The Michigan Daily-Wednesday, November 30, 1977-Page 7
S. AFRICANS GO TO THE POLLS
Vorster's white
defiance garners votes
JOHANNESBURG (AP) - South
Africa's general election today may
be remembered as the one in which
Prime Minister John Vorster ran
against U.S. President Carter.
Leaders of the National Party,
which has ruled this racially divided
country of 26 million people for
nearly 30 years, have been. preach-
ing a simple message to the 2.2
million white voters: Vote National
and tell the world with one voice what
South Africa thnks of foreign inter-
vention in domestic affairs.
And that message appears to be
carrying Vorster's party toward its
biggest election victory in the white-
ruled country where the 19-million
black majority is not allowed to vote.
OPINION POLLS have indicated
the 63-year-old Vorster may increase
the 116 seats he now holds in the
165-seat parliament by between 10
and 20 in a major sweep of constitu-
encies now held by splintered opposi-
tion parties.
The anti-government newspaper
Johannesburg Star predicted, how-
ever, that only about one million of
the 2.2 million registered voters will
vote. And the blacks, whose future is
a key issue in the election, will have
no say.
The election campaign has coin-
cided with a mandatory arms embar-
go imposed by the United Nations,
international ire over the death of
black activist Steve Biko in a South
African jail, and a crackdown on
black organizations and newspapers.
TYPICAL OF the defiant mood of
South Africa's leaders, Foreign Min-
ister R. F. Botha said recently: "The
United States insists on one-man,
one-vote in South Africa knowing it
must eventually lead to our destruc-
tion.'
This, he said, is what the West
wants because a white government in
South Africa hinders Western efforts
to woo the Third World.
Information Minister Connie Mul-
der put South African reaction
crisply during a campaign meeting:
"President Carter is the most rotten
president America has had in the last
three decades."
And Vorster received his most
resounding ovation immediately aft-
er the United Nations voted the
embargo.
"THERE ARE those in the world
outside who believe that with the
mandatory.arms embargo they can
bring South Africa to its knees," he
said. "But let me tell them tonight
they have another guess coming."
But the issue of foreign meddling
has overshadowed two other reasons
cited by Vorster for calling elections
18 months ahead of schedule.
One is a proposed new constitution
to provide separate parliaments for
the 4.3 million whites, 2.5 million
colored, or persons of mixed race,
and 750,000 Asians. The black major-
ity would remain excluded.
Vorster has assured the electorate
that whites will remain firmly in
control under the proposed constitu-
tion. Blacks will continue to exercise
political rights only in tribal home-
lands, constituting 13 per cent of
South Africa's land area set aside for
them.
The second reason is to test the new
oppositiqn line-up.
THE REAL questions to be deter-
mined by the election is how much
the Nationalists will increase their
present 70 per cent majority in the
165-seat parliament, now 116 seats,
and that depends on how many
English-speaking voters swing to-
ward the government dominated by
Afrikaners, and which of the two
main opposition parties will form the
t
I
official opposition.%
The Nationalists have fielded 148
candidates and it is the only party to
put up a sufficient number for a
majority in parliament.
Others contesting the election are
the tiny South African Party with six
seats and the ultra-right-wing Her-
stigte Party which has never won a
seat. Two seats were vacant when
parliament was dissolved in Septem-
ber.
A recent opinion poll published by
the Afrikaans Sunday newspaper in-
dicates the English vote for the
National Party will jump from 18 per
cent in the 1974 election to 31 per cent.
The English speakers represent
about 36 per cent of the whites.
Despite all the fulminations
against the West, the question really
is not what South Africans think of
the United States, arms embargoes
and what South Africa calls "double
standard" attacks on the govern-
ment's racial policies. But rather it is
the old agony of finding a workable
political solution to a situation where
disenfranchised blacks outnumber
whites 5 to 1.
leaders, as a solution for these final say.
groups. Blacks still will be expected
to exercise political rights only in the
rural tribal homelands constituting
13 per cent of South Africa's land
area set aside for them.
The Progressive Federal Party has
criticized the constitutional plan as
an attempt to entrench apartheid
under a dictator - a reference to the
white president who will have the
The progressives want to dis-
mantle apartheid laws immediately,
including those covering housing and
schooling, and hold a multi-racial
constitutional conference to decide
the new order.
The New Republic Party envisages
whites, coloreds and Asians inIe
federation linked to black homelands
in a confederation.
THE NATIONALISTS
their constitutional plan,
been rejected by colored
point to
which has
and Asian
Battered wife is found innocent
of charges in husband's murder
MARQUETTE (UPI) - A woman
who portrayed herself as a battered
housewife was found innocent of
murder yesterday in the shotgun-
slaying of her husband.
The verdict clearing Sharon Mc-
Neary, 42, was returned following a
two-day non-jury trial by Marquette
County Circuit Judge John McDon-
ald, who said the prosecution failed
to prove she had not acted in self
defense.
MCNEARNEY HAD been charged
with shooting her husband, George,
45, as he walked in the door of their
home last Feb. 12, emptying both
barrels of a 20-gauge shotgun.
Another Michigan murder case
raising the rights of battered house-
wives ended in Lansing last month
with a jury finding Francine Hughes
innocent by reason of temporary
insanity in the torch slaying- of her
husband following 13 years of physi-
cal abuse.
McNearney's only defense was a
tape-recorded statement given to
Marquette Police detectives imme-
diately following the shooting in
which she told of an argument with
her husband earlier in the day and
her fear that she would face physical
violence upon his return.
CAPT. MARVIN Gauthier, head of
the department's detective division,
told a reporter after the trial there
had been a history of wife beatings
involving the couple, who have teen-
aged children.
Gauthier, who did not testify at the
trial, said McNearney had been
arrested for felonious assault a year
and a half ago for firing a gun at his
wife.
McNearney, in her statement pre-
sented at the trial, also told of past
batterings.
No defense witnesses testified in
the case. There were nine prosecu-
tion witnesses, most of whom had
spent time with the victim on the day
of his death.
McDonald, reached at his home
after the trial ended, refused to
discuss' the basis of his ruling in
detail.
It all adds
UPI
Birth defects
are forever.
Unlessyou help.
TO PROTECT THE UNBORN
AND THE NEWBORN
March of Dimes
THIS SPACE CONTRIBUTED BY'THE PUBLISHER
Egypt, Israel ready
for Mideast summit
--- -------
... --.. - -. --....
C:Over 11,000 full-color pictures 80-page Atlas
: 48-page Time Chart. 25.000 in-depth entries
L 2,856 pages ..:
..
-
..
- - -
(Continued from Page1)1
position party, the National
Progressives, who said: "Halt all these
rash initiatives that have divided the
Arabs and have facilitated Israel's
dream of driving a wedge into Arab
solidarity."
The party has two seats in the 360-
member parliament.
SADAT HIMSELF was at home in
Ismailia on Tuesday, telling Egypt's
supreme judicial council that his visit
to Israel "does not erode any Arab
rights, historical or legal."
In Jerusalem, Israel's designated
chief delegate to the Cairo sum-
mit-Eliah ben-Elissar, the prime
minister's chief of bureau-met with
his advisers to prepare for the talks.
In the Israeli-occupied West Bank of
the Jordan River, meanwhile, Arab
pupils in four schools demonstrated
briefly against Sadat's initiative. A
military spokesman said the demon-
stration broke up peacefully without
Israeli intervention.
READING, Pa. (AP) --The ways
of the "good old days" are not the
cheapest nowadays.
An ice company here reports that it
has one family left that insists on
using an old-fashioned ice box. The
ice company delivers a 50-pound
cake of ice three times a week. Each
cake costs $1.50. That amounts to
more than $200 a year.
The cost of electricity for an
electric refrigerator to replace the
ice box would be about $75 a year and
the electricity needed to freeze a tray
of 16 ice cubes costs about 1.5 cents,
according to the General Public Util-
ities Corp.
. . . . . . . ..
Herds how to make
the new Burger Chef Salad:
.4
*e
I
Get a bowl and go
to the Salad Bar.
Ladle on chunky
Bleu Cheese.
Sprinkle on bacony-bits.
Start with crisp,
fresh lettuce, cabbage
and carrots.
Or creamy French.
, .
- ,,,
Add some
julienne beets.
ti
Add a few cherry
tomatoes.
Y
J
N
i
v"
it. /i..
/, . i
i
Or tangy Italian.
Or delicious
Thousand Island.
f
-AK
t
OPEN WIDE AMERKA
-I-
-l
Top off with crunchy
croutons. Enjoy.
Hereshowtoget one free.
Burger Chef is a trademark of Burger Chef Systems, Inc., Copyright 977, Burger Chef Systems, Inc.
GOOD FOR ONE FREE SALAD A
AT THE NEW BURGER CHEF'SALAD BAR
0 1