1989 South African general election

1989 South African general election

← 1987 6 September 1989 1994 →
166 of the 178 seats in the House of Assembly 84 seats needed for a majority
Registered	3,120,104
Turnout	69.48% ( 1.64pp)
First party Second party Third party   Leader F. W. de Klerk Andries Treurnicht Zach de Beer Party National Conservative Democratic Last election 52.70%, 123 seats 26.83%, 22 seats 16.12%, 20 seats[a] Seats won 94 39 33 Seat change 29 17 13 Popular vote 1,039,704 680,131 431,444 Percentage 48.19% 31.52% 20.00% Swing 4.51pp 4.69pp 3.88pp
Results by constituency
State President before election F. W. de Klerk National Elected State President F. W. de Klerk National

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General elections were held in South Africa on 6 September 1989, the last under apartheid. Snap elections had been called early (no election was required until 1992) by the recently elected head of the National Party (NP), F. W. de Klerk, who was in the process of replacing P. W. Botha as the country's president, and his expected program of reform to include further retreat from the policy of apartheid. The creation of the Conservative Party had realigned the NP as a moderate party, now almost certain to initiate negotiations with the black opposition, with liberal opposition (the PFP) openly seeking a new constitutional settlement on liberal democratic and federalist principles.

Although the National Party won a comfortable majority of seats (94 of 166) in the House of Assembly, the governing party suffered a setback and received only 48% of the popular vote, the first elections since 1961 in which the NP failed to win a majority of the vote. However, the first-past-the-post system, and a severely fractured opposition as well as the twelve appointed and indirectly elected members entrenched the NP's majority, allowing it to comfortably remain in power.

The Conservative Party (CP), which opposed any form of power-sharing with other races, failed to accomplish a breakthrough beyond its conservative Afrikaner backing as some had expected, but remained the official opposition with 39 seats. By some estimates, the party had received the backing of a slim majority of Afrikaners particularly in the Orange Free State, once the NP's heartland, but with very limited support among English-speaking voters.^[1]

Before the elections, the liberal Progressive Federal Party (PFP) had dissolved itself and regrouped as the Democratic Party (DP), winning 33 seats, six seats short of retaking its position as the official opposition. In terms of vote share, it fell a quarter million votes behind the CP, but was favoured by its stronghold in the Cape Province and Natal.

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