South Africa Backlash

By ; Michael S. Serrill

In Sasolburg, an oil and coal center south of Johannesburg, a pamphlet was distributed with a message that was provocative even by South African standards. Referring to a white man who had married a "colored" woman after miscegenation laws were repealed last June, it asked: Do you want the Van den Bergs living on your street? Do you want their children going to your school?

The pamphlet was credited with helping its sponsor, Louis Stofberg, win last week's by-election in Sasolburg. The ultra-right-winger thus became the first candidate of the Herstigte (Reconstituted) National Party to capture a seat in Parliament. Stofberg was the beneficiary of a surge of right-wing reaction against the halting racial reforms of the National Party government of State President P.W. Botha. In five districts holding elections, the National Party won one handily, lost in Sasolburg and won in the other three by margins much reduced since the last local balloting in 1981.

Stofberg's victory, by a slim 367 votes out of 12,845 votes cast, was aided by the rival Conservative Party's agreement to stay out of the race. The Conservatives, who already hold 18 places in Parliament, came close to taking another seat themselves, losing in the town of Springs by only 749 votes. H.N.P. Leader Jaap Marais saw the elections as "a significant drift away from the National Party." The voting was made necessary by deaths and resignations in the all-white 178-seat House of Assembly, which dominates a tricameral Parliament that includes segregated chambers for coloreds and Indians. South Africa's 24 million blacks, who make up 74% of the population, cannot vote.

While the National Party retains an absolute majority in the House of Assembly, President Botha had portrayed last week's vote as a litmus test for his government's reforms, which have included repeal of the laws against sex and marriage among the races and proposals to allow blacks to own houses in urban areas. Some white backlash was to be expected given the continuing violence in the black townships and South Africa's severe unemployment and recession. In a speech last week to the Foreign Correspondents Association, Botha blamed foreign persecution for intensifying his country's troubles. "The more we reform, the fiercer the international campaign against us," he said. At week's end the government imposed restrictions on press coverage of strikes, riots and other social unrest. Even before the voting, the ever cautious Botha government was trying to deflect right-wing attacks. At a public meeting in Sasolburg, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha responded to the furor over the Van den Bergs, who now live in a mixed-race trailer camp, by saying that housing rules would have to be reviewed. That sort of equivocation did not impress voters on either side of the race question. Said Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, chairman of the antiapartheid Progressive Federal Party: "Ambiguous reform will lose support from both the left and the right."

By contrast, the newly prominent H.N.P., whose militant leaders were ejected from the National Party in 1969, is for total white supremacy, for the repeal of all the Botha government's reforms and for even stronger police and military action against rioters. Says H.N.P. Leader Marais: "The H.N.P. is the only party that can defend the whites." While one small victory hardly gives any party a right to such claims, last week's vote is likely to make future reforms by a regime already under siege even more difficult.

With reporting by Bruce W. Nelan/Johannesburg