Minister, Barend du Plessis; the Law and Order Minister, Adriaan Vlok; and the Defence Minister, Magnus Malan, were all re-elected.

There were no upsets in the vote for the House of Assembly’s Indian and coloured chambers, which have a limited say in national politics. The Rev. Allan Hendrickse’s Labour Party maintained its overwhelming majority in the coloured House of Representatives. In the Indian House of Delegates, Solidarity held the most seats in a hung chamber, with the National People’s Party taking second place.