PW Botha Resigns from the National Party
On 6 May 1990, former leader of the National Party (NP) and head of state, Pieter Willem Botha, resigned from the party in protest against President F.W. de Klerk’s reform proposals. On 2 – 4 May 1990, the Groote Schuur talks took place between the apartheid government and the African National Congress (ANC). An agreement was reached about conditions for full-scale negotiations on ending political conflict in South Africa. Following this agreement, on 6 May 1990, P.W. Botha resigned from the National Party in protest against the reform proposals.
Apartheid President Botha’s loss of influence can be directly attributed to the defeat of the apartheid South African Defence Force (SADF) in the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale in Angola on 23 March 1988 and the subsequent decisions taken at the summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow, from 29 May to 1 June 1988, that paved the way to resolving the problem of Namibia. The issue of Namibia, according to apartheid Foreign Minister Pik Botha, was destabilising the region and “seriously complicating” the major issue which South Africa itself would shortly had to face.
Soviet military aid would cease and Cuban troops and Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) guerrillas were to be withdrawn from Angola as soon as South Africa complied with United Nations (UN) Resolution 435 by relinquishing control of Namibia and allowing UN-supervised elections there. The Tripartite Agreement, w
