Word: transvaal
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...Nationalists see it, black activists cannot topple them from power, but the Conservatives might. Calling for a return to total apartheid and accusing Botha of betraying white Afrikaners, the Conservatives became the official opposition in Parliament last year. All the party's parliamentary seats are in Transvaal province, the northernmost region settled by the voortrekkers who drove their ox wagons across the veld to escape British rule 150 years ago, but last week the Conservatives challenged the National Party at the local level in all four of the country's provinces...
...that stern policy did not prevent the ruling National Party from suffering a parliamentary by-election defeat at the hands of the far-right Conservative Party, its third such loss in the past month. Last week's voting took place in the urban mining constituency of Randfontein, in the Transvaal, a sign that the fast-rising Conservative Party, long seen as the voice primarily of rural Afrikaners, is broadening its base. It was also a sign that the Conservatives, who hold 22 seats in Parliament, vs. the National Party's 133, could pose a serious threat in next October...
Only two seats were at stake in last week's all-white ballot for the South African Parliament, but the outcome sent shock waves through the nation. The big winner in the Transvaal provincial by-election was the ultra-right Conservative Party, which strengthened its grip on both rural seats by attacking every concession State President P.W. Botha has made in recent years to South Africa's blacks...
Botha called the Transvaal vote a "temporary disappointment," blaming it on "foreign interference." He has reason to worry. The next parliamentary elections are scheduled for 1989, and if last week's results were any indication, it is no longer inconceivable that victory would go to a right- wing opposition that makes Botha's Nationalists look moderate...
Opposition politicians and academics in South Africa linked Vlok's announcement to this week's parliamentary by-elections in two Transvaal constituencies. Botha's ruling National Party is eager to win back at least one of the seats from the far-right Conservatives, who seized them in last May's general election and supplanted the liberal Progressive Federal Party as the official opposition in Parliament. Kragdadigheid, or a show of strength, is a standard tool in Afrikaner electioneering, and the security of South African borders and the country's white minority has long been the central plank in the National...