Andries Treurnicht has spurned PW Botha's hand of Afrikaner friendship – until the state president "turns around away from mixed residential areas and mixed, political bodies, and returns to the apartheid path mapped out by Dr DF Malan.
Speaking at a political rally in Elsburg near Johannesburg last night the Conservative Party leader said only when these conditions had been fulfilled would Botha find the CF's hands outstretched in welcome. “We say reject power-sharing in a multi-racial, unitary state," said Treurnicht, "remove multi-racial structures of government that have power over the Afrikaner … Stop making concessions to the other two (parliamentary) houses. Choose again a path to our own absolutely sovereign while parliament, where we can't be vetoed by other races."
Treurnicht was responding to Botha's emotional call for Afrikaner unity at the National Party's Free State congress this week. In a plea to Treurnicht, Botha said only two men could rescue Afrikaner unity — himself and his archrival in the House of Assembly. He called on the volk to shelve their differences in the year of Afrikaner festivities. In the process, he released a wave of speculation that he had betrayed great weaknesss on the eve of the municipal elections – in which the buoyant' right-wing party is expected to make huge gains.
The incident is also taken to indicate that the president's consuming interest lies in intra-Afrikaner relations, and this win be sure to infuriate his coloured and Indian partners in the tricameral parliament. Gleeful CP representatives described Botha's state" meat as a revealing blunder. "He is creeping on his knees," a senior CF source reportedly said, “it is an unbelievable humiliation.
In his response, Treurnicht used more temperate language – but the message was just as blunt. “In Bloemfontein, the state president, extended a hand of goodwill to me personally and to everyone who wishes to work toward Afrikaner unity in the year of festivities," Treurnicht told the Elsburg meeting.
“I share the longing for true Afrikaner unity and regret its lack, a lack that is threatening the survival of our volk. But, he said, although "we (Afrikaners) enjoy great unity – beyond party boundaries – in our support for our security forces and in our resistance against threats and attacks from boycotters, blackmailers, subversives and terrorists," the only real unity, summed from conviction based on fundamental principles.
This article originally appeared in the Weekly Mail.
