Marion Edmunds
ROELF MEYER is to test support for his new movement in the Western Cape next week, hoping to win over the hotly contested coloured community.
Meyer’s Athlone-based organiser, former Labour Party member Ken Lategan, said this week: “There has been unprecedented interest in the last two weeks. People are looking for something new, people are speaking among themselves and the word is spreading, we are getting calls.”
Lategan could not pinpoint any particular income group or geographical area which supported Meyer, but said a common theme was people’s dissatisfaction with the status quo.
“People are saying that nobody is representing their interests and they want a party which expresses the way they feel and their needs. That is not coming from either the African National Congress or the National Party.”
Lategan said invitations would be sent to “opinion-makers” to meet Meyer when he came to Cape Town next week. NP members had come to his house to ask for details of the programme.
Meyer’s plans to win support in Cape townships come in the same week that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard allegations that he had been present at a State Security Council meeting which approved support for Witdoek vigilantes which destroyed Cape townships in 1986.
Meanwhile the NP is holding a “solidarity rally” on Saturday to show support for party leader FW de Klerk. A series of profile- building walkabouts for De Klerk is planned, anticipating a rekindling of grassroots support for the beleaguered leader.
NP provincial MEC Gerald Morkel dismissed Meyer’s chances of success as minimal.