THURSDAY, 11.00AM:
THE National Party lost 81% of its 1995 vote to lose 1419-386 to the Democratic Party in the Brakpan by-election on Wednesday.
The winning candidate was the DP’s Shelly Loe, who defeated the NP’s Malcolm Laing in a 31% poll. On Tuesday, the DP won a clear victory in former NP bastion Bergvliet/Meadowridge in the Cape Peninsula.
The acid test of the NP’s apparently declining support comes on Thursday, with the Rosettenville/Linmeyer by-election, which the NP describes as its safest seat. The DP is saying it expects to win the seat.
In the Bergvliet election, which followed the inauguration of the NP’s new Western Cape premier Gerald Morkel by just two days, the DP increased its support from 17% two years ago to 54%. Even the newcomer United Democratic Movement — led by Bantu Holomisa and Roelf Meyer — secured more votes than the NP, getting 24% to the NP’s 22%.
The African National Congress, long irked by the National Party’s domination of the Western Cape, is elated by the NP’s setbacks, saying it is now a “spent force”.