South Africa's apartheid laws initially limited the party's membership to the country's whites, from which it drew support mainly from liberal
English speakers. It opened up its membership to all races as soon as this became legal again, in 1984, but the party remained predominantly white and English. It won seats in cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Durban. It had very little support amongst Afrikaners, apart from a minority of liberal Afrikaners and the PFP was derided by right-wing whites, who claimed its initials stood for '
Packing for Perth', because of the many white liberal supporters of the 'Progs', who were emigrating to
Australia. The PFP would become the official opposition in the 1977 election, winning 17 seats. Colin Eglin, who had also led the earlier Progressive Party, was initially the leader of the PFP. But over the weekend of 3 September 1979, on the behest of
Gordon Waddell, the PFP would hold a special congress in
Johannesburg to elect a new leader, citing such reasons as Eglin's "uninspired" parliamentary performance, which allowed the ruling Nationalists to recover from the
Muldergate slush fund scandal; his "indiscreet" contacts with black US politicians Don McHenry and
Andy Young, whom many white South Africans regarded as enemies of the country; and the party's severe defeats in three recent Parliamentary by-elections.
Frederik van Zyl Slabbert succeeded Eglin in 1979. The PFP strengthened its opposition status in 1981 by increasing its representation to 27 seats. It was ousted as the official opposition by the far-right
Conservative Party in the whites-only parliamentary elections held on 6 May 1987. This electoral blow led many of the PFP's leaders to question the value of participating in the whites-only parliament, and some of its MPs left to form the New Democratic Movement (NDM). In 1989, the PFP and NDM merged with another small white reformist party, the
Independent Party (IP), to form the
Democratic Party (DP). ==Notable members==