Howard Barrell:OVER A BARREL
The disintegration of a once great political party can be one of life’s less dignified sights. Old friends inexplicably become bitter enemies, and once deadly foes strangely firm friends. What once seemed like high political principle for party members is suddenly exposed as having been mere convenience. Political reputations that sparkled among the frippery of high office lose their lustre and much of their thread. And once proud and pompous men and women behave like rats in a Skinner box ready to perform any contortion – none, including a somersault, is too demeaning – to earn a new meal ticket from another party.
Things in the New National Party have not reached quite such a pass – yet. But South Africa’s party of government for 46 years seems intent on doing to itself in 30 days what it took the United Party nearly 30 years to achieve before its dissolution in 1977.
The defections of NNP public representatives to the Democratic Party over the past fortnight are by no means the last. The same is true in the direction of the African National Congress. And, from the stories DP and ANC sources tell, it has sometimes seemed in recent days that it is a relatively unusual NNP public representative who has not been flirting with other parties.
DP party managers have turned away a few would-be defectors who, they believed, “would not add value”. Their judgment has sometimes been based on a potential defector’s private or parliamentary record, or on the view that grey-haired white men (particularly those not overly blessed with grey matter) are not best equipped to help the DP penetrate strategically important sectors of the electorate.
True, old white men can help it win over recruits from the NNP – perhaps one of the DP’s two primary objectives at this point. But the DP also knows it must increasingly reposition itself to win over coloured voters – as important an immediate aim, particularly in the Western Cape, where coloureds make up more than half the electorate – and black South Africans. This means attracting more coloured and black leaders into the ranks of DP public representatives.
This appears to be pragmatic – the DP’s acknowledgement of the latest research on what factors cause voters to support a particular party. The approach also seems to depend on a realistic assessment of the party’s likely growth path, rather than a racist concern to differentiate its potential constituency.
The ANC has had a different kind of difficulty in dealing with would-be NNP defectors. This became evident last week when Patrick McKenzie, a leading New Nat in the Western Cape cabinet, was on the point of crossing over to the ANC. McKenzie had been flirting with the ANC for some months. So, too, had Peter Marais, a still more powerful colleague in the Cape cabinet and NNP.
The problem the ANC faced was not just the unpredictability of the two men – both eventually stayed in the NNP, though it is unclear how long they can remain – but also their reputations. With or without justification, many ANC leaders in the Western Cape hold the two responsible for a campaign of anti- African racism among coloureds in the province shortly before the 1994 election. One ANC leader explained: “We could face a revolt in our ranks if we let them in.”
This distaste is one reason the ANC has not yet developed a strategy for absorbing people like McKenzie and Marais. The ANC may yet rue this omission. The McKenzies and Maraises could help it achieve the kind of penetration it needs into the Western Cape’s coloured vote. The ANC’s incorporation of less well-known or lower-level NNP councillors has, however, been allowed to go ahead.
A third major beneficiary of the NNP’s problems could be Louis Luyt’s Federal Alliance. Its policies have yet to be formally agreed, but it is pursuing a conservative social agenda alongside free market economics. This, Luyt’s bank balance and absolute style of leadership, may yet prove a heady mixture for New Nats tired of waiting for a lead from their leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, and uncomfortable with some DP positions.
NNP spin doctors have recently produced a set of quite compelling arguments for their claim that their party is far from down and nowhere near out. One is a set of technical arguments which seeks to fault or re-interpret opinion poll data. Another says that those defecting are doing so merely because they find themselves further down the NNP’s election lists than they need to be to feel they have a chance of election. And a third maintains that talk of the National Party’s death has been greatly exaggerated in the press for decades, and it is being overstated yet again.
Perhaps. But there are counter-arguments which point to a near-terminal crisis in the NNP. Whatever the shortcomings in the way polling data is being applied by some journalists, the trend evident in all of them – and the trend is the important thing here – shows that the NNP has lost about half its supporters across the country since 1994 and two out of five its Western Cape stronghold.
Moreover, party discipline has now all but broken down. Senior party leaders brief journalists against each other with little regard for their organisation’s stability. Whereas in 1994 the party leadership could offer public representatives the prospect of a post in a putative government of national unity, the chances of wielding patronage to maintain discipline is nothing like as great and is diminishing daily.
Whereas in 1994 the party had the figure of FW De Klerk at its head – a man who knew the plot even if he was no longer its author – it now has Van Schalkwyk, a man even his own MPs deride unaffectionately as “Kortbroek”.
And whereas the DP has formulated a plausible promise to its potential constituency – effective opposition and solutions for South Africa’s problems – the NNP seems unable to get to grips with its severely limited prospects in the new era. As a result its credibility has suffered.
To add to the confusion, a sizeable portion of the NNP’s support base seems now to want to make of this once white ethnic party a coloured ethnic party – as the party’s mainly white establishment clings on to the instruments of party power and property.
I see only two things standing between the NNP and its demise in the next five years. One is our electoral system. This makes it possible for a party to retain however many seats it wins in an election for the next five years. This is because party managers can deprive any defectors of their seats and replace them with more compliant people.
And the second reason to suppose the NNP has another five years is that it, as a party, owns a lot of property. Who is to control it and press it to their service is a battle that still has to be fought out.
Beyond those two reasons: very little.