Word: vorster
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...John Vorster was right about that. Fulfilling the Prime Minister's euphoric election-night prediction, his National Party won 64.8% of the popular vote and 134 of the 165 seats in the new Parliament, an increase of 17. The moderately liberal Progressive Federal Party, supported by many English-speaking South Africans, doubled its previous support (to 16.7% of the vote), but elected only 17 members to the new Parliament. The other two English opposition groups, the conservative South African Party (three seats) and the Natal-based New Republic Party (ten seats) were virtually wiped out. So was a right...
...result was a personal victory for John Vorster. He had called the election and dominated the campaign, capitalizing on the U.N.'s new mandatory arms embargo against South Africa and other recent signs that both Britain and the U.S. had decided to take a firmer line with Pretoria from now on. South Africans joked that Vorster and his party had run against President Jimmy Carter-and had won big. As they had always done before, the Afrikaners united in a time of crisis. And this time, they brought record numbers of English-speaking whites along with them...
...there are to be any reforms in the near future, they will be "filtered through," one or two at a time, as a Vorster associate puts it. The job reservation laws, which restrict certain work categories to whites, may be scrapped. The Bantu education system, the subject of violent protest by black students in the past 18 months, will almost certainly be revised. Integration of sports-increasingly acceptable to whites, if largely irrelevant to black aspirations-may be expanded...
...most important issues, however, Vorster will stick to the course he has already set. In an interview last week with the Afrikaans magazine Huisgenoot, the Prime Minister insisted that there would be no concessions on political power-sharing with blacks on a national level. He will proceed with his plans for constitutional changes to establish separate "parliaments" for whites, mixed-blood coloreds, and Asians, and will continue to develop the tribal homelands. This week BophuthaTswana becomes the second of these homelands to attain "independence...
...election night, Vorster spoke pointedly about taking no chances with "the safety of the state." He thus seemed to imply that the internal security measures now in effect will not be relaxed and that the people detained and "banned" in the government roundup of dissidents on Oct. 19 will not soon be released...