The bulk of the New National Party favours a closer relationship with the ANC
Howard Barrell and Barry Streek
The Democratic Party and ruling African National Congress are engaged in a tug of war to win over the bulk of the collapsing New National Party.
Whichever way the NNP leadership decides to go looks likely to split the party down the middle, particularly in its Western Cape stronghold.
The bulk of the NNP leadership, particularly in the Western Cape, favours a closer relationship with the DP. This faction includes longstanding NNP MPs and organisers and, in the Western Cape, MEC for Safety and Security Mark Wiley and MEC for Finance and Development Planning Leon Markovitz.
Provincial Premier Gerald Morkel, who supports the coalition with the DP, cut short his trip to China and rushed to Cape Town on Wednesday to deal with the crisis.
The NNP’s populist maverick Peter Marais and a number of senior coloured members of the party in the Western Cape favour a link-up with the ANC. Senior NNP sources add that the party’s national leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, also inclines to the ANC.
Van Schalkwyk is coming under growing pressure to accept the offer from one or other of the two main parties in Parliament to halt what appears to be a rapid deterioration in his negotiating position.
The only thing evidently standing between his party and complete collapse at the moment are aspects of South African electoral law which dictate, firstly, that members of Parliament and of provincial legislatures lose their seats if they leave the party in whose name they were elected and, secondly, that party leaderships decide who occupies party seats.
Van Schalkwyk and DP leader Tony Leon were due to meet late on Wednesday. The meeting was scheduled to take place just hours after the announcement of the defection to the DP of the NNP’s former Western Cape leader and provincial premier Hernus Kriel – and Kriel’s appeal to other NNP members to join the DP.
Kriel’s defection was indicative of continued haemorrhaging of NNP public representatives and members to the DP. More defections to the DP are in the pipeline – on the scale of the 39 NNP public representatives who crossed to the DP on Monday, according to opposition party sources.
On Tuesday, Louis Luyt, leader of the small Federal Alliance, which has two seats in the National Assembly, announced his party would be fighting under the DP’s banner in local government elections in November, and called on other opposition parties to follow suit.
First prize for the DP – and, the party argues, for the cause of building a strong opposition to the ANC – would be for the NNP also to agree to fight under the DP banner in November. But signals exchanged by Leon and Van Schalkwyk in midweek indicated a degree of flexibility on both sides about what the modality of closer co-operation or unity could be.
The ANC’s interest in the NNP is in inducing it to break its coalition with the DP in the Western Cape. Well-placed sources told the Mail & Guardian that the ANC was offering the NNP seven of the 12 provincial cabinet seats plus the premiership in the Western Cape.
Meanwhile, the DP is seeking a way through its public spat with the NNP over the size of DP representation in the current Western Cape coalition cabinet. The NNP has said it wants the DP’s representation in the cabinet decreased from the present four to two – a demand the DP has rejected.
Kriel, an NNP grandee, is a particularly attractive catch for the DP because of his long-standing political relationship with the populist ANC-inclined Marais. Kriel’s defection to the DP gives Leon’s party greater reason to hope it can stymie ANC plans to win the NNP into a coalition in the Western Cape.