On 2 February 1989, apartheid State President P.W. Botha announced his intention to resign the National Party presidency while remaining State President, after suffering a mild stroke, on 18 January. His decision came on the eve of the 1989 session of Parliament and took everyone, including the National Party caucus, by surprise. The resignation shocked his colleagues and led to an internal succession process in the party.
When the 130 National Party MPs filed into their routine pre-session caucus meeting, they had no idea that they would have to elect a new leader. Botha delivered his letter of resignation as party leader to Jurie Mentz, the chairman of the NP caucus, only 10 minutes before the gathering. By quitting his party post, Botha said in his letter of resignation, he hoped to elevate the presidency above partisan politics and make it “a unifying force in South Africa”. In particular, it encouraged speculation that Botha, because of his ill health, would retire as President the same year. During his recovery Botha appointed the Minister of Constitutional Development and Planning, J. Chris Heunis, as Acting President.
Actually, Botha’s stroke occurred while Chris Heunis was meeting with the black councillors on 18 January 1989, as part of an effort to legitimise the failed October 1988 municipal elections that were largely boycotted (less than 20 per cent voted) in virtually all the townships in South Africa. The apartheid regime had chosen to interpret the October elections as a mandate from the black community to continue with Botha’s reform programme.
On 18 January 1989, Chris Heunis held a press conference after attending a meeting with over sixty representatives of the black urban councils that were elected in the black community-rejected municipal elections. Heunis and the councillors released a joint statement declaring that the councilmen agreed to establish a forum that was to represent black people outside of the “self-governing” Bantustans, which was envisaged to eventually take part in the national process of negotiations that the National Party intended to undertake towards a new constitution in South Africa.
The National Party plan under the management of Heinus and the stewardship of PW Botha was to have Bantustan leaders and township councillors representing blacks in the negotiations that would effectively exclude the African National Congress (ANC) from the reform process. Heunis hailed the initiative as evidence that the radicals were being subdued by the “evolutionary movement” that was emerging as a result of the reform process.
The subsequent media reports were largely sceptical of the process, as they predicted that the forum would be rejected by the black majority, similarly to the previous initiatives that failed to gain legitimacy as the true representatives who enjoyed their faith, and moreover, that could lead to the ultimate end of apartheid. Concluding their reports, most of the media houses anticipated an indefinite prolongation of the State of Emergency if PW Botha remained in power due to an unremitting political stalemate.
However, Botha, who suffered a stroke that left him partially paralysed, was succeeded as party leader by Education Minister Frederik W. de Klerk. While Botha made it clear that he intended to retain the presidency, the move appeared to position de Klerk to become the next president. The party caucus elected De Klerk by a vote of 69-61 after three rounds of balloting. Foreign Minister Roelof “Pik” Botha was eliminated in the first round, Heunis in the second, and Finance Minister Barend du Plessis fell in the final vote.
Defence Minister Magnus Malan, who was also listed as a contender for the top party job, was never in the running. In a statement from Lusaka, the African National Congress (ANC) de-emphasised the importance of Botha’s announcement: “We are seeing a change of one personality to another. What they have been doing as a government will continue. Our people must be prepared to fight on against oppression.”
In the Editorial of its official journal, Sechaba (Vol. 23 No. 4, April 1989), the ANC continued to say that “The apartheid regime is in disarray, and pulling in different directions. The racists don’t want to relinquish their privileges, but can’t agree on how to cling to them. The followers don’t know what leader to follow, with PW Botha refusing to go, and Heunis, De Klerk and others taking their turn to talk of ‘reforms’. …When they speak to their followers, it seems that not Botha, not De Klerk, not Heunis, dare address the real problems looming behind their ‘leadership crisis’ and their confusion.”
“They don’t talk about their defeat at Cuito Cuanavale”, the Editorial continued. “They are quiet abbot their attitude to the elections in Namibia. They avoid mentioning the corruption in their own corridors of power; in the Department of Education and Training, for example, and in their bantustan governments. They don’t comment when their own courts find the system of rents in Soweto to be illegal. They keep of the subject of the economy – profits are slowing down, interest rates are going up, and the time is approaching when foreign loans must be repaid” (‘Editorial’, Sechaba, Vol. 23 No. 4, April 1989).
Castro Khwela
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