political home
Chiara Carter
The National Party in the Western Cape looks set to lose several key politicians to the Democratic Party. The big prize is former education MEC Martha Olckers, set to leave after first being deposed as a provincial Cabinet minister and now featuring low on the regional lists.
A number of other senior NP politicians, most of them associated with moves to give the party a more “coloured” face and push female candidates, have been looking for a new political home after the party finalised its candidate lists for 1999 elections.
According to sources, other NP politicians on the verge of quitting to join the DP include:
l National Assembly MP Glen Carelse;
l Western Cape politician Antoinette Versfeld, who commands considerable support on the West Coast;
l provincial economics committee chair Charles Redcliffe, who is originally from the Eastern Cape;
l veteran politician Nic Isaacs, whose constituency lies in the working-class area of Bonteheuwel and who is being wooed by both the DP and the African National Congress;
l NP member Hendry Cupido defected earlier this week to the DP, although his wife, Pauline, was placed fifth on the NP regional list – the only woman to feature in the top 12 on the list. However, according to sources, Pauline Cupido is poised to join her husband within the next six weeks.
Announcing Hendry Cupido’s defection, DP provincial leader Hennie Bester said the NP made “huge strategic errors” in selecting its candidates and confirmed his party was meeting with disaffected Nats. NP politicians meeting with other parties are disillusioned at being ranked low on the NP’s lists and are unhappy at intrigues in the regional caucus of the NP.
While Peter Marais, who contested the election for leadership and premiership but lost to Gerald Morkel, is placed number two on the list, his support base has fared less well.
Most of the “Marais faction” are placed below number 20 and there is strong speculation that members of Marais’s grouping are behind a series of bizarre tip-off notes received by ANC regional representative Cameron Dugmore.
The letters, which take the form of Nostradamus prophesies, make allegations about NP leaders including MECs. The DP hopes to capitalise on the situation and is leaving its candidate lists open until February next year so that it can add candidates who cross the floor before then.
l Meanwhile, several notorious “witdoek” leaders from the 1980s are to form part of Louis Luyt’s Federal Alliance committee in the Western Cape. The announcement puts paid to speculation that the leaders, traditionalists linked to the Western Cape United Squatters’ Association and the Congress of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, would join the United Democratic Movement in line with similar moves in the Transkei region.
Additional members announced this week by the Federal Alliance include:
l Conrad Sandile, a well-known if enigmatic figure in Western Cape land and housing, who was investigated by the Goldstone commission and now heads development and housing for Contralesa in the Western Cape;
l Jeffrey Nongwe, Contralesa’s deputy chair, a Crossroads leader who is no stranger to changing political allegiances, having previously moved from the ANC to the Pan Africanist Congress, flirted with the UDM and all the while maintained his power base in the informal settlements of the Crossroads area;
l Western Cape Contralesa chair Jerry Tutu, a squatter leader from Khayelitsha who at one stage was linked to Prince Gcobinga. Gcobinga served a prison sentence in connection with an attempted coup in the Transkei and was recently named by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a military intelligence agent.