Marion Edmunds
When retired Western Cape premier Hernus Kriel heads off on his caravan tour of South Africa, he sets off comfortable, he says, in the knowledge that his party will rule the Western Cape into the next century.
Kriel bowed out of provincial politics this week, with a crocodile tear and a Cheshire-cat smile, to make way for a coloured National Party heir.
His confidence in the future of his cause stems from the knowledge that whoever the party chooses – and it will have to be the best of a mediocre bunch – will be bound by his legacy. It’s a legacy based on a myopic political stance designed to impress conservative whites and fearful coloureds in the Western Cape.
Kriel leaves a provincial administration in working order, and a political party with a majority in the legislature. But it’s this Kriel-created stance – a laager mentality disguised as federalism – that the Nats believe they need to win votes, particularly from the coloured majority, to stay in power after the 1999 election.
The message Kriel broadcast, and which his successor must echo, is simple: the “black” African National Congressnational government is out to exploit the Western Cape’s riches to shore up other provinces.
Said Kriel in a parting interview with the Afrikaans media this week: “If the ANC fails to realise that it can’t put the goose that lays the golden eggs on a diet, the goose is going to say it is no longer to her advantage to be part of the farm.
“The central government must realise the Western Cape is not a milch cow. If it wants to make us a milch cow, it must realise there is a developing debate – one which I do not necessarily approve of – a debate in which the Quebec option comes to the fore.”
By regularly hinting at secession, Kriel has successfully redrawn the racial line in the Western Cape, putting coloureds and whites on one side of the bank and blacks on the other, as in the days of the tricameral Parliament.
The NP formally pretends race has nothing to do with regional politics and leadership, but it is no coincidence that the National Assembly in Parliament is, in the majority, black and the provincial chamber over the road in Wale Street is populated with mainly white and coloured members.
Realising it has ground to make up, the ANC has dramatically revised its electoral strategy for the Western Cape. In Ebrahim Rasool it appointed a new hands-on leader to target the coloured community in the run-up to the elections.
Rasool is considered to be a capable politician, probably more competent than any senior NP leader (a point Kriel himself has grudgingly conceded to his confidants).
But he will have to work hard to swing the coloured community over to his side. Furthermore, as opposition leader, Rasool cannot offer patronage to the coloured community, which believes it is entitled to its fair share of state perks.
There is general disillusionment with politicians among Western Cape voters. Several people identified problems which Kriel’s government had failed to solve – failings which will continue to haunt Kriel’s successor.
Since 1994, the Western Cape has experienced a dramatic surge in crime, and an escalation of the bloody gangster conflict – which has shown Kriel’s government up as effectively powerless on law and order, the issue closest to Kriel’s heart.
Unemployment remains a problem, as does a lack of housing. Poverty is prevalent on the Cape Flats and in the black squatter areas which encircle Cape Town. The Nats, of course, are hoping the black squatters won’t matter.
Kriel has projected an image of the provincial government as independent, efficient and the fearless protector of minority rights in the face of a national black majority.
He has also portrayed the Western Cape as the last bastion of white power, in a country ruled by blacks. The Cape is becoming an increasingly attractive destination for middle-class and upper-class whites traumatised by crime, affirmative action and, in many cases, ANC rule.
University of Cape Town political scientist Professor Robert Schrire says even with a coloured leader the NP will continue to serve the same interests as before.
“A political party generally represents a constituency and an interest, and the power structure of the Western Cape is still characterised by Die Burger, the farming community and white business which hold the purse-strings,” he says. “We will essentially have an NP coloured leader whose power base is white.”