Andries Treurnicht; Leader of Pro-Apartheid Party in S. Africa

Andries Treurnicht, the leader of the pro-apartheid Conservative Party, died Thursday, a party spokesman said. He was 72.

The party’s chief whip, Frank le Roux, said Treurnicht died in a Cape Town hospital after undergoing heart bypass surgery Sunday.

Treurnicht’s death came at a difficult time for the party, which has opposed President F.W. de Klerk’s reforms to dismantle apartheid and had one of its most prominent leaders implicated in the recent slaying of ANC activist Chris Hani.

Treurnicht had warned of chaos if the black majority was allowed to run the country, but he always distanced himself and his party from violence and from militant right-wing groups such as the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement.

Last week, Clive Derby-Lewis, one of the Conservative Party’s prominent leaders, and his wife, Gaye, were arrested for questioning in Hani’s slaying. Neither has been charged.

The man charged in the murder is a member of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement.

Treurnicht was dubbed “Dr. No” for his rigid resistance to political reform. He was elected to Parliament in 1971 as a candidate of the ruling National Party and eventually became a Cabinet minister whose portfolios included public works, tourism and state administration.

As early as the 1970s, his conservative views clashed with movements toward reform in the governing party. Treurnicht was suspended as the party’s Transvaal provincial leader in 1982 and weeks later resigned from the Cabinet to form the Conservative Party.

A fire and brimstone preacher of the Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church from 1946 to 1960, Treurnicht warned that the white minority could lose everything to a black Marxist government if De Klerk’s reforms continued.

But his party suffered an embarrassing defeat in March when whites voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to support De Klerk’s reforms.

Born Feb. 19, 1921, in Piketberg, South Africa, Treurnicht earned bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at the University of Stellenbosch, the Theological Seminary at Stellenbosch, and the University of Cape Town. He published more than a dozen works on religious and political subjects.