HOWARD BARRELL, MARIANNE MERTEN, Johannesburg, Cape Town | Friday
DEMOCRATIC Alliance leader Tony Leon is demanding the complete dissolution of the New National Party, and his senior colleagues are insisting that NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk faces disciplinary action.
Senior party sources also told the Mail & Guardian this week that if the Cape High Court were to overturn on procedural grounds Leon’s unseating of Peter Marais as mayor of Cape Town, this would not be the end of the matter.
They say Leon would then merely reinstitute proceedings against Marais in line with whatever guidelines the court laid down.
The tough line being taken by Leon and his senior colleagues as they gained the upper hand in the DA’s month-long internal war this week – coupled with the disclosure by Absa Bank on Thursday that the NNP is, in effect, bankrupt – have piled pressure on the embattled Van Schalkwyk.
The extent of the NNP’s debt, disclosed in Absa’s statement, suggests the party may have been guilty of a monumental deception when it engaged with the Democratic Party to form the DA last year.
DA leaders from both sides of the divide have – remarkably – so far managed to keep a lid on proceedings at the meeting between Leon and Van Schalkwyk at an undisclosed private venue on Tuesday this week. But the mood is thought to have been uncongenial. More meetings are planned.
DA leaders from former DP backgrounds believe they are fighting for the DA’s soul. They say the DA’s character must be decided now and without any ambiguity.
They believe two groups from the NNP – one led by NNP leader Van Schalkwyk and the other by Marais – set out to displace Leon and to weaken the DA’s commitment to “principled opposition to the ANC”, to building an opposition able to contend for power, and to developing a culture of service to the electorate.
The high court is likely to hear Marais’s legal action against his unseating on Tuesday October 30. Leon relied on the advice of three eminent Cape senior counsel when he took disciplinary action against Marais.
Absa Bank’s statement this week on the NNP’s debt and inability to pay it has come as a hammer blow to the Van Schalkwyk and Marais groups. Absa says it concluded after the 1999 general election that the NNP had no means in the foreseeable future of repaying its R6,2-million overdraft. At Absa’s insistence, the NNP then liquidated its tangible assets, raising about R1-million, which was paid to Absa.
The bank added that taking the NNP to court would have recovered no more of the debt. Absa concluded an agreement with the NNP that obliged the party to repay the remainder of the debt “if the NNP’s financial position ever improved”.
Senior DA sources said on Thursday that, when the DA was formed, NNP leaders had denied that their party had any financial liabilities, and had at no stage since then owned up to the huge outstanding debt to Absa. They added that NNP leaders had also sought to keep their list of donors from the DA.
“Some of us are wondering if NNP leaders wanted to use those donors to service this outstanding debt secretly,” one of these sources said.
The assault Van Schalkwyk led against Leon’s leadership this month is now looking increasingly like a grave miscalculation. Van Schalkwyk and his key adviser, Renier Schoeman MP, appear to have underestimated the political will and mobility of Leon and his closest advisers, who include party manager James Selfe MP and spin doctor Ryan Coetzee.
A senior NNP source said that Van Schalkwyk was shocked at Leon’s willingness actually to carry through his threat to unseat Marais as mayor on political grounds.
“Marthinus just didn’t think Tony had the nerve,” he said.
Van Schalkwyk now finds himself in a strategic impasse. His assault on Leon’s leadership has failed to increase the NNP’s weight.
Instead, it has lessened it. And, if he now tries to lead the NNP out of the DA, he will almost certainly be depriving hundreds of DA local government councilors around the country of their seats. Moreover, doubts within the NNP have grown about his judgement. These doubts curtail his capacity to issue threats or act decisively.
Leon’s demand that the NNP dissolve its structures within the DA goes to the heart of the power struggle.
A senior DA source said on Wednesday: “The old DP has merged its organisation into the DA but the NNP has been resisting doing so.
“We must now consolidate the DA in a way that makes it impossible for the NNP to remain separate, to maintain a capacity for separate organisation and for it to mobilise against the DA when a few NNP leaders feel like it,” he said.