S. Africa Vote Backs Botha; Moderates Slip

President Pieter W. Botha’s ruling National Party won a substantial victory in South Africa’s whites-only parliamentary elections Wednesday, defeating two moderate parties that had called for an immediate end to apartheid and steps toward majority rule.

But Nationalist candidates came under heavy pressure from extreme rightists--advocates of white power and strict racial segregation--who captured several National Party seats and defeated the minister of agriculture.

The results, better than the Nationalists had expected, showed broad approval of Botha’s policies among white voters, who turned out in record numbers in most areas. While maintaining its commitment to continued but gradual political reforms, the party had underscored its determination to halt the civil unrest that has kept the country in turmoil for nearly three years.

More than 1 million black workers, unable to vote in national elections, participated in a general strike to protest their exclusion from the country’s politics and to demand an end to the state of emergency, now in its 11th month. They were joined by more than half a million black students who boycotted classes. Ninety-three people were arrested in election protests, police said.

Although police had warned that the guerrillas of the outlawed African National Congress would launch terrorist attacks to disrupt the election, the only serious incident among the dozens reported by the government’s Bureau for Information was a double explosion about 2 a.m. today at the Johannesburg headquarters of the Congress of South African Trade Unions, which had organized the workers’ protest. Damage appeared extensive, but no injuries were reported.

The Nationalists, who stated their reform plans only in the broadest terms and reaffirmed their commitment to racially segregated residential areas and schools, won 10 seats from the moderate Progressive Federal and New Republic parties, which had called for an immediate repeal of racially discriminatory laws and negotiations on a new constitution.

The National Party also won nine seats from the Conservative and Herstigte Nasionale parties on the far right but lost at least 10 to the Conservatives, who also significantly reduced the Nationalists’ majorities in many constituencies to a few hundred votes.

Party Wins 112 Seats

With results at 6 a.m. today from 150 of the 166 constituencies, the National Party had won 112 seats, the Progressive Federal Party 19, the Conservatives 18 and a liberal independent 1.

Most of the remaining districts are in remote rural areas where the Conservative Party expects to pick up a number of Nationalist seats. Results from these areas are not expected until late this morning.

Before the election, the National Party held 127 seats in the 178-member House of Assembly, the white chamber in the country’s racially segregated, tricameral Parliament. The Progressive Federal Party had 27 seats, the Conservatives 18, the New Republic Party 5 and the Herstigte Nasionale Party 1. Twelve members are appointed by the president or political parties on the basis of seats won in the election.

The National Party won 52% of the vote compared with 57% in the last election six years ago. The Conservative and Herstigte Nasionale parties increased their share of the vote from 16% to 28% while the Progressive Federal and New Republic parties’ share delined from 27% to 18%.

So great was the swing to the right that the Conservatives could replace the Progressive Federal Party as the official opposition in the new Parliament and from that base step up its pressure on the government to slow or even halt its cautious reforms of apartheid, South Africa’s system of racial separation and minority white rule.

The Progressive Federal Party had hoped that it and its allies would win half a dozen seats and use this base to lure liberals from the National Party into a new movement to accelerate political reform. Instead, the party suffered surprising losses in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and Pietermaritzburg districts that were regarded as strongholds.

A major factor in this swing to the right, political analysts said, appeared to be the large-scale defection of English-speaking voters to the National Party from the Progressive Federal and New Republic parties, their traditional political home.

This probably resulted from the general white backlash to the prolonged civil unrest here, the analysts speculated, and the comfort that many have taken in Botha’s strong law-and-order policies and his cautious approach to political reform.

The only significant exception to the liberals’ setback was the massive victory of Wynand C. Malan, who broke with the National Party over the slow pace of reform and was reelected as an independent. “I call upon all South Africans to move towards a future of justice and peace and to work together to achieve this goal,” Malan said.

Another independent, Denis J. Worrall, the former South African ambassador to Britain, came close to defeating J. Christiaan Heunis, the minister of constitutional development and planning, who won reelection by only 39 votes after two recounts. A third independent, businesswoman Esther Lategan, sharply reduced the majority of her National Party rival.

For the Nationalists, the Conservatives’ defeat of Greyling Wentzel, the minister of agriculture, was a major but expected setback as was the defeat of Ron Miller, the deputy foreign minister, who lost his Durban seat to the Progressive Federal Party. Two other deputy ministers also lost to Conservative candidates.

The independent Labor Monitoring Group, which estimated that at least 1.05 million blacks stayed away from work, said the protest was the largest general strike yet, and the Congress of South African Trade Unions warned in a statement that “it is impossible to rule the country as before without generating even more massive resistance.”

The United Democratic Front coalition of anti-apartheid groups said in a statement, “When May 6 comes to a close and whites have returned the Nationalists to power, the democratic movement will be right here at center-stage, ready to intensify our struggle for a nonracial and democratic South Africa free of the National Party’s dangerous parochialism.”

Unrest Reported

Widespread unrest was reported in many areas of the country. In its longest daily report since Botha declared a national state of emergency last June, the government’s Bureau for Information in Pretoria said that there had been dozens of cases of stone-throwing, arson, illegal gatherings and other incidents, many of them around the Durban area and most of them minor.

Ninety-three people were arrested for participating in the protests, according to the bureau. Firebombs were thrown at a school shortly before polls were to open there Wednesday morning. And a suspected guerrilla of the African National Congress, the principal group fighting continued white-minority rule, was arrested near Zeerust in the western Transvaal while apparently attempting to smuggle a supply of hand grenades and explosives into the country from Botswana.

The government has charged that the ANC and its allies inside the country wanted to disrupt the elections in order to discredit the results, and security forces mounted a major operation to guard polling places.

A few hours before the polls closed, the government announced that it had expelled two Australian television journalists for what it called biased reporting. The Home Affairs Ministry said that Richard Carleton and Jennifer Ainge of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. had prepared “reports containing gross untruths,” but that the state-run South African Broadcasting Commission had prevented their transmission. Five other foreign newsmen have been expelled in the past year.