Obituaries : Connie Mulder; Disgraced S. Africa Apostle of Apartheid

Connie Mulder, an apostle of apartheid whose political career ended in disgrace over the misuse of government funds for propaganda purposes, has died, taking to the grave the secrets of that scandal.

After months of heart and kidney ailments, Mulder died in a clinic Tuesday night without carrying out a threat to embarrass the government by telling details of the 1978 affair. He was 62.

Mulder, an ex-teacher who had a meteoric rise to power, was the principal victim of disclosures that the government was financing a clandestine campaign to give apartheid a better image.

Cost Him Votes

It cost him crucial votes in the contest to succeed then-Prime Minister John Vorster and he was narrowly defeated by South Africa’s current president, P. W. Botha.

Mulder always insisted that he had been made to carry the blame for the information scandal and that other ministers, possibly including Botha, were aware that secret funds were being spent in an elaborate propaganda campaign.

He was forced to resign from the cabinet as information minister in 1978 following revelations that millions of dollars were spent to set up a pro-government Johannesburg newspaper, the Citizen, and to buy media influence abroad to defend Pretoria’s apartheid policies.

Opposing Papers

The Citizen was meant to counter the anti-apartheid Rand Daily Mail, which had a large readership among English-speaking whites. The Mail has since folded, while the Citizen has continued under private ownership.

The affair prompted delegates from South Africa’s Orange Free State province to throw their support behind Botha when the National Party elected Vorster’s successor after Vorster resigned in June, 1979, and Mulder lost his chance to take power.

His humiliation appeared complete when he was expelled from his parliamentary seat in 1979, but Mulder staged a comeback last May when he won a parliamentary seat for the extreme right-wing Conservative Party, which is dedicated to enforcing strict racial segregation.

Politicians waited for his long-promised speech shedding new light on the scandal. Dogged by poor health, he failed to deliver it.