South Africa: Botha's Setback

He wins—but reforms may lose

In South African elections there is never any doubt about the outcome. The all-white electorate troops to the polls and votes overwhelmingly for the Afrikaner-dominated, white-supremacist National Party, just as it has seven times since 1948. Last week's parliamentary election seemed to be no exception: the Nationalists ran up a familiar landslide among the 1.5 million voters, winning 131 of the 165 seats at stake. But this time there were significant differences. There was an overriding issue—the extent and pace of racial reform. There were defections from...