A Show of Iron Fists

The 1.6 million South Africans who went to the polls in parliamentary elections last week were all white, but uppermost in their minds were the 18,750,000 nonwhite South Africans who cannot vote. Prime Minister John Vorster, 58, called the elections 18 months ahead of schedule to seek a mandate to pursue the racial policy that Afrikaners call kragdadigheid (ironfistedness), which has been coming under increasing fire from verligte (enlightened) South Africans. After the ballots were counted, the sentiment was clear: five more years of harsh segregation.

Slight Shift. As it has for the past 26 years, Vorster's National Party garnered a majority of the ballots; its 55.1% gave it 122 legislators--a gain of four--in an expanded 171-seat house. The official opposition United Party, which is only slightly to the left of the Nationals, dropped from 46 to 41 seats. The tiny, militantly anti-apartheid Progressive Party was the surprising big winner with five new seats, for a total of six.

Though the Progressives' gains marked a slight shift away from racism, it was not nearly enough to inhibit Vorster's plans to continue segregating most of South Africa's blacks in crowded Bantustans. The dreary settlements have little hope of achieving economic independence. Black tribal land was originally promised in 1936, but much acreage still has not been turned over. Even if it were, black chiefs say, the total area would still be inadequate. Vorster claims that he cannot grant more land because the 1936 act ties his hands. "Nonsense," retorts Gatsha Buthelezi, 45, chief minister for the country's 4,250,000 Zulus. "Parliament made that law in 1936, and it can unmake it now."

With the National Party's new mandate, any such undoing is highly unlikely. Indeed, United Party leaders were so depressed by the results that they said South Africans had opted for a "one-party state." Their reaction, however, may have been at least partly inspired by the embarrassment they suffered at the hands of both the bold Progressives, who stole the opposition's thunder, and Vorster, who showed unseemly scorn for their party on election day. Happening upon the Prime Minister at a polling booth, Vorster's United Party opponent, Elias Olivier, approached him with a greeting. In response, the jut-jawed apostle of kragdadigheid jeered: "Go play marbles, young man"--and he refused even to shake Olivier's hand.

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