Botha ticks off namesake

Press, 10 February 1986, Page 6

Botha ticks off namesake

NZPA-Reuter Cape Town

White South African politics were in turmoil at the week-end after the President, Mr Pieter Botha, publicly rebuked his reformist Foreign Minister, and the Opposition Leader, Dr Frederik van Zyl Slabbed, resigned. In a speech in the white chamber of Parliament on Friday Mr Botha severely reprimanded his Foreign Minister, Mr Roelof Botha, for telling reporters that a black might one day be President of the country.

Roelof Botha’s remark, made casually to a briefing of foreign correspondents last week, appeared to be the last straw for the hard-liners in the white minority National Party Government who fear losing voters to the extreme Right.

"Any speculation about future Presidents is purely hypothetical," President Botha said. “No member of the Cabinet has any right to compromise the party in such away.” He said on January 31 that apartheid was outdated, but on Friday backed Mr F. W. de Klerk, a more conservative Cabinet Minister in charge of white education, for reaffirming the principle of segregated schooling. Mr Botha also announced an immediate lifting of emergency powers in seven districts in the Cape Province, but the main cities of Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Port Elizabeth remain under emergency rule designed to curb rioting. “As the situation returns to normal, the emer-

gency regulations will also be lifted in other areas,” he said.

Extreme Right-wing politicians swiftly latched on to the controversial issue of black Presidents. The Herstigte Nasionale Party’s leader, Jaap Marais, said the Government was yielding to the country’s foreign enemies and handing over power to the blacks. Minutes after President Botha spoke, Dr Slabbert announced his resignation from the leadership of the white Centrist Progressive Federal Party and from Parliament.

Dr Slabbert expressed frustration with the pace of the Government’s reforms to apartheid and bitterly condemned a new, year-old Constitution that givfes Indians and Coloureds a subordinate role in Parliament.

The black majority is excluded from the Parliament, and the other groups sit in racially segregated chambers. “We have no time to mess around with pseudoconstitutions,” Dr Slabbert said.

Dr Slabbert, who wants apartheid scrapped, expressed disillusion with the Government for not following up its reformist rhetoric with actions, and with white voters for being unduly impressed by the Government’s avowed intentions.

For years the Afri-kaner-dominated Government has had an overwhelming majority in the 178-seat white assembly. The P.F.P., supported mainly by Englishspeakers, has 27 seats and is the largest opposition party in the white chamber.