cerned, I'm not even considering the possibility of black majority govern-
ment in South Africa. "40
The government made a great effort to acquire legitimacy for the town-
ship administrations, the existing African councillors having been totally
discredited. But African nationalists boycotted the municipal elections that
were held on a segregated basis in October 1988. Only 905 out of 1,839
seats for black councillors were contested, and in 183 wards there were no
nominations at all. In the contested wards, only 25 percent ofthe registered
voters cast their ballots-that
is, 3 percent of the African population of
South Africa (including all ten Homelands)."!
While the government was trying to create institutions Africans could
respect, it was losing ground among the white electorate. In the general
election for the House of Assembly on May 6, 1987, the National party
share of the vote fellto 52 percent (from 57 percent in 198 I). Although that
still gave the National party a commanding majority with 133 seats in the
House of Assembly, the Conservative party, which stood for a reversion to
strict Verwoerdian apartheid,
polled 26 percent of the vote and won
twenty-three seats, displacing the Progressive Federal party, which won