MR F. W. de Klerk's National Party was last night heading for victory over President Nelson Mandela's African National Congress in local government elections in the Western Cape.
This is one of two provinces where the ANC failed to win a majority in the April, 1994, provincial elections.
The NP won 53 per cent of the provincial vote against 33 per cent for the ANC in 1994, securing a controlling position in the provincial government for itself.
The present contest assumed a disproportionate importance for two the main adversaries, the NP and the ANC; the prominence at the hustings of Mr De Klerk and Mr Mandela was evidence of that.
The Western Cape is the only province where blacks do not constitute a clear majority. Coloureds people of mixed race, most of whom speak Afrikaans and many of whom see blacks as rivals rather than allies - form about 60 per cent of the population.
At stake in the election was the question of whether the NP could retain its appeal to the majority of coloured voters, who, the ANC charged, had been won over by the NP's "swart gevaar", or black peril propaganda. The obverse question was whether the ANC could make good its boast that it would win a substantial number of coloured voters into its fold.
These questions were given added zest by the use of racist slurs by NP coloured supporters to describe Mr Mandela in the heat of the struggle. He was referred to as a "kaffir", the South African equivalent of "nigger". Use of that epithet was a factor in the resignation from the NP of the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Mr Bhadra Ranchod, on the eve of his appointment as South Africa's Ambassador to Australia.
The second reason why the election assumed unusual importance was that it took place in the wake of the NP decision to withdraw from coalition governments at central and provincial level, except in the Western Cape where it was the majority party. It was thus the first test of how voters viewed the NP decision.