THEPOLITICALTRANSITION
cars to Mmabatho, the capital of Bophuthatswana, shooting randomly at
African men, women, and children in the streets. The local army then re-
belled and forced the raiders to retreat ignominiously. Three AWB men,
who had been shooting through the window of their Mercedes, were
stopped by gunfire and a Bophuthatswana policeman shot them to death
in full view of television cameras. The South African government then as-
sumed direct control of the territory and Mandela was wildly applauded
at a mass rally in Mmabatho.
Soon afterward, the equally unpopular
Ciskei government also surrendered its independence, in the face of strik-
ing civil servants and looming mutiny in the police and army. Those events
thoroughly discredited the Volksfront and its allies. Viljoen, supported by
a substantial section of the Conservative party leadership, took the final
step toward participation in the election by registering the names of his
Freedom Front candidates, which left the IFP and a greatly weakened
Conservative party as the only significant holdouts. The Conservative
party could then be ignored, but not the IFP, which controlled a large ter-
ritory and millions of potential voters. 58
In March and early April, violence escalated to even higher levels in