ANGELA QUINTAL, Cape Town | Saturday
WESTERN Cape Premier Gerald Morkel has quit.
He made the announcement at Mitchell’s Plain in Cape Town on Saturday morning.
Morkel said he would resign as premier and also as provincial leader of the New National Party with effect from close of business Monday.
“Because I believe with all my heart, and soul, and strength, that the NNP leadership has now embarked on a path of betrayal, I find myself in a position where I can no longer, in good conscience, continue as premier of this province and provincial leader of the NNP.”
Morkel faced a palace revolution earlier in the week when four of his MECs asked him to resign, saying they wanted to spare him the embarrassment of a vote of no confidence by his party’s head council in the province and in the legislature itself.
This came after he publicly clashed with the party’s national leaders about their decision to withdraw from the Democratic Alliance in favour of co-operation with the African National Congress.
Morkel said that in his long political career, he had always believed the will of the people — expressed through the ballot box — was an untouchable and unchangeable mandate.
“In 1999 the New National Party, and in 2000 the Democratic Alliance, went to the communities of the Western Cape with a manifesto and a set of policies which were clear in their purpose.
“We offered ourselves as a party of opposition to the ANC, as a party which would present an alternative to the ANC’s overwhelming and autocratic national dominance.”
It was on this basis that his party had won support.
Morkel said he could and would not break faith with the confidence placed in him by the electorate.
“The duty of an opposition is to oppose, not to crawl greedily into the bed of one’s enemy simply because it offers temporary warmth and comfort.
Morkel said there were times in politics “when you must be on the right side and because of that, pay a price.”
At the heart of the other current crisis was the fact that the NNP’s Federal Council had chosen its course of action without any consultation with the party’s structures and local officials, in this province, and elsewhere.
“That is not leadership. Unlike the Federal Council, which rides rudely over the mandate of the voters, we in this province will be holding a congress next Saturday in order to test the wishes of our membership.
“We will actively seek public opinion, and obey it, unlike those who have chosen to ignore it.”
Morkel said it would have been easy for him to say nothing, to remain silent as his conscience rebelled, and retain his position as premier.
“But I am not prepared to become a tame coloured in order to feed the personal appetite of others for position and privilege.
“Nor am I prepared to be party to any legislative larceny designed to steal political office and, in so doing, to overturn the will of my people in the Cape,” he said referring to the proposed lifting of the anti-defection clause.
The planned and rushed introduction of legislation to strong-arm elected councillors to cross the floor to the ANC was a moral scandal.
“It is a deliberate and cynical attempt to trample the democratic rights of the electorate.
“It is not an attempt to achieve some high constitutional principle, but a transparent device to serve the sinister, short-term opportunism of the ANC and the NNP.”
Morkel said that not since JG Strijdom packed the Senate in 1956, in order to remove coloureds from the common voters’ roll, had there been a more wicked attempt to undermine democracy.
“I will have nothing to do with it. For office, without honour, is the jailhouse of the political harlot.”
Morkel denied he was leaving under pressure.
“I am taking this step because I believe it to be right, because I believe it is the only honest route I can follow, and because principle dictates that I take a stand.
“Nor have I decided to resign because of the threats and blackmail to which so many of my colleagues have been subjected,” he said.
Recent weeks had seen a systematic and appalling campaign of threats to livelihoods, careers, and families in order to whip NNP colleagues into line.
“The air is thick with the smog of menace and crude bullying, as decent men and women have suffered intolerable intimidation.” – Sapa
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