S. African Parties Gear Up as Botha Hints at Early Election

With one hint after another from President Pieter W. Botha that he will soon call an early parliamentary election, white politicians are maneuvering intensely to prepare for an election that many see as determining the country’s future.

Botha, faced with delays in implementing his plans for step-by-step reform of South Africa’s system of apartheid, as well as with right-wing criticism that he is going too far, apparently wants a new and longer mandate for his National Party. This would enable him to press ahead with his program of gradual political, economic and social change.

National Party strategists say that Botha also could use a major election victory to convince black leaders that they must deal with him if they want a negotiated resolution of the country’s problems--or wait five more years for a successor who might be more pliable 1869750374further.

And Botha might believe as well that an early election, effectively prolonging his term to 1994, when he will be 78, will curb the often disruptive jockeying within the party leadership to succeed him.

Some Nationalist members of Parliament say the election for the white House of Assembly in the tricameral legislature could come as early as Nov. 26, three years ahead of schedule. But others believe that next April is more likely.

F.W. de Klerk, the party’s powerful leader in Transvaal province, told delegates at a party conference last weekend not to worry about the precise date but to start immediate preparations for the campaign.

Botha himself told the conference: “I enjoy the speculation about an election among the journalists. Keep on guessing--you may even get it right later.”

Botha had touched off the speculation when he told the party’s extraordinary congress last month that there would be an election sooner than most people expected. Over the past month, De Klerk and other senior Cabinet ministers and party officials added to the discussion about when the election would be and what the Nationalists hoped to gain by an early election.

“Dawie,” the political columnist of the Cape Town newspaper Die Burger, which serves as a National Party mouthpiece, said this week that “a fierce election is at the door; the country can prepare itself for one of the toughest elections in its history.”

Whites’ Terms Extended

The last white parliamentary election was held in 1981 and another was due this year. But the terms of white members of Parliament were extended to 1989 with the adoption of a new constitut1768910368Parliament.

Under South Africa’s constitution, Botha as state president may dissolve Parliament and call new elections on two months’ notice. The decision is his alone, although he is expected to discuss the question with the Cabinet. Botha must also decide whether the election will be for only the white chamber or for the Colored (mixed-race) and Indian houses of Parliament as well.

If he chooses Nov. 26, the president is expected to announce the election next week at the National Party’s annual Cape provincial congress in East London.

All the hints have not only raised popular expectations that he will call early elections, but have also created a demand for elections, on both the political left and right.

“A government that reverses course so dramatically--for the second time since the past parliamentary elections!--has a duty to seek a new mandate,” the national financial newspaper Business Day said in an editorial, reflecting widely held views in the white political and business establishment.

“There have been major shifts of allegiance within the electorate, and the politics of the country would be healthier if those shifts, both in the opposition as well as the government, were properly represented in Parliament.”

Blacks, whose future in this country would be at stake, too, would be excluded from the election, and prominent black spokesmen have dismissed it as “a white power game.”

“Nothing makes clearer P.W. Botha’s intention to cling to power as long as possible than this attempt to consolidate the National Party’s position,” the Rev. Allan Boesak, a leading anti-apartheid clergyman, said in Cape Town. “We might watch this game with amusement were it not for Botha’s hope that it will buy more time for his racist regime.”

But other black political observers privately expressed their hopes that the election and the presumed National Party victory would give Botha and the Nationalists sufficient courage not only to proceed with reforms but to open negotiations with black leaders on the country’s future.

“We are at a stalemate politically and, as a result, the crisis is only getting worse,” Sam M. Motsuenyane, president of the National African Federated Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said this week. “The paralysis in white politics is largely due to this fear the Nationalists have of the far right, and maybe an election would shake them out of it. . . . An election is not a solution to our problems, but it might get a few things moving.”

The main advantage of calling elections now, according to National Party insiders, would be a renewed mandate for reform, particularly Botha’s proposal for a new constitution that would “share power” between the country’s white, Indian and Colored minorities and the black majority.

South Africa’s 1983 “reform constitution,” adopted by white voters in a referendum, created the present, racially segregated, white-dominated tricameral legislature to share power with the Colored and Indian minorities, but it continued the exclusion from national politics of the country’s black majority.

“We have been proceeding with an ongoing program of reform for which the guidelines were laid down prior to 1983, when Coloreds and Indians were brought into the parliamentary process,” Chris Rencken, the National Party’s chief information officer, said amid speculation on a new election. “The National Party would like to have a mandate to continue that program, and now is perhaps a good time to test the electorate on that.”

Whites Split on Reform

According to the most recent public opinion polls, about 52% of urban whites agree with the government’s reform program, 22% believe its scope should be enlarged and the pace quickened, and only 7% believe the reform program should be halted. But 19%, a higher proportion than usual, said they were not sure.

Botha is now offering black leaders membership on a proposed “national council,” which would make all policy decisions affecting blacks and begin the process of writing yet another constitution, this time giving blacks a share of power, too.

Few black leaders are willing to take part, however. Blacks criticize the proposal as based on “group security” and thus prolonging white minority rule.

With black insistence on “one man, one vote” stronger than ever, the government’s reform initiatives are virtually at a standstill.

“We are treading water,” a member of Parliament from the National Party’s liberal wing commented. “We can introduce some reforms unilaterally, doing things that we all agree need be done, but unless black leaders will talk to us, negotiate with us, we cannot proceed with the central question of how to share power equitably in this country. . . .

“An election could, I believe, focus everyone’s attention on the realities of our situation, on the desirability for a negotiated, peaceful resolution of this very serious conflict over a racial civil war. Whites have to see they must give much more than they have been willing to--and blacks must see that this course will be better for them as well. An election won’t solve all our problems, but I hope it will get everyone thinking about how to solve them.”

The National Party is assured of victory, according to all opinion polls and political analysts, and what is at stake is the size of that victory and the gains and losses of parties on the left and right.

The Nationalists hold 126 of the 178 seats in the white House of Assembly. Projections based on recent by-elections as well as opinion surveys show that the Nationalists can count on a mini1836412192of the 165 seats that will be at stake. (Under South Africa’s constitution, 13 members of the house are appointed by the president based on nominations by the majority and opposition parties.)

Challenge From Right

But the Nationalists will face a strong challenge from the ultrarightist Conservative and Herstigte Nasionale parties, whose sharp attacks on Botha’s limited reforms have won them increasing support in parliamentary by-elections over the past two years.

In anticipation of an early election, the two white-supremacist parties have discussed a merger or an election pact that, according to several projections based on the by-elections and public opinion surveys, could bring them as many as 53 seats. The Conservative Party now holds 18 seats and the Herstigte Nasionale one seat.

Both the Conservative and the Herstigte Nasionale parties were formed as the result of breaks with the Nationalists over earlier reforms that relaxed apartheid’s strict social and political separation of the races. Both parties now see their support growing among worried whites, particularly the Dutch-descended Afrikaners, who have always been the National Party’s strength and now are concerned by the country’s continuing civil strife and the government’s concessions to blacks.

The prospects of the centrist Progressive Federal Party, which now has 27 seats, are less clear.

Robin Carlisle, the party’s general secretary, said this week that with a new “turbo-charged campaign” focusing on 7% to 9% of the 3 million white voters, it can win most of the marginal urban constituencies that went to the Nationalists at the last general election in 1981 and secure 52 seats, nearly double its present number.

The Progressive Federal Party believes the country now is in accord with its longstanding opposition to apartheid, its vision of a federal political system that would protect the white minority as well as assure the rights of the black majority, and its call for a “national convention” to settle South Africa’s future.

If it wins those 52 seats, the Progressive Federal Party believes, it can recruit 30 to 35 disillusioned liberal Nationalist members of Parliament, giving it a majority.

But independent analysts, studying opinion polls, are predicting a hard swing to the right that, if the elections were held soon, would cost the Progressive Federal Party 12 to 15 of its seats.

Party officials acknowledge that their strategy was based on the assumption that elections would not be held before late 1987 and they would have this time to recruit more members, raise funds and organize their campaign.

Inside the National Party itself, early elections on the basis of the present constituencies without redistricting would have implications affecting the selection of Botha’s successor and the scope and pace of reform--decisions that are shaped by the party’s parliamentary caucus.