Chris Heunis

January Christiaan Heunis ( born April 20, 1927 in Uniondale, Western Cape Province, † 27 January, 2006 Somerset West) was a South African politician of the National Party (NP ). He worked during the apartheid era from 1979 to 1989 as Minister of Balthazar Johannes Vorster among different areas and Pieter Willem Botha, and was from Januar to March 1989 of the current President of South Africa. Among his most important contributions to political life in South Africa was one in the 1980s, the establishment of a three-chamber Parliament, by the designated as "Coloured " and " Asian " population groups in addition to the white population of a limited share of power was granted. This was in addition to other measures in an attempt to secure through amendments to the Constitution and the state structure the survival of the apartheid system.

Life

Chris Heunis was born in 1927 in Uniondale and in 1951 was first employed as a lawyer. In 1970 he was first elected to the South African Parliament. Four years later he took over with the Ministry of asians Affairs and Tourism his first government position, then he was Minister of the Interior from 1980 to 1982. After he was in 1979 appointed a member of a government commission to study constitutional issues, In 1982 he became Minister for Constitutional Affairs. He was mainly responsible for the creation of trikameralen Parliament, in which the existing chamber, at the elections exclusively attended by the white population of South Africa ( House of Assembly ), was supplemented by two further chambers for as "Coloured " ( House in this function of Representatives ) and " Asians " ( House of Delegates ) designated populations. This complicated legal system in which the House of Delegates of the whites continued to be the dominant chamber, was seen as an attempt to maintain a conditional participation of other sectors of the population to the power of the apartheid system.

Chris Heunis was known mainly as the " Minister of Everything " as well as long and complex speeches about constitutional issues. In September 1986, he was elected Chairman of the National Party in the Cape Province and followed in this office Pieter Willem Botha, the then president of the country. He became the co-favorites to succeed Botha as president by this choice in the most influential of the four NP- provincial associations. However, in the following year he defended his parliamentary seat with only 39 votes ahead of his rival candidate Dennis Worrall, a former ambassador of South Africa in the UK, who had also been a member of the NP and took for the newly formed Independent Party. Worrall was like Heunis as an expert in constitutional matters. The candidacy of Worrall and his surprisingly good performance were therefore despite the election victory of Heunis a serious setback for his ambitions for the presidency and for his ideas about the future of the constitutional order in South Africa.

Chris Heunis was from January to March 1989 after a mild stroke Pieter Willem Botha temporarily acting president of South Africa. In the same year, however, he retired after the election of FW de Klerk as president disillusioned from politics and founded one of his sons, a law firm in Somerset West. Expression of his disappointment was his testimony before the incurred after the end of apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he would " try to forget ever having been politically active ." Among the honors he received during his life, included an honorary doctorate from the University of Stellenbosch, the honorary citizenship of the city of George and a number of awards from the South African police. In Somerset West, where he died in 2006, wore a retirement home his name. He was married and the father of four sons and a daughter.