Progressive Federal Party

Progressive Federal Party (PFP), former South African political party established in 1977 in the merger of the Progressive Reform Party (founded 1975) and defectors from the United Party (founded 1934; see also New Republic Party). During the late 1970s and the 1980s it was the official opposition to the ruling National Party. In 1989 the Progressive Federal Party merged with two smaller parties to form the liberal Democratic Party.

The history of the Progressive Federal Party may be traced to 1959, when liberal defectors from the United Party (the major opposition to the ruling National Party) formed the Progressive Party. From 1961 to 1974 Helen Suzman was the party’s sole representative in Parliament, fighting alone against apartheid and the extension of South Africa’s racial and security laws. In 1974, however, the Progressive Party won seven seats, and in the following year, on July 25, 1975, it merged with the Reform Party (itself formed in February of that year by other defectors from the United Party); the result was the Progressive Reform Party, which, with further recruits from the United Party, became the Progressive Federal Party on Sept. 5, 1977.

In the general election of 1977 the PFP became the official opposition to the National Party, and in 1981 the party won 26 seats in Parliament. During the 1980s the PFP advocated an antiapartheid program that included universal suffrage, but it was equivocal on key issues such as the need to abolish the Bantustans (territories designated by the white National Party-dominated government as “homelands” for the black African population). PFP leader Frederik van Zyl Slabbert opposed the attempts by South African Prime Minister (and later President) P.W. Botha to exclude black Africans from politics and, after acrimonious exchanges with Botha, resigned from Parliament in February 1986. The following year the PFP lost its position as the official opposition party.

In 1989 the number of PFP seats in Parliament had dropped to 19. That same year the PFP merged with two smaller liberal parties—the National Democratic Movement and the Independent Party—to form the Democratic Party. As with the older United Party from which they sprang, the PFP and the successor Democratic Party were both regarded with hostility by the National Party to the right and the African National Congress and United Democratic Front to the left. For further information, see Democratic Party.