Word: botha
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Already trussed up in the world's most elaborate net of emergency regulations, South Africans braced for a further crackdown after Botha's ruling National Party won an impressive victory at the polls earlier this month. The National Party, which has been in power since 1948, captured 52% of the popular vote and 123 out of 166 Assembly seats. At the same time, many whites, fearful of political concessions to the country's black majority, lined up behind the total-apartheid Conservative Party, giving it 26% of all votes cast and easily eclipsing the liberal Progressive Federals as the country...
...Botha, for his part, engaged in heavy rhetoric but skimped on details. He warned that he would no longer allow funding from outside the country for those who rely on violence to promote political change. "We shall not permit the constitutional order in South Africa to be subverted in this way," he said. Many anti-apartheid organizations, church groups and trade unions receive contributions from abroad and will watch anxiously as the government spells out how it intends to take action and how it will define subversion...
Warming to his theme, Botha advised journalists working in South Africa to "guard against instigating and promoting activities of this kind under the guise of the freedom of the press." As if to underscore the point, the Department of Home Affairs last week refused to reverse its decision not to renew the work permits of two British television correspondents. At the same time, Botha pledged to be "more directly involved" in negotiations with black leaders and to create a National Council as a forum for such talks. But even moderate blacks such as KwaZulu Chief Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi have refused...
...Botha sounded reasonable compared with Treurnicht, a onetime chairman of the Broederbond, the secret brotherhood of Afrikaner nationalists. The day after the President's speech, Treurnicht rose from his Assembly seat to introduce the opposition's traditional no-confidence vote. Then, smiling with satisfaction and jabbing the air in the direction of the Nationalist benches, he attacked Botha for weakening apartheid. Said Treurnicht: "The government's policy means that eventually we will not have control over our own fatherland." As the Nationalists across the aisle jeered, Botha sat rigidly in his seat, occasionally making a comment to his lieutenants...
...House of Assembly are not some dry debating match but deal with deeply emotional issues that can and do cost lives. The irony of the Conservative challenge is that even though the reform process has shuddered to a halt and there is no prospect of negotiations with black leaders, Botha's image might be boosted by the astonishing confrontation in Parliament, where the Nationalist government is being denounced as dangerously liberal...