Moving into No-man’s Land

Abstract

A bombshell was dropped into white South African politics in January 1986 when two high-profile MPs, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert and Alex Boraine, announced their immediate withdrawal from Parliament and their resignation from the Progressive Federal Party (PFP), for many years the leading liberal opposition to the ruling Nationalists. Their joint action was intended as a dramatic protest over the race policies of the Botha government and what they saw as the inability of their party to exert any real influence. The move was also a repudiation of the tricameral parliament established by President Botha barely fifteen months earlier which left real power in the hands of Botha and the ruling National Party.