P.W. Botha is not a man given to changing his mind, so his listeners did not expect any surprises last week when the South African State President addressed the opening session of Parliament. Walking behind the sergeant at arms carrying the ceremonial mace, Botha entered the whites-only House of Assembly in Cape Town and faced the newly elected members sitting on green leather benches. In his schoolmasterish, staccato delivery, he told them that his government stood firmly on the principle of politics by segregated racial groups and that those who disapproved would not be permitted to use violence or otherwise break the law. Declared Botha: "The fact that certain legal arrangements may not be acceptable to some people does not give them the right to contravene the law."
Already trussed up in the world's most elaborate net of emergency regulations, South Africans braced for a further crackdown after Botha's ruling National Party won an impressive victory at the polls earlier this month. The National Party, which has been in power since 1948, captured 52% of the popular vote and 123 out of 166 Assembly seats. At the same time, many whites, fearful of political concessions to the country's black majority, lined up behind the total-apartheid Conservative Party, giving it 26% of all votes cast and easily eclipsing the liberal Progressive Federals as the country's second major party. For the first time in Nationalist rule, the government found itself with a right-wing party as the official opposition. The lurch to the right sets the stage for a struggle between the Nationalists and the Conservatives, led by former Dutch Reformed Church Minister Andries Treurnicht, to see which party can sound more determined to protect the white minority.
Botha, for his part, engaged in heavy rhetoric but skimped on details. He warned that he would no longer allow funding from outside the country for those who rely on violence to promote political change. "We shall not permit the constitutional order in South Africa to be subverted in this way," he said. Many anti-apartheid organizations, church groups and trade unions receive contributions from abroad and will watch anxiously as the government spells out how it intends to take action and how it will define subversion.
Warming to his theme, Botha advised journalists working in South Africa to "guard against instigating and promoting activities of this kind under the guise of the freedom of the press." As if to underscore the point, the Department of Home Affairs last week refused to reverse its decision not to renew the work permits of two British television correspondents. At the same time, Botha pledged to be "more directly involved" in negotiations with black leaders and to create a National Council as a forum for such talks. But even moderate blacks such as KwaZulu Chief Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi have refused to take part until Nelson Mandela and other popular leaders are freed from prison and offered the opportunity to participate. The reform process, slow and tentative at best, appears stalemated.