S. Africa Leaders See Vote as Mandate for Mild Reform

The ruling National Party attempted Thursday to put the best face on an election setback, its worst in 41 years of rule, saying the slim parliamentary majority has given the government a clear mandate for modest racial reform and, ultimately, relinquishing some white control of South Africa.

But some political analysts said the government’s heavy losses Wednesday, to pro- and anti-apartheid white parties--and its inability to gain even half of the total popular vote--reflect growing divisions within South Africa’s white minority and might paralyze efforts to dismantle apartheid.

Meanwhile, police and church leaders argued over the number of people killed in dozens of election-day clashes between police and anti-apartheid demonstrators.

Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, criticizing “the brutality of this government,” told a news conference that the police killed at least 22 people in townships near Cape Town.

Police Deny Killing 22

But a police spokesman denied the accusation, saying that 12 people had died in “mob and street violence” and only one person, a 16-year-old mixed-race girl, had died in unrest. She was killed when police fired shotguns to disperse a crowd that had fire-bombed a car, seriously injurying the driver, the spokesman said.

“We invite Archbishop Tutu to produce the evidence,” the police said in a statement Thursday. The police accused Tutu, the 1984 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, of using a news conference to “propagate untested allegations.”

The black majority, which outnumbers whites 5 to 1, had no vote in the elections that brought the National Party-led government back to power and assured the selection of acting President Frederik W. de Klerk as South Africa’s leader for the next five years.

The National Party, which has had a firm grip on South Africa as the original architects of apartheid, saw its 123-seat majority in the controlling white chamber of Parliament fall to 93 seats, or 56%. The far-right Conservative Party won 39 seats, a gain of 17, which was less than had been expected. The surprise came from the anti-apartheid Democratic Party, which now has 33 seats, an increase of 13.

The race for one of the 166 seats in the white chamber ended in a tie between the Nationalist and Conservative candidate, and a new election was called in that district.

De Klerk said the strong showing by his left- and right-wing opponents will neither speed nor slow his party’s plan for reform. That program includes bringing blacks into the political system on a limited basis while assuring that they cannot overrule white interests.

De Klerk also has pledged to begin a dialogue with black leaders, although his party’s crackdown on dissent, opposition to a one-person, one-vote system and commitment to retaining segregated schools and neighborhoods have prevented similar attempts to attract legitimate black leaders to the table in the past.

Mangosuthu Gatsha Buthelezi, the moderate leader of the 2-million-member Zulu nation, said the Democratic Party’s gains herald “a new and very distinctive political era” in which “the National Party will have to look over its left shoulder and not its right shoulder.”

No Plans to Change Course

But De Klerk said he has no intention of deviating from his party’s middle course, although he added that he is encouraged by the fact that his party and the more liberal Democrats, who want to abolish all segregation laws and grant equal votes to blacks, now hold 70% of the white seats.

“It is absolutely clear,” De Klerk said, “that there was an overwhelming vote . . . for policies which give full political rights in some way or another to all South Africans.”

Although the Conservative Party nearly doubled its strength in Parliament, its popular vote increased by less than 20%, indicating less support than it had expected for its plan to strengthen apartheid and deny political rights to blacks.

“Some of our supporters were overly optimistic,” said Andries Treurnicht, the Conservative leader. But he said the election has given his supporters “a stable foundation for future action.”

De Klerk has raised expectations in foreign capitals that he will quickly move to improve the climate for talks by easing a three-year-old state of emergency and freeing black nationalist Nelson R. Mandela and other political prisoners. But senior government officials in recent weeks have sought to lower those expectations, saying that they do not expect significant moves from De Klerk before the end of the year.

In his first months, though, De Klerk will have to overcome the international outcry that has followed his government’s attempt to crush a five-week-long defiance campaign by black activists protesting apartheid laws and curbs on free expression.

While some black protests have been allowed by the authorities to continue peacefully, many more have been broken up by police whips, dogs, tear gas, rubber bullets and shotguns. The authorities have arrested more than 2,000 people in the past month.

On Thursday, De Klerk defended the government’s handling of the defiance campaign, saying the police had acted “with aplomb and in a very reasonable way.”

But anti-apartheid leaders argue that the police have provoked trouble in the townships by using their broad powers to order peaceful demonstrators to disperse--and then attacking participants and spectators.

A mixed-race police lieutenant, Gregory Rockman, said Wednesday that a white superior threatened to arrest him when he tried to stop officers from hitting bystanders and students picketing in a township near Cape Town.

“They were just hitting people,” Rockman said. “They couldn’t care if they were innocent bystanders or not. They were running after them even when they were fleeing, hitting them. It seemed to me that they were enjoying themselves, feasting on the people.”