South Africa The Man Who Gives Botha Fits

By Bruce W. Nelan/Cape Town

South Africa's Parliament is officially segregated into three houses -- one for whites, one for so-called coloreds, one for Asians, and none at all for the country's black majority. When State President P.W. Botha opened this year's session in Cape Town last week, he addressed the members of all three houses in a new $16 million, 340-seat assembly hall. But the new auditorium may not get much use.

After Botha finished his speech, a 35-minute droner devoted almost entirely to the economy, the briefly integrated assemblage filed out to reconvene as usual in three separate chambers. And though the government has proposed that joint sessions be held periodically, the colored House of Representatives and its leader, the Rev. Allan Hendrickse, have rejected the proposal as a cosmetic half step. The dispute is only the latest confrontation between Botha and Hendrickse, 60, a portly, goateed former Congregational minister. Says Hendrickse: "P.W. Botha is the sort of person who does not give in."

The bad blood between the two has been flowing since early last year, when Hendrickse sauntered into the surf at a whites-only beach as a demonstration against apartheid. Hendrickse, whose Labor Party holds 76 of the colored House's 85 seats, opposes Botha's key political legislation this year, including several amendments to the Group Areas Act, which chops South Africa into segregated areas.

Botha and his National Party, which controls 133 of the 166 elected seats in the all-white House of Assembly, could pass these measures anyway. Botha, however, cannot prevent Hendrickse from blocking another proposal -- the postponement of elections from 1989 to 1992. Shocked by the strong showing of the far-right Conservative Party in last year's balloting and alarmed that his party might lose control of the government, Botha wants to delay next year's vote. But the deferral must be approved by all three houses. Hendrickse says he will pass the measure only if Botha will agree to repeal, not just amend, the Group Areas Act. As Hendrickse told Botha, "If you continue fiddling with the Group Areas Act without making radical changes, the Labor Party will have no other option than to send you back to the voting polls in 1989."

A former high school teacher who was detained for two months in 1976 for political activism, Hendrickse became chairman of the House of Representatives ministers' council in September 1984, which earned him a seat in Botha's Cabinet. When Botha learned last August that Hendrickse intended to block the postponement, he warned him that he could not do so and remain in the Cabinet. Hendrickse resigned. He is convinced that Botha is trying to split the Labor Party and replace him with a more pliant leader. Says he: "Carrots have been dangled."

If Hendrickse retains control and keeps saying no to Botha, Parliament will be dissolved in September 1989. Hendrickse is confident that Labor will fare well at the polls. "Our stance has enhanced our position in the colored community," he says. "We are no longer seen as collaborators with the system." But Botha is famously intolerant of opposition and is unlikely to repeal the Group Areas Act. Hendrickse's opinion of the prospects for reform this year: "Bleak."