Chiara Carter
Tensions within the New National Party in its Western Cape stronghold reached the status of open warfare this week with the MEC for Agriculture and Property Management, Lampie Fick, at odds with the NNP chair of the province’s finance committee, Jeanne-Pierre Gerber, over the sale of state land.
Fick, a senior politician close to the former premier, Hernus Kriel, wants to sell provincial property. This would raise R100- million this financial year and a further R30-million a year from concessions thereafter.
Gerber, a former National Party youth leader with a strong following in the Boland, is 15th on the party’s list of Western Cape nominations to the national Parliament. He is part of a group of ”liberals” at loggerheads with conservatives and there is speculation that, if thwarted, Gerber might defect to the African National Congress.
This week Gerber said bluntly that the Western Cape was ”not up for sale” after Fick flew in the face of a recommendation by his committee for a moratorium on the sale of state land until an assets register had been compiled and a strategic plan drawn up.
The committee earlier failed to approve Fick’s departmental budget on the grounds that there had not been a cost analysis of Fick’s plan to transform the agricultural department into a parastatal-type board.
According to NNP sources, Gerber’s opposition to Fick drew praise from a group of coloured Nats who are also in conflict with the party’s old guard. Shortly after Gerber crossed swords with Fick, the NNP’s number two man in the region, Peter Marais, issued a statement condemning the politicisation of the Aids issue.
The statement was a subtle slap in the face for fellow MPL Quarta du Toit, who earlier this week attacked Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma for not providing the Aids drug AZT to HIV-positive pregnant women.
Sources in the NNP said there were now several caucuses openly operating in the party and the clash between Gerber and Fick was indicative of the widening rift between the two sides.
The row is the latest in a series of flashpoints. Last month, Marais stormed out of a caucus meeting after a clash with MECfor Safety and Security Mark Wiley.
Then came the news that senior ANC politicians were holding talks with senior Nats, including Marais and veteran politician Patrick McKenzie, in the hope of wooing them over. Were the charismatic duo to opt for defection, it would more than likely be in the company of MEC for Housing Cecil Herandien as well as Anwar Ismail, Nic Isaacs and Gerber.
When the Western Cape legislature opened earlier this month, Marais delivered a speech that had more in common with that of ANC leader Ebrahim Rasool than politicians from his own party. NNP politicians remained poker-faced as ANC MPLs cheered Marais’s appeal for politicians to concentrate on fighting poverty and to find each other across political lines.
McKenzie was approached by the Inkatha Freedom Party and Democratic Party and there were widespread rumours that a retired senior Nat politician had brokered defections to the DP – a claim denied by the politician but further damaging morale in the NNP.
Both McKenzie and Marais have played enigmatic roles throughout the fever of speculation about their intentions, and eyebrows have been raised in NNP quarters at the seeming inability of regional and national leadership to deal decisively with the issue.
”Marthinus [van Schalkwyk] is doomed whatever he does. If he acts, he risks a serious rift in the party. If he doesn’t, it is clear he is not firmly in the driving seat,” said an NNP MP.
The footsie-footsie games between national ANC politicians and key Nats follow hot on the heels of a spate of defections by Western Cape Nationalists to the DP – a move sparked by dissatisfaction at the NNP’s nominations list released at the end of last year.
Less publicly but with equally lethal potential, the DP and ANC have been targeting the party’s election machinery, seeking to woo organisers and youth leaders in rural areas.
But according to insiders, the nominations list was only the catalyst for undercurrents to surface. What was critical was the party’s poor performance in the polls and its declining image countrywide – factors that have led NNP politicians to fear a further loss in power and status.
Last week’s poll released by Markinor, Idasa and the SABC showed the ANC running neck and neck with the NNP in the Western Cape and indicated that the NNP might not stand a good chance of winning the Northern Cape.