South Africa Running Against America

With the verve and vigor they usually reserve for their favorite rugby matches, South Africa's white politicians last week set off on a three-month- long election campaign. On May 6, almost two years before the next constitutionally mandated election, the country's 3 million white voters will go to the polls to elect a new all-white legislature. Although it will not be a referendum on any specific issue or program, State President P.W. Botha is, in effect, asking for a vote of confidence on his hard-line responses to black activists at home and economic sanctions from abroad.

As Botha and his governing National Party candidates swung into action, it appeared that their real opponent was not South Africa's other political parties but the U.S. Government. In his speech opening the campaign, Botha bemoaned the "prejudice, abuse and dishonesty South Africa had to endure at the hands of cynical and sanctimonious antagonists abroad." Lest there be any doubt about the target, Foreign Minister Roelof ("Pik") Botha, who is no relation to the President, candidly admitted that his party would be tapping the "strong anti-U.S. feeling in this country." It is time, he said, "to show the U.S. Congress they will not coerce us." It is "dangerous," added Botha, to follow the U.S. in decisions on world affairs. "They are hopeless."

State President Botha enters the campaign confident that his strategy will keep in power the National Party, which has ruled the country since 1948. He assumes that South Africa's white voters want a period of calm after so much turbulence. Since Botha declared a national state of emergency last June, incidents of political violence have dwindled to just a handful a day. According to government figures, the number of deaths in racial conflicts dropped from 665 to 251 between the first and the second half of last year. Under the country's harsh press restrictions, no violent incidents can be reported on or photographed by journalists. The decreased coverage adds to the public's sense of returning normality. Botha's anti-Americanism theme is likely to win a favorable response. In 1977 his party ran a campaign against Jimmy Carter, who was then pressuring South Africa for changes in apartheid policies, and won a resounding victory.

The National Party completely dominates the outgoing Parliament, holding 127 of the 178 seats. Nothing less than an opposition landslide could turn it out of power, and that is unlikely. Nonetheless, political analysts are looking to the election for signs that the country's white voters are moving either to the left or right of the Nationalists. The results could thus influence any future liberalization of apartheid laws.