NATIONAL Party leader FW de Klerk is juggling the chicken and the egg, and cannot decide between the two.
The chicken is the current NP: it clucks about forming a “new new” National Party and scratching for dirt on the African National Congress, particularly in the backyards of the Western Cape, where it struts its stuff and is cocky. Its life is limited by the 1999 elections, where it is unlikely, in its present form, to attract enough votes to be a powerful force against the ANC in Parliament. Like most chickens, it is doomed for a roasting.
The egg – De Klerk’s other option – represents the NP’s much talked-about opposition movement – an idea on which De Klerk and his former secretary general have been sitting for quite some time. It has not hatched for a year, and this week, under intense pressure from the Afrikaans press and commentators, De Klerk was forced to bring it out and flourish it in public view, to prove that the dream still exists.
And to show further commitment, he stripped his secretary general, Roelf Meyer, of his title and has confined him purely to nurturing the dream.
While Meyer might feel some personal liberation at being set free from the rest of the NP to pursue his own agenda, there is no guarantee that he, with only his five-person task team, will have the magnetism and power to pull all anti-ANC forces to one sweet centre.
In fact, his movement beyond the hierarchy of the NP into the political wastelands of the new South Africa will probably be interpreted, in the short term at least, as a demotion for Meyer and a victory for hardliners in the party who disliked his multi-racial approach and his personality – hardliners such as the ambitious Western Cape leader Hernus Kriel and his provincial enthusiasts.
The sense of crisis in the party will mean a further haemorrhaging of NP support in its traditional constituencies, a further weakening of the public image, disillusionment among moderate supporters and general confusion among the electorate.
By creating a division of labour in his party, De Klerk has drawn a line between the past and the future, straight through the middle of his party, and personally, will have to work very hard to prevent it sucking the stronger, more credible members down.
If he stopped tossing his options around, and concentrated hard on one approach, with a complementary set of principles, and grounded his opposition tactics in a distinct value system, there might be few feathers flying around, and less egg on his face.