Jan Taljaard
EVEN before the ballots were counted this week, South African right-wingers knew they had reached the crossroads.
The Freedom Front saw the local government elections as an opportunity not only to emerge as king of the right- wing heap, but also to make significant inroads into a disenchanted voters’ base that once belonged to the National Party.
FF secretary Flip Buys, disdaining of the “right-wing” tag, said the party was aiming at becoming the main political voice of all Afrikaners. Ahead of votes being counted, however, he was concerned the party was not doing as well as it hoped to.
But the bombshell decision to prosecute former defence minister Magnus Malan and other former defence force generals for complicity in a Natal massacre in 1987 played into the FF’s hands. FF leader Constand Viljoen milked the issue for all it was worth, and certainly to more effect than National Party leader FW de Klerk or any of the other right-wing groupings.
The FF’s offer to go to court to challenge the move and Viljoen’s threat earlier to quit Parliament if he failed in getting the cut-off date for amnesty shifted were actions that found their way to voters’ hearts.
High on the FF’s wish-list is that it will finally dispose of the Conservative Party as the official party of the right wing. Drastically marginalised after its decision not to contest last year’s general election, the CP — once the official opposition — had little choice but to take the local government plunge. But CP leader Ferdie Hartzenberg seemed barely optimistic about his party’s chances, letting it be known among supporters weeks before the poll that should the “volk” decide they did not want him or the CP to represent them, he would return to farming full-time.
From the outset, the CP’s local government election campaign was beset by internal strife, private agendas and the strange relationship between itself and the once powerful Afrikaner Volksfront. A hammer blow came just days before the election, when a Pretoria-based weekly claimed in a front-page report that the CP was sinking due to in-fighting and other problems.
As for the rest of the right-wing groupings, some never even left the starting blocks in the race for voters’ crosses.
The Herstigte Nasionale Party must surely have come to the end of its 26-year-old trek through the political wilderness, though it’s moot whether it was a lack of political vision, or a lack of funds, which finally brought the party to its knees. A week before Wednesday’s poll it retrenched half its staff, including the editor of its mouthpiece, Die Afrikaner. Remaining staff were this week doubtful the party would be able to re-open its doors after the Christmas holidays.
This did not prevent die-hard HNP leader Jaap Marais from calling on Afrikaners not to vote, saying it would not only be futile but a betrayal of their history.
Another die-hard, the Afrikaner Weerstandbeweging’s Eugene Terre’-Blanche, also seized on the prosecution of Malan as an opportunity to lift his organisation from the depths it sunk to after its abortive invasion of Bophuthatswana last year. But it’s doubtful the right-wing leaders’ summit to which Terre’Blanche invited both Viljoen “to bury their differences” it is doubtful is this summit will ever take place.
More likely is that Hartzenberg will opt for his pastures, while Viljoen will continue trying to harvest disenchanted National Party members.