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But Botha sounded reasonable compared with Treurnicht, a onetime chairman of the Broederbond, the secret brotherhood of Afrikaner nationalists. The day after the President's speech, Treurnicht rose from his Assembly seat to introduce the opposition's traditional no-confidence vote. Then, smiling with satisfaction and jabbing the air in the direction of the Nationalist benches, he attacked Botha for weakening apartheid. Said Treurnicht: "The government's policy means that eventually we will not have control over our own fatherland." As the Nationalists across the aisle jeered, Botha sat rigidly in his seat, occasionally making a comment to his lieutenants.
The Conservative Party program calls for partitioning South Africa into 13 separate, independent states. One of them, named Southland and including most of present-day South Africa, would be reserved for whites, while the others would be divided among nonwhites. After Treurnicht finished, Nationalist Minister of Manpower Pietie du Plessis, a fierce debater, took the floor, armed with a batch of Treurnicht's old speeches. He read quotes to prove that before he walked out of the National Party in 1982, Treurnicht had supported the policies that he now vigorously denounced. The Conservatives, Du Plessis said, "are living in a dream world. We cannot enforce a system of absolute separation." It was the Conservatives' turn to jeer, forcing the Speaker of Parliament to call repeatedly for order.
Du Plessis wound up by linking Treurnicht with Eugene Terre'Blanche, leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), many of whose followers support the Conservatives. He said that he was reminded of a puppet show in which the man pulling the strings was the AWB leader. But it was Colin Eglin, head of the Progressive Federal Party, who said aloud what many in the House of Assembly must have been thinking: "Here we have a Nationalist government that believes in race classification, group areas, apartheid in schools, hospitals, housing and constitutional provisions, being attacked for being too liberal. What a sad day for South Africa."
In the midst of the rhetoric, two car bombs exploded outside Magistrate's Court in downtown Johannesburg, killing four policemen and injuring 14 other people. The tragedy served as a reminder that the speeches in the House of Assembly are not some dry debating match but deal with deeply emotional issues that can and do cost lives. The irony of the Conservative challenge is that even though the reform process has shuddered to a halt and there is no prospect of negotiations with black leaders, Botha's image might be boosted by the astonishing confrontation in Parliament, where the Nationalist government is being denounced as dangerously liberal.