APARTHEIDIN CRISIS
COSATU, the Southern African Catholic Bishops' Conference, the South
African Council of Churches, and the Black Sash. In February 1988, sev-
eral hundred armed members of the extra-parliamentary Afrikaner Weer-
stand Bewegingmarched through the streets ofPretoria to the Union Build-
ings and presented a petition calling on the government to create a
"traditional Boer state" without Blacks.v'
While white opinion was swinging to the right, black opinion was mov-
ing in the opposite direction. The government's attempt to co-opt signifi-
cant elements in the Coloured and Indian communities by providing them
with Houses in the tricameral Parliament was not a success. Sincethe new
constitution had been inaugurated in 1984, many Coloureds and Indians
had denounced those who participated, and in 1987, Allan Hendrickse,
the leader of the party that controlled the Coloured House, resigned from
the cabinet. In 1988, both the Coloured and the Indian houses blocked the
government's attempt to enact legislation that would have imposed heavy
penalties for violations of the residential segregation in the Group Areas
Act.45
Official attempts to appease Africans were no more successful. Oupa
Thando Mthimkulu expressed the feelings of many people in the town-