S. Africa Vote Won’t Be Fair, Botha Rival Says

With South Africa’s strict curbs on freedom of speech and press, parliamentary elections planned for May 6 will be “neither free nor fair,” the leader of the white opposition Progressive Federal Party said Monday in a fierce attack on President Pieter W. Botha’s assumption of emergency powers nearly eight months ago.

Colin Eglin, opening what will probably be the bitterest election campaign since Botha’s National Party came to power in 1948, told Parliament that the government has lost its way and instead of “bold, visionary leadership” now offers “pettiness, churlishness, confusion and aggressiveness.”

Eglin, whose left-of-center party hopes to add at least a dozen more seats to the 27 it now holds in the 178-member white House of Assembly, said the Nationalists have virtually ended democracy and freedom in South Africa--even for the country’s white minority.

“The state of emergency, with its police powers, its abrogation of the rule of law,” he said, “ . . . is proof that the National Party, after 39 years in office, is incapable of governing this country by democratic means.”

Peaceful Resolution

In an hourlong indictment, he charged that the severe curbs on freedom of speech and of the press will prevent not only a fair election but will prevent the peaceful resolution of the country’s problems.

“Quite apart from the restrictions placed on what can be said by and what can be published about a political party, there cannot possibly be a free and fair election if the voters are kept in the dark about what is going on in their country. . . ,” Eglin told Parliament.

Under emergency regulations, the national police commissioner was given the authority by Botha last week to prohibit publication of “any matter” that he believes would endanger the country’s security or law and order.

Reporters had already been prohibited from first-hand coverage of political violence and were required to submit to censorship any material they gathered on civil unrest and anti-apartheid protests.

Eglin accused the government of using its rules to hide police activities from the public. Citing a medical study suppressed by government censors last month, he charged that many of the more than 25,000 people detained without charge under the state of emergency had been subjected to psychological torture.

Police Accused

He said that hundreds of children have been jailed as political prisoners without trial and often without even a visit from their families. And he accused the police of standing aside while right-wing vigilantes rampaged through a black township near Port Elizabeth last month, killing half a dozen people and injuring many more. “If a government that has ruled for nearly 40 years has to resort to these measures to maintain peace, law and order,” Eglin said, “it deserves to be thrown out of office.”

Eglin also sought to exploit the deepening division between the National Party’s leadership and its reformist, liberal wing, whose views are close to those of his own party.

“This wonderful country of ours is in a mess, thanks to the incompetence of a government that has lost its way and which now, mercifully for South Africa, is starting to lose both members and supporters,” he said.

One Nationalist member of Parliament has quit the party, and another appeared ready to do so when he was pulled back in a political power play. South Africa’s ambassador to London resigned last week amid rumors that he would run for Parliament against a Cabinet minister.

Early Opinion Polls

The National Party’s control of the white chamber in the tricameral Parliament is not really in doubt. The party now holds 126 seats, and early voter opinion polls suggest that it will keep a minimum of 105. But it is certain to come under rising attack from both left and far right as the country prepares for elections.