S. Africa Vote a Mandate to Tighten Security, Botha Says

President Pieter W. Botha on Thursday described the victory of his National Party in South Africa’s whites-only parliamentary elections this week as an overwhelming mandate to make security the government’s primary objective in the wake of nearly three years of civil unrest.

The country’s white voters have “given the government a very clear mandate on the question of security,” Botha said, implying that white fears aroused by months of political violence and by Nationalist warnings of a Communist-led revolution were decisive in the party’s victory and the white electorate’s broad shift to the right in Wednesday’s voting.

Clearly savoring what he called the “National Party’s greatest triumph ever,” the 71-year-old president made clear his intention, during an interview broadcast on state-run television, to use the new mandate to counter his critics on both the left and right.

Botha, who declared a national state of emergency last June to quell the unrest and gave the police what amount to virtual martial-law powers, warned of a further governmental crackdown on anti-apartheid groups in the near future.

Stresses Strong Stand

“The country must know that I am determined to see the government takes a very strong stand on extra-parliamentary actions of this nature as well as the financing of these organizations from outside our country,” the president said.

Political reforms that will bring blacks into national politics also remain a priority, Botha said, but they will be gradual, will come from negotiations and will depend upon parliamentary action.

Blacks, he added, must now accept that they will have to deal with his government and the National Party in pursuit of political, economic and social reform. “Wise black leaders, black leaders who believe in peace, will come forward and start negotiations with the leaders chosen by this overwhelming support that the National Party received,” the president said.

But Botha, apparently concerned by the election gains of the far-right Conservative Party, put his main emphasis on security concerns and was vague about Nationalist plans for reform, although these were the original reason for the election. He added that the election results constitute a firm rejection by white South Africans of international pressure to replace apartheid with a political system based on majority rule.

“The outside world must now have a clear picture that they cannot dictate to South Africa,” Botha said. “South Africans want to solve their own problems, and South Africans believe in moderate reform, well-balanced reform. But South Africa’s white electorate is not prepared to accept and follow a policy that will lead to one group dominating the other. The outside world must accept that the white electorate believes they are here to stay . . . and are determined to follow their convictions.”

Having won three-quarters of the seats at stake in the elections, the National Party felt that it could now “move into the future with greater confidence and determination,” Botha said, dismissing both the pressure from the far-right Conservative Party, which increased its share of the vote to more than 25%, and from the liberal Progressive Federal Party, which suffered a serious defeat.

The National Party won 123 of the 166 seats at stake, according to final election results. The far-right Conservative Party won 22 seats, the moderate Progressive Federal Party 19, the New Republic Party 1 and a liberal independent 1 in a substantial rightward shift by virtually the whole white electorate, nearly 70% of whom voted in the hotly contested polls.

Twelve other seats in the 178-member House of Assembly, the white chamber in South Africa’s racially segregated tricameral Parliament, will be filled next week by Botha and the political parties. This will probably give the Nationalists a total of 133 seats, a gain of seven.

More Polarization Seen

The size of the Nationalist victory and the increased support for the Conservative Party aroused grave concern, however, among leading anti-apartheid campaigners, who interpreted the election results as a further polarization of the country and possibly a serious step toward a racial civil war.

“Now we have a right-wing government that has been confirmed in its right-wing views with an extreme right-wing opposition,” Archbishop Desmond Tutu said in Cape Town. “I believe what we are going to see now is an escalation in the intransigence of this government, an escalation in oppressive intolerance of any dissent.”

The Rev. Allan Boesak, moderator of the Dutch Reformed Mission Church and president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, said that Botha has received the backing he wanted for his yearlong crackdown on the government’s opponents and would now use it to justify harsher measures.

“White voters made their position clear,” Boesak said, almost despairing of hope that change can come through liberal white reformers. “They support the state of emergency, they support the detention of more than 30,000 people, they support the detention of thousands of children without trial and they support the actions of the security forces.”

And Chief Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the moderate leader of the country’s 7 million Zulus, described the election results as a “deliberate vote to support white privilege,” and he warned that the prevalent black reaction will be to abandon attempts to bring change peacefully and instead to turn increasingly toward violence.

“I can only see blood,” he said.

That was the reaction, too, of Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed African National Congress, who said in Lusaka, Zambia, that the vote was a signal to his organization to intensify its fight to end minority white rule here.

“There is no alternative to armed struggle,” Tambo said. “We must fight the state of emergency all the harder. The election results are saying that it is all right to have a state of emergency, that it is all right to continue with detentions, even of children.

“The government in South Africa will take the election results as a mandate to increase internal repression and external aggression against neighboring states.”