Chiara Carter
Two of the New National Party’s most senior Western Cape leaders, Patrick McKenzie and Peter Marais, are preparing to jump ship or challenge the moribund leadership of their disintegrating party.
The African National Congress will this weekend discuss accommodating McKenzie, the veteran Cape Flats politician and former welfare deputy minister, into its ranks. There is also strong speculation that the NNP’s number two man in the province, Marais, will either join the ANC or use the crisis in his party to launch a challenge for its leadership.
The abandonment of the sinking ship comes as new polls indicate a further decline in NNP support which could lose its final provincial stronghold, the Western Cape, this year. There is increasing discontent at the lacklustre leadership style of Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
ANC sources said discussions about McKenzie’s and other senior defections were at a “sensitive” stage, but the MEC for local government was expected to quit the NNP for the ANC, pending the outcome of final negotiations with the party about his new role.
ANC national executive committee office bearers will decide whether McKenzie could be added to their nomination lists for the next election and how to deal with a possible backlash from branches opposed to having former tricameral Parliament politicians in their ranks.
Informing ANC discussions is a report handed to the party’s president, Thabo Mbeki, earlier this month by the party’s Western Cape leadership that includes a comprehensive analysis of the state of the NNP in the province.
Mbeki is understood to be promoting moves to actively recruit dissatisfied “liberal Nationalists” to the ANC even if these politicans come with a tricameral Parliament pedigree.
Speculation that McKenzie is poised to change sides comes in the midst of a spate of defections and rumoured further defections from the NNP which has hit the party’s image hard in its stronghold, the Western Cape.
Following the defection of four senior Nationalists to the Democratic Party earlier this week, Marais became the centre of speculation and intrigue.
Senior ANC politicans claim Marais, who was defeated by Gerald Morkel in a bid for regional leadership last year, is poised to quit in favour of the ANC. However, Marais strongly denied this.
NNP sources said Marais had been approached to join the ANC during a meeting with President Nelson Mandela last year, but had not been wooed by the ANC since then. They said Marais, who is at loggerheads with a largely white old guard in the party, was more likely to use the crisis to bolster his position. He is understood to be considering launching a challenge to Van Schalkwyk.
However, Marais said this week he had no further talks with the ANC since his discussion with Mandela and could not understand why the party was insisting that he was intending joining them soon.
He said he was not challenging Van Schalkwyk for the leadership of the NNP as “we have a tradition of leaders resigning”.
According to NNP sources, McKenzie, a veteran of tricameral politics and no stranger to party-hopping, has reached a “glass ceiling” in the NNP. Recruiting McKenzie would be a coup for the ANC, not least because he has a raw charisma which could be put to use in winning support in working-class coloured areas.
According to senior ANC sources, several white NNP members are also expected to join the ANC – giving rise to renewed speculation about the intentions of former education MEC Martha Olckers, who last month expressed unhappiness about her low placing on the party’s nomination list.
At the time Olckers held talks with the DP in the Western Cape but subsequently declared her loyalty to the NNP.
Another NNP politician thought to be on his way out of the party is Kobus Dowry, who last year led a group of disgruntled Nationalists in a heated meeting with party leaders about the nominations list.
Although there has been speculation that Dowry intends defecting to another party – possibly the DP – he is now said to be likely to go into business.
Also expected to quit politics is MEC Lampie Fick, while fellow MEC Kobus Meiring is understood to be seeking a diplomatic posting. Several councillors in the region are also poised to quit the NNP for either the DP or the ANC.
The prospect of losing as many as three MECs has hit party morale hard even though party leaders have been dismissive about the defections to the DP earlier this week of their candidate MPs, Pauline Cupido, Glen Carelse and Chris Wyngaard.
Privately, party leaders acknowledged that the subsequent defection of the NNP’s regional legislature candidate Antoinette Versfeld was a serious blow.
The departure of the four as well as ongoing dissatisfaction with the nominations list, which includes a disproportionately large number of former National Party organisers, have heightened tensions between a “liberal” faction and a grouping termed “old-guard Broederbonders”.