1987 South African general election

South African general election, 1987

6 May 1987 (1987-05-06)
All 166 elected seats in the House of Assembly
First party Second party Third party   x130px Leader P. W. Botha Andries Treurnicht Colin Eglin Party National Party Conservative Progressive Federal Last election 131 n/a 26 Seats won 123 22 19 Seat change 8 n/a 7
State President before election P. W. Botha National Party Elected State President P. W. Botha National Party

The 1987 South African general election was held on 6 May 1987. The State of Emergency existing in South Africa at that time cast a cloud over the elections. It was once again won by the National Party (NP) under the leadership of P. W. Botha, although for the first time it faced serious opposition from the right of the South African political spectrum.

The right-wing opposition came in the form of the Conservative Party (CP), which opposed even the limited powersharing with Indian and Coloured South Africans that had been implemented by the NP as part of a package of constitutional reforms in 1984. The CP was led by a former chairman of the Broederbond and NP cabinet minister, Andries Treurnicht, infamously known as Minister of Education under the Soweto riots. Following the election, in which the CP extended its 17 splinter MPs to win 22 seats, it replaced the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) as the official opposition in the House of Assembly.

The election year also saw important political developments to the left of the NP. During 1987 Denis Worrall resigned as the South African ambassador in London in order to return to politics. Together with Wynand Malan (who had resigned from the NP) and Esther Lategan he formed the Independent Movement to fight the general election. Only Malan won a seat and the partnership consequently disintegrated. Denis Worrall and others subsequently went on to form the Independent Party (IP), while Esther Lategan and others formed the National Democratic Movement.

Partially as a result of the split in the votes to the liberal anti-NP parties, the PFP lost seven of its parliamentary seats as well as its role of official opposition. The New Republic Party (NRP), formerly the United Party continued its disintegration and lost four of its five seats.

Reaction

Anglican Archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu noted after the election, "We have entered the dark ages of the history of our country."

Results

	Party (abbr.)	Leader	Votes	%	Elected seats	Other seats1	Total seats	Swing3	% seats
	National Party	P.W. Botha	1 075 642	52.3%	123	10	133	10	74.7%
	Conservative Party	Andries Treurnicht	574 502	26.6%	22	1	23	23	12.9%
	Progressive Federal Party (PFP)	Colin Eglin	288 579	14.0%	19	1	20	7	11.2%
	Herstigte Nasionale Party (HNP)	Jaap Marais	62 888	3.1%	0	0	0		0.0%
	New Republic Party (NRP)	Bill Sutton	40 494	2.0%	1	0	1	7	0.6%
	Others including Independent Movement2	Wynand Malan Denis Worrall	27 149	1.3%	1	0	1	1	0.6%
	Total		2 069 254	100.0%	166	12	178		100.0%

¹ Includes nominated seats and proportional seats. ² The seat was won by the Independence Movement. ³ Since the previous election (1981).

Sources

• African elections