It has been a nine-month march for New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk from Nobody Location, Thakgalang Village, Limpopo, to the fluffy bed of cooperative government with the African National Congress.
On September 11 last year Van Schalkwyk told villagers: ”Since 1994 the ANC has promised much, and delivered little. In 1995, 1999 and again last year the ANC promised change and a better life — again that trust was betrayed. Despite grand talk about free water and free electricity for all, people … continue to be cold, thirsty, and hungry.”
This week he told members of the Cape Town Press Club: ”The last six to eight months [there] has been from the side of the ANC a different approach. My impression is that the ANC is starting to understand the need for everybody to make the country a success.”
Van Schalkwyk admits it has been a shock for voters to understand his remarkable political journey. But he believes they will be won over in time.
Less than a year ago, when deputy Democratic Alliance leader, he described the ANC as ”a political dinosaur, which has fulfilled its historical purpose”.
In February 1999 he warned as leader of the opposition that the Democratic Party would enter a coalition with the ANC in the Western Cape in the event of a hung legislature.
Before the June 1999 national election he ran posters portraying himself and then premier Gerald Morkel declaring that voters should ”Keep Western Cape” (out of ANC hands).
Cynical Press Club members this week grappled with his apparent political gymnastics over lunch. NNP MPs and MECs who had appeared in support of their leader clapped loudly, but otherwise stayed silent.
He was pressed on how NNP supporters, fed on a diet of anti-ANC rhetoric, would make the shift. It was ”a fair question”, he said. ”Initially it was a shock to the system for minority communities that the NNP was taking this route. I am convinced they will follow the NNP. When in 1990 FW de Klerk unbanned the ANC and Communist Party … if a poll had been held that morning 90% of our members would have said never … yet two years later we won a referendum.
”Today the ANC is not the ANC of five or 10 years ago. We have to convince people that the ANC is just another normal political party. The right question is: with whom do you share the future? It is better to build strong good government.”
Unlike the DA, where lawyers had to check every fact ”and you still ended up going to court”, the relationship with the ANC was based on ”mutual trust and common objectives”. No ANC pledges had been broken.
Eighteen months after fighting a largely successful municipal election campaign under the DA banner — again on keeping the Western Cape out of ANC hands — he dismisses his former allies as ”right-wing extremists”.
A manifesto brought out last week features a NNP worker helping to build a house, with a DP ”watchdog” savaging his heels.
Was his altered course ”a sudden moment?” ”No, it was not.”
One of the reasons the first ANC-NNP government of national unity had failed was ”because the NP thought they can sit there as a minority party and still be the power behind the throne. You must accept and respect the majority party. I am absolutely convinced that if [there is] enough responsible leadership from the black, coloured and white communities, it can work.”
Explaining the undelivered Cabinet post once pledged by the ANC and expected to go to Van Schalkwyk, he said: ”Once the president is ready with regard to national government he will make an appropriate announcement.”
Someone asked when Van Schalkwyk would become a liberal. One could swear that he blushed.