(11 of 11)
Botha's Nationalists now hold a commanding 126 seats, and all pollsters and experts predict they will retain their majority. But Botha is aged, and the struggle to succeed him is expected to start soon after the election. Professor Sampie Terreblanche estimates that the "enlightened" wing of the party amounts to about 30% and the reactionary right wing to another 30%, with the remaining 40% spread out between. The winner must face new elections in 1989, and that clash may generate major changes, new alignments, even a new party.
Still very much in question, of course, is whether the impending changes will be enough at least to buy some time for further changes. And the demand of the black majority's leaders, both in and out of prison, is not just change but a change to black power. An election without blacks, one Soweto leader said last week, is "obscene." Botha and the Afrikaners retain full control of the instruments of power: almost all the officers of the well-equipped police force are Afrikaners, and the army is unquestionably the best on the continent. But facing the angry defiance of the black majority, backed by the economic and moral opposition of the outside world, the embattled Afrikaners seem at last to be losing their oft proclaimed determination to maintain apartheid at all costs. Botha's forces may win a majority of the white votes in next week's election, but history promises the eventual victory to the blacks.
FOOTNOTE: *Blacks number 26 million, mixed-race coloreds 3 million, English- speaking whites 1.5 million, Indians and other Asians 1 million.