Two Far-Right Parties in South Africa Abandon Merger Efforts

Two ultrarightist political parties on Thursday abandoned their effort to merge in a united challenge to South Africa’s ruling National Party, virtually assuring the Nationalists many of the parliamentary seats they feared losing in approaching elections.

The feuding leaders of the two parties, Andries Treurnicht of the Conservative Party and Jaap Marais of the Herstigte Nasionale Party, blamed each other for the collapse of the unity talks, which had gone on for more than a month.

Marais, grim-faced and bitter, told newsmen that, without a merger, the two parties cannot hope to win a total of more than 10 to 12 seats in the whites-only election scheduled for May 6. At present, they have a total of 18 seats and had boasted that if merged, they could win more than 30.

“I am thoroughly disillusioned,” Marais said. “I cannot see how we can have talks any longer on unity.”

Unacceptable Conditions

Treurnicht responded that Marais’ party, which has just one seat in Parliament, the only one it has ever won, had demanded too many seats and tried to impose unacceptable conditions for the merger.

“We must ask the Herstigte Nasionale Party whether their survival to them as a party is more important than the unity of our people,” Treurnicht said, referring to his fellow Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers who now dominate white politics here.

Despite the rejection of several earlier proposals, Eugene Terre’Blanche, the formidable leader of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement, was still trying for some compromise, according to aides, in the hope of an agreement that will “prevent this election from going to the Nationalists by forfeit.”

Only three days ago, Terre’Blanche had spoken of the possibility of an ultraright alliance holding the balance of power in the white, 178-seat House of Assembly, and he had placed the political hopes of his neo-Nazi movement in the merger of all the ultraright forces.

Reform Plans Opposed

The ultraright opposes the National Party’s plans for step-by-step reform of apartheid, leading in time to the controlled sharing of political power between the white minority and the country’s black majority. Many on the far right regard President Pieter W. Botha as a traitor to his Afrikaner people for the limited reforms already adopted and for his pledge to bring blacks into “the highest levels” of government.

Meanwhile, another feud, this between Inkatha, the predominantly Zulu political movement led by Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, and the outlawed African National Congress, burst into violence again outside Durban, and there were fears that a major clash is coming between the two groups and their supporters.

Four Inkatha members, patrolling the black township of Umlazi, clashed with men--apparently ANC guerrillas--who were armed with rifles and grenades, according to the government’s Bureau for Information. One Inkatha member was killed, and the others fled.