OW CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Friday 7.00pm
NEW National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk’s office in Parliament stood empty on Friday afternoon, stripped of everything but government-issue furniture in preparation for its new occupant — Democratic Party leader Tony Leon.
The drawers of the imposing wooden desk, with inlaid fake-leather writing pad, yawned open; an unplugged television set stood blank in one corner, and in the dustbin was a discarded folder carrying the NNP logo, a poignant symbol of the party’s shattering defeat in the June 2 polls.
Van Schalkwyk is to move one floor down in the Marks Building into the former NNP chief whip’s office, making way for the DP as new official opposition.
Before the election, the NNP had 82 MPs and occupied the entire second and third floors.
Now shrunk to a mere 28 representatives, it will take up only two-thirds of the first floor and displace the public works department from a handful of offices on the ground floor.
NNP chief whip Sakkie Pretorius was late on Friday overseeing the removal of decades of memorabilia from his and other whips’ offices, including a genuine rawhide sweepstok, or whip, and several sets of springbok horns, trophies shot by past whips as members of the parliamentary hunting club.
DP whip and newly-elected member of the National Assembly James Selfe, who has been put in charge of overseeing his party’s office move, said that despite “trying circumstances”, the NNP was being as efficient and accommodating as possible.
He said Leon will fly in from Gauteng at lunchtime on Saturday, and move into his new office immediately.