APARTHEIDIN CRISIS
fifty-nine seats in a National Council that would have had merely advisory
powers. Twelveof those African seats, moreover, were to have been held by
representatives of the non independent homeland governments, and the
other eighteen seats were to have been occupied by Africans elected indi-
rectly by the councillors who succeeded in the township elections in Octo-
ber
1988.
African nationalist
leaders and several homeland
leaders
promptly condemned the proposal. No Black of "caliber or representative-
ness" would sit on the National Council, said Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi
of KwaZulu. That idea, like its predecessors, was stillborn.t?
Botha and his colleagues, thinking in racial categories, could not con-
template giving Africans an effective say in national politics because they
feared that it would lead to rule by the African majority and that the
consequences would be calamitous for the white population. President
Botha made his meaning clear on August 18, 1988, when, addressing the
National party's annual congress in Durban, he said, "As far as I'm con-
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-