Sechaba ka’Nkosi
Meet the Federal Alliance’s newest recruit and probably Louis Luyt’s most sensational catch. She is streetwise Elizabeth Rapuleng (50) of Zondi, Soweto.
Rapuleng dumped the ailing New National Party only three days after party stalwarts such as Sheila Camerer organised a big bash to celebrate her birthday.
Rapuleng joined the alliance last week after her name failed to appear prominently on the NNP election list.
“I established the National Party from a hated party in Soweto to a force that was later to be reckoned with. And what did I get out of that?” she asks. “Nothing. After serving the party with loyalty for five years, they decided to dump me for white candidates and black mascots in the election list.
“So I thought, because opposition parties share more or less the same political agenda, the Federal Alliance was the closest I could get to the convictions that led me to the NP.”
Rapuleng refuses to call her former party the “new” NP. She says it failed to adapt to changing realities in the country’s political landscape.
Her gamble to go straight into King Luyt’s house paid dividends just a few days after she knocked at his door and demanded alliance propaganda and a membership form.
Rapuleng is now the Federal Alliance’s national organiser, and one of the most powerful players in the newly formed party.
The Federal Alliance’s policies are yet to be formally agreed on. The little that is known at the moment is that it is pursuing a conservative social agenda alongside free market economics.
Rapuleng is determined to make her mark in the alliance by getting to the top of the party’s election list and perhaps becoming a member of Parliament. She says she has already delivered 93 black members from Soweto.
Rapuleng says there is nothing racist about the alliance or its leader. She defends Luyt’s action of taking President Nelson Mandela to court last year – an act that was widely interpreted as the last hope for dying Afrikaner conservatism.
“We all adore Mandela. Dr Luyt took him to court not because he was black or that he did not like him. It was a clear point of policy and constitutional matter.
“The Federal Alliance never fights individuals. It fights the system and wrong procedures.”
The former Afrikaans and history schoolteacher claims to have cut her political teeth in the early 1990s when she joined the African National Congress in Soweto. She says she left the ANC because her voice was never heard as the party had too many members.
Rapuleng says: “The Federal Alliance is growing fast despite what the opinion polls are saying. You see here we represent disgruntled members of all political parties in South Africa who want something new. There is so many of them at the moment and we will find them.”
Rapuleng supports an opposition election platform: the reinstatement of capital punishment, an end to corruption and the Federal Alliance’s vision of the economy.
She claims to have been a victim of crime a few times herself. But she is not leaving Soweto, where she was once a member of the criminal gang amaHazel.
“Soweto is where I was born and where my constituency is. If I leave them who is going to understand their problems?” she asks.