Konserwatiewe party
The Konserwatiewe Party van Suid-Afrika (in Afrikaans for short : Konserwatiewe Party , KP, English : Conservative Party of South Africa , CP, German: "Conservative Party") was a party in South Africa . Shortly before the end of apartheid , it became the largest parliamentary opposition party.
history
In 1982 the KP split from the ruling National Party (NP). The NP was the dominant party in the apartheid system, but it appeared to some critics to be too moderate. The reason for the split was the formation of a three-chamber system with parliaments for the Coloreds and " Indians ". The first leader of the Communist Party was Andries Treurnicht , former pastor of the Dutch Reformed Church and South African Minister of Education. The supporters of the Communist Party were predominantly Boers who lived in the countryside, especially in what was then the Transvaal province . After the elections on May 6, 1987, the Konserwatiewe Party replaced the liberal Progressive Federal Party with 22 members of the strongest opposition force and thus the “official opposition” to the NP. In the local elections in the same year she won in 60 of the 110 municipal electoral districts in the Transvaal and in a quarter of the municipal electoral districts in the Orange Free State . In the parliamentary elections in 1989, the last election before the end of apartheid, it received around 31.5 percent of the vote and remained the official opposition party.
In the 1992 referendum , only 32 percent of eligible whites voted for the halt to negotiations recommended by the CP. Treurnicht died in 1993 and Ferdinand Hartzenberg became the new party chairman. The CP decided to boycott the parliamentary elections in 1994 , in which all adult South Africans were allowed to vote for the first time. Their influence then declined in favor of the politically similar Vryheidsfront (freedom front ). In 2003 the two parties merged with the Afrikaner Eenheids Moving to form the Vryheidsfront Plus .
The Communist Party politician Clive Derby-Lewis was instrumental in the murder of the ANC politician Chris Hani in 1993. He was found guilty of it that same year. In 1997, Hartzenberg admitted to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the murder had been carried out with the approval of the party leadership in order to destabilize the country. Derby Lewis was sentenced to life imprisonment for the act.