An Avalanche for Vorster

As always, the Afrikaners drew together in a time of crisis

"As I see it, it is not a landslide. It is an avalanche."

John Vorster was right about that. Fulfilling the Prime Minister's euphoric election-night prediction, his National Party won 64.8% of the popular vote and 134 of the 165 seats in the new Parliament, an increase of 17. The moderately liberal Progressive Federal Party, supported by many English-speaking South Africans, doubled its previous support (to 16.7% of the vote), but elected only 17 members to the new Parliament. The other two English opposition groups, the conservative South African Party (three seats) and the Natal-based New Republic Party (ten seats) were virtually wiped out. So was a right-wing Afrikaner splinter group, the Herstigte Nasionale Party, which won no seats at all.

The result was a personal victory for John Vorster. He had called the election and dominated the campaign, capitalizing on the U.N.'s new mandatory arms embargo against South Africa and other recent signs that both Britain and the U.S. had decided to take a firmer line with Pretoria from now on. South Africans joked that Vorster and his party had run against President Jimmy Carter--and had won big. As they had always done before, the Afrikaners united in a time of crisis. And this time, they brought record numbers of English-speaking whites along with them.

The election strengthened the verligte (enlightened) wing of the National Party as voters approved a number of attractive party newcomers. Among them: Dr. Jan Marais, 58, the original driving force behind the independent South African Foundation and a maverick Afrikaner who has questioned many of the government's apartheid laws; Christophe Rencken, 40, a political commentator for the South African Broadcasting Corp.; and Denis Worrall, 43, the English-speaking former director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at Rhodes University. Worrall advocates a substantial revision of the government's apartheid blueprint, including some kind of constitutional role for the country's 9 million urban blacks and an enlargement of the nine tribal homelands slated for nominal independence.

But if there are to be any reforms in the near future, they will be "filtered through," one or two at a time, as a Vorster associate puts it. The job reservation laws, which restrict certain work categories to whites, may be scrapped. The Bantu education system, the subject of violent protest by black students in the past 18 months, will almost certainly be revised. Integration of sports--increasingly acceptable to whites, if largely irrelevant to black aspirations--may be expanded.

On the most important issues, however, Vorster will stick to the course he has already set. In an interview last week with the Afrikaans magazine Huisgenoot, the Prime Minister insisted that there would be no concessions on political power-sharing with blacks on a national level. He will proceed with his plans for constitutional changes to establish separate "parliaments" for whites, mixed-blood coloreds, and Asians, and will continue to develop the tribal homelands. This week BophuthaTswana becomes the second of these homelands to attain "independence."

On election night, Vorster spoke pointedly about taking no chances with "the safety of the state." He thus seemed to imply that the internal security measures now in effect will not be relaxed and that the people detained and "banned" in the government roundup of dissidents on Oct. 19 will not soon be released.

A gruff but avuncular authority figure, Vorster gained votes from both South Africans who want him to safeguard the country against change and those who want him to bring about change safely. In recent weeks there has been a series of incidents--a rash of daylight robberies and attacks in white suburban areas --that has had an unsettling effect on the national psyche. A bomb exploded at rush hour in Johannesburg's leading shopping complex, injuring 19 people. Two weeks ago, a National Party candidate for Parliament, Economist Robert Smit, and his wife Jeanne-Cora, were murdered in their home near Johannesburg. The victims were shot and stabbed, and their killers sprayed mysterious letters in red paint on the kitchen walls. Police were not sure whether the killings were a South African variant of the Charles Manson case, as one anonymous caller hinted, or whether they had political connotations.

Meanwhile, the inquest into the unexplained death of Black Consciousness Leader Stephen Biko ended in Pretoria. At first the government maintained that Biko died in prison three months ago from the effects of a hunger strike. Later, security police claimed he had hit his head against a wall while scuffling angrily with interrogators. Summarizing his case last week, the eloquent attorney for Biko's family, Sydney Kentridge, asserted that the security police had inexcusably disregarded Stephen Biko's rights while he was in their custody. "There is indisputable evidence," Kentridge said, "that on the morning of Sept. 6 Mr. Biko went into the interrogation room alive and well. On the morning of the 7th he came out a physical and mental wreck. He died a miserable and lonely death on a cold prison floor."

The lawyer did not call it murder, but he held the state at least partly responsible for Biko's death. In a five-minute verdict at week's end, the presiding magistrate, Martinus Prins, ruled out the possibility of charges against the police. Biko's death could not be attributed, he declared, to "any criminal act or omission by any person." Case dismissed. qed

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