CAPE TOWN, Dirk van Zyl | Monday
NEGOTIATING teams from the African National Congress and the New National Party met on Sunday to discuss the structures of future co-operation between the two parties.
This would be based on principles agreed on at a number of meetings between the two working groups during the past week, a source told Sapa.
Sunday’s talks followed a stormy meeting on Saturday at the Goudini Spa near Worcester in the Boland, in which premier Gerald Morkel, also the province’s Democratic Alliance and NNP leader, received a resounding, unanimous vote of confidence from more than 1000 delegates from all over the province.
A number of mayors and local government councillors, largely from the DA’s NNP component, attended the meeting.
Morkel and national NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk are at loggerheads over a decision by the NNP’s federal council nine days ago that the party should pull out of the DA and seek co-operation with the ANC at all three governmental tiers.
The NNP has dismissed Saturday’s meeting as “being a side-show”.
It was an orchestrated attempt by individuals “who want to undermine the NNP”, provincial spokesman Johan Gelderblom said in a statement.
The “consultative meeting”, attended by virtually the whole Western Cape cabinet and a number of other former senior NNP office-bearers, including former Cape Administrator Kobus Meiring, resolved unanimously that the NNP should immediately stop its talks with the ANC.
It also rejected the federal council’s decision that the NNP change its name and called on the NNP to hold a special congress urgently to discuss these issues.
Delegate after delegate walked to the podium to slam the federal council’s decision which, they claimed, had been taken without proper consultation with party grassroots formations.
Observers were surprised at the large turnout at Saturday’s meeting and at the level of enthusiasm shown.
The meeting was organised by a number of Southern Cape mayors from the DA’s NNP component.
Van Schalkwyk said in a statement on Sunday that the federal council’s decision to withdraw from the DA “has started a process which offers white, coloured and Indian South Africans the opportunity to become co-owners of our own country”.
Participatory government, with the right to disagree, was the only way in which all communities could become “true shareholders” in the new South Africa.
“The NNP is committed to continuing discussions with the ANC in order to negotiate a comprehensive agreement,” Van Schalkwyk added.
DA and Democratic Party leader Tony Leon said in a speech to businessmen in Cape Town on Saturday that it was being suggested that the poor and less privileged, and indeed black South Africans in the Western Cape, would benefit if the current provincial government was thrown out and replaced by an ANC-dominated one.
“But the current DP/NNP coalition government has achieved a remarkable amount for the people of the Western Cape.”
The people of the Western Cape and Cape Town unicity were better off than the rest of the country,” Leon said.
It was quite apparent that most NNP representatives wanted their province to continue under the current political dispensation.
“Today, in Goudini, we saw something unprecedented in South Africa. We saw the true voice of the rank and file rise up in revolt at the Machiavellian machinations of the NNP leadership,” Leon said.
Chairman of the DA’s national management committee, James Selfe, said on Sunday that municipal councillors in Mpumalanga had confirmed their commitment to the DA at the weekend, with a unanimous motion of confidence in Leon.
At an informal information meeting called by DA Mpumalanga Leader Clive Hatch in Carolina on Saturday, more than 70 of the province’s 110 DA councillors “unanimously endorsed a spontaneous motion from the floor of full support of the national and provincial leaders of the DA”, Selfe said.
“It is quite clear that Van Schalkwyk and his lieutenants are acting without the mandate of the rank and file of their party, let alone of the voters.”
The ANC’s national executive committee at the weekend endorsed cooperation with the NNP “at all levels of government, in all the provinces”.
ANC representative Smuts Ngonyama said the deal was based on “building a national consensus founded on a true South African patriotism”. – Sapa
ZA*NOW:
Marthinus vat sy goed en trek October 27, 2001
Battle for the soul of the DA October 26, 2001
Punch-drunk DA suspend hostilities October 23, 2001
Marais throws public money at his problem October 22, 2001
DA crises: caught between lies and allies October 19, 2001
Feisty Peter Marais back in the saddle October 17, 2001
End of the road for Cape Town mayor? October 14, 2001
Battle for the DA – Leon lets slip the dogs of war October 12, 2001
FEATURES:
NNP leader ‘started plotting in March’ November 2, 2001
‘In politics solutions are always possible’ October 19, 2001
Cracks show in Democratic Alliance October 2, 2001