Running for Parliament as Independent : Ex-S. African Envoy Bucks National Party

This country’s former ambassador to Britain, who resigned to protest the government’s failure to move faster on political reforms, returned home Saturday to run for Parliament on a campaign platform he hopes will give the nation “a sense of purpose and direction and vision of a new South Africa.”

Denis J. Worrall, a political scientist and constitutional lawyer who was ambassador to London for 2 1/2 years, said he will campaign for “a real end to apartheid” and for full political rights for the country’s black majority.

Worrall, 51, previously considered a leader of the ruling National Party’s liberal wing, said he will run as an independent in the May 6, whites-only election with the intention of forcing the Nationalists to focus on those issues. He said he will seek “a real mandate” for broader change from the voters.

To press his challenge to the government, Worrall is expected to run either near the university town of Stellenbosch against J. Christiaan Heunis, the minister of constitutional development and National Party leader in Cape province, or in Durban against Stoffel Botha, minister of home affairs and party leader in Natal.

“The choice of constituency will be intended to demonstrate that the whites in South Africa, as a people, are for very real change,” Worrall said.

According to friends, Worrall holds Heunis personally responsible for the government’s stalled reform efforts, but he might run instead against Botha to demonstrate white support for a proposed multiracial government in Natal province that would be based largely on the principle of one man, one vote, but which the National Party has rejected.

Worrall said he also wants to mobilize others disenchanted with President Pieter W. Botha’s government and the National Party in a nationwide campaign for bolder reforms, adding that since his surprise resignation two weeks ago he has received sufficient support from around the country to form a “think tank” and begin active fund-raising.

He did not discuss in detail his differences with the government, nor did he spell out his own platform. He did, however, stress the urgent need for negotiations with black leaders on a new political system, and he called for the inclusion of the outlawed African National Congress and other groups in those talks.

Worrall’s return to South African politics follows the resignation of Wynand Malan, a prominent member of Parliament from the National Party’s liberal wing, who has declared that he will run as an independent in the approaching election. He, too, has received wide support from disenchanted Nationalists.

Whether Malan and Worrall will attempt to bring their supporters together or coordinate their campaigns is doubtful, according to local political observers.

“One of the realities of the election is that the National Party will be returned to power,” Worrall told an airport news conference, and thus the only “real option” for critics on the left is to force it into commitments for broader and faster political changes.

Breaking Points

The National Party leadership’s rejection of two key reform measures late last year had led to his resignation, Worrall said.

The first issue was Stoffel Botha’s rejection of the proposed constitutional framework for a multiracial government in Natal, and the second was the decision to send back for further study recommendations by the President’s Council that local communities be allowed to end the present racial separation of residential neighborhoods.

Worrall had also tendered his resignation last May after South Africa’s much-criticized raids on guerrilla bases of the African National Congress in neighboring Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe and the resulting collapse of mediation efforts by a special Commonwealth commission. He was persuaded to remain at that time by Foreign Minister Roelof F. (Pik) Botha.

Since his resignation, which stunned many National Party supporters, the government has reportedly sought to discredit Worrall, accusing him of “sour grapes” after he was passed over for a Cabinet position in November.

As the previous chairman of the constitutional committee of the President’s Council, Worrall helped draft the new South African constitution that brought Colored (mixed-race) and Asian representatives into Parliament and the Cabinet in 1984, but after quarreling with Heunis he was sent abroad as an ambassador, first to Australia and then to Britain.

A lawyer by training and a political scientist by profession, he taught at UCLA and Cornell University in the 1960s. He entered politics as a National Party member of Parliament from a liberal constituency in Cape Town and later served in the President’s Council and in the old Senate.