Botha Facing Dual Vote Challenge : Blacks and Conservative Whites Assail His Reform Plan

PRETORIA, South Africa — Assailed at home and abroad for dragging its feet on apartheid reform, South Africa’s ruling National Party faces a serious challenge in municipal elections Wednesday from a party that wants to turn the clock back to a time when apartheid was even stronger.

After 12 days of “prior voting” designed to increase black participation in the racially segregated elections, it is still too early to tell how the government will fare in its other crucial challenge--to win a big turnout and claim popular black support for its reform program.

About 15% of registered blacks had cast ballots when the early balloting ended Saturday, and when the polls reopen Wednesday, the government hopes to surpass the 20% black turnout in the last municipal election.

Calls for Boycott

Anti-apartheid activists have called for an election boycott, and black guerrilla groups have launched dozens of attacks on black candidates, town councilors and municipal buildings. On Monday, two black men were killed and 42 other people were injured when a car bomb exploded outside a shopping center in Witbank.

Few whites heeded the government’s call to “beat the rush” and cast early ballots, but a large turnout of voters from among the 5 million whites is expected Wednesday.

The far-right Conservative Party has transformed the city council election in the nation’s capital and in hundreds of towns across the vaderland into a referendum on President Pieter W. Botha’s more moderate national government.

“We are not fighting the municipal elections on issues like pavements and roads, but for the survival of Afrikaners and whites,” a Conservative Party candidate for the Pretoria City Council declared at a recent rally.

The Conservative Party, whose membership rolls have swelled since it received 26% of the vote in the 1987 general elections, hopes to wrestle control of most white municipal councils from the National Party in two of the country’s four provinces, including the Transvaal, the most populous province.

If the Conservatives succeed, they will be in their strongest position yet to challenge the National Party’s 40 years in power at the next general election, many analysts believe.

“We’re growing so fast it’s unbelievable,” said Moolman Mentz, a Conservative Party spokesman. “Wherever we go, people are flocking to us. If it continues, we’ll rule this country after the next (general) election.”

Some analysts think Wednesday’s battle for the white votes is as important to the government as the concurrent turnout of black voters.

“The government has shown it can control the United Democratic Front,” said Rory Riordan of the Human Rights Trust in Port Elizabeth, referring to the anti-apartheid coalition effectively banned by the government earlier this year. “But it hasn’t shown it can control the Conservative Party.”

Increased Salaries

To stave off the Conservative Party attack, the government has, among other things, increased the salaries of civil servants and teachers, a pillar of National Party support. It also demonstrated its commitment to residential segregation by refusing to shelve its 40-year-old Group Areas Act, despite increasing international pressure to do so.

Botha also has withdrawn South African troops from Angola and pushed the Angolan peace process, allowing him to initiate talks with friendly leaders of black-ruled African countries--diplomatic initiatives that have been praised by all but the most right-wing whites.

The National Party also has gained some converts from the more liberal Progressive Federal Party, which was unseated by the Conservative Party as the government’s official white opposition in 1987 and has steadily lost support. But it will probably not be enough.

The Conservative Party, by portraying even modest apartheid reforms as a surrender to blacks, has tapped into the fears of many whites that they will be overrun by the black majority.

Charge Whites Abandoned

The Conservatives contend that whites are being abandoned by the National Party, and they cite as examples the growth of illegal mixed-race neighborhoods, the government’s decision to abandon “influx control” of blacks into urban areas and the integration of movie theaters, commuter rail lines and beaches.

The National Party maintains that eventually whites will have to share some political power with blacks or risk bloody revolution. Most political analysts think that a Conservative Party national government would increase racial confrontations and invite unprecedented international sanctions.

In the black elections, a high voter turnout would lend support to Botha’s contention that the silent black majority supports his step-by-step reform program. The prior-voting period was designed to allow inconspicuous voting by blacks worried about election day intimidation by black activists.

A wide range of anti-apartheid activists, from the banned African National Congress to Anglican Archbishop Desmond M. Tutu, have called for an election boycott. They argue that town councils are merely puppets of a white government that denies blacks any say in national affairs. Only about 4 million of the country’s 26 million blacks are eligible to vote in these elections; the rest technically live in so-called homelands created by the government.

Johannesburg bureau assistant Michael Cadman contributed to this article.