The Conservative Party-controlled town of Boksburg had a brief encounter with integration when a multi-racial audience gathered this week at a Democratic Party election meet. The Boksburg Town Hall, which is reserved for whites only, did not collapse when several blacks joined about 250 people in a meeting addressed by DP co-leader Dr Dennis Worall on Monday night. What could have been expected to be a meeting marred with confrontations and heckling, turned out to be a disciplined and peaceful occasion as speakers explained the policies of the new party. Outlining the DP’s position in relation to the other two major parties contesting the elections in the white House of Assembly, Worall said while the CP was irrelevant with regard to the future of South Africa, the National Party was holding it.
And, he said, the DP was the only party that was working for the future. ”The DP says ‘goodbye apartheid’ and we are prepared to build a new future South Africa together with our fellow citizens,” said Worall. He said the NP government lacked the necessary credibility to bring about the changes that would restore South Africa’s international standing and bring about internal peace and prosperity. ”If I believed the National Party could do it I would still be an ambassador,” he said. He said the NP had failed in the past to get the negotiation process going because it had insisted on its own government institutions.
He proposed that negotiations should be held on an independent basis under the supervision of the chief justice and with constitutional lawyers and political scientists working towards formulating a draft constitution. He said everybody had to be involved in this process. ”From the Freedom Charter to Carel Boshoff’s Volkstaat idea, all these proposals have to be put on the table to design a new South Africa. This process could take years in the same way as the national convention leading up to the Union in 1910 had taken years,” he said. The Boksburg seat is being contested by Sirk van Wyk (DP), Sakkie Blanche (CP), Dr Sias Nothnagel (NP) and Attie Treunicht for the Herstilrte Nasionale Party. – Phil Molefe
