Botha Pledges to Maintain Reform Pace in South Africa Despite Election Setback

President Pieter W. Botha pledged on Thursday to pursue his course of gradual reform of apartheid despite election setbacks for his National Party this week that indicate many whites fear that he is moving too fast.

Botha said he will have to “take cognizance” of the substantial swing to the right evident in the five parliamentary by-elections Wednesday. But he added that he will try to persuade his critics to follow “the road of realism and level-headedness” as he continues the step-by-step reform of South Africa’s apartheid system of racial separation.

Although his party lost a seat in the Orange Free State for the first time in more than 30 years and saw its previous victory margins reduced by half or two-thirds in other constituencies, Botha said, “Considering the difficult economic consequences of the recession, the drought conditions . . . as well as the present unrest . . . the government can express its satisfaction with the result.”

Political commentators, including National Party supporters, argued strongly that the lesson of the elections, in which Nationalist candidates won four seats but lost one, was that Botha should not only proceed with his reform program but broaden it to win the firm backing of other moderates and even liberals looking for a political home.

The National Party, in their view, must transform itself, even more than it has, into the party of the center, the party of pragmatism and reform, for it has little hope of recapturing the lost votes of the far right--and should not weaken itself by chasing them.

Mandate to Continue Reforms

The Johannesburg Afrikaans-language newspaper Die Vaderland (the Fatherland) commented, for example, that despite the economic situation and the unrest, “the voters have again chosen it (the Nationalist Party) as the only party they trust to govern.” This, the newspaper said, was a mandate to continue on its present reform course, not to pull back or shift direction.

And state-run Radio South Africa said in a commentary reflecting government views that “there can be no question of (the reforms) being brought to a stop, of being pushed off course” by the right-wing success in the elections.

“Reform is an imperative that has been imposed on this country by its own evolution,” the commentary said. “Governmental stagnation--a failure to accommodate historic changes in a society--is the surest road to the collapse and destruction of that society. Reform is not a matter of choice but ultimately a requirement for national survival.”

But the leaders of the two white-supremacist parties that won unprecedented support in the by-elections declared that the results will force Botha to slow, if not abandon entirely, his reform plans, particularly those for limited power-sharing with the country’s black majority.

“The Afrikaner nation is rising again,” said Jaap Marais, leader of the extreme right-wing Herstigte Nasionale Party, of his party’s capture of the Sasolburg constituency, the first seat it has won in Parliament in the 16 years since it broke with the National Party to fight racial integration. “This victory will paralyze the government.”

‘Suicide’ for Afrikaners

Andries Treurnicht, leader of the Conservative Party, predicted in Pretoria that more and more whites, particularly the Dutch-descended Afrikaners, will fight the government’s reforms as leading to black majority rule in South Africa and as “suicide for the Afrikaner nation . . . and ultimately the white race.”

The election results Wednesday, when compared with those of the last general election four years ago in the same five districts, show that nearly 15,000 additional voters went to the polls, unusual in a midterm election, and nearly all the new votes went to the two right-wing parties, not to the Nationalists. The Nationalists have governed South African since 1948 and appeared to have an almost unassailable hold on the government.

“The main reason (for the right-wing surge) is the president’s move away from white self-determination to power-sharing and a racially mixed government,” Treurnicht commented. “People don’t want it, and increasingly they will do whatever they can to make clear their opposition to all these schemes and plots of Botha.”

Of the sustained civil unrest over the last year, Treurnicht commented: “I think the government did not act in time and, in certain cases, not strongly enough. This created uncertainty in the minds of whites. It created instability in the country as a whole. And it added to the fear that South Africa might have black-majority rule in the near, very near future.”

Botha, speaking later to foreign correspondents, reaffirmed his personal and political commitment to reform. “Let me state very clearly: There is no one in this country, or anywhere else, who appreciates the urgency for reform better than the members of this government of South Africa,” he declared.

Doing ‘What Is Possible’

But this conviction is based, Botha continued, on a desire to do “what is possible and what is right” and does not stem from either foreign pressure or the continuing unrest.

“We shall not deviate from this road,” he said, “and we shall not surrender to the forces of revolution, anarchy and chaos.”

The president, answering questions after his speech, said he has no timetable for reform and could not impose one on the black leaders with whom he must negotiate, although the Commonwealth and, by implication, the United States want to see major progress within six months. Similarly, he cannot impose his own agenda for reforms on others, he said, but must negotiate if the process is to succeed.