“The news of my death is greatly exaggerated …” Author Mark Twain’s response to a premature obituary applies to the recent public demeanour of New National Party leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk.
The third premier in a year of political soap opera in the Western Cape is gleefully heading a publicity campaign to welcome municipal defectors from former Democratic Alliance partners back into the NNP fold.
“We had to try the DA. The failure of the DA makes it so much easier to explain our message: they could not deliver, they can’t deliver,” he said this week after Stellenbosch was clinched for the African National Congress/NNP alliance.
That announcement was made on the same spot where, days earlier, DA leader Tony Leon had drunk champagne, promising the winelands town was secure. Since the defection period opened, the NNP has taken to military analogies, describing Leon as “a has-been general fighting yesterday’s battles”.
Van Schalkwyk (42) has delivered the majority of councils where his councillors ruled as part of the DA to the ANC-NNP cooperation pact. This stands in contrast with the battering by the Democratic Party during the 1995/1996 municipal by-elections.
“We will beat the pants off them,” says Van Schalkwyk of his party’s chances against the DA in the 2004 election, confident he will serve another term as premier. Opposition from the right, as represented by the DA, is dead, he says.
“The trends are all there. Even if our supporters differ with the ANC … they understand we must work together. After two years they are asking themselves: what has the DA achieved? And the answer is zilch, nothing.”
Whether he can finally shake the “Kortbroek” tag depends on his establishing a credible NNP party identity and selling the proclaimed move to “the political middle ground” to its supporters, most of whom are conservative whites or blue-collar coloured voters traditionally hostile to the ANC.
Van Schalkwyk says the move from opposition to “a voice in government” is based on disillusionment with the DA’s “fight-back” strategy and grassroots voter belief that they can join the mainstream without joining the ANC.
By all accounts Van Schalkwyk was never a verligte Nat, but fellow politicians credit him with being a political survivor. Long before the formation of the DA, Leon once described Van Schalkwyk as “an upward blip on a downward trend”.
These days there’s no love lost between the two. “It is not the light of truth he has seen,” said Leon earlier this week. “It’s the green sheen of a hefty salary increase, a position that comes with a small degree of status, a driver and taxpayer-funded bodyguard or two that have lured him and what remains of his party into the ANC’s camp.”
But Van Schalkwyk insists that the digestion of the Nats by the ruling party is “not on the cards”. Each party can disagree in public — unlike the days of the government of national unity.
“The ANC now realise if they have a partner it can have its own identity. The NNP realises the old National Party’s mistake that you cannot, as a smaller party, force your way on the ANC.”
Despite the collapse of white Afrikaner backing for the NNP in 1999 Van Schalkwyk still projects himself as the voice of Afrikaners. “Afrikaans-speaking people are practical. They say we don’t want to end up like the whites in Zimbabwe. We have to give the ANC-NNP cooperation a chance.”
He shrugs when asked about his somersaults since joining forces with the ANC. As DA deputy leader he accused President Thabo Mbeki of being “obsessed with race”, repeatedly attacked the ANC’s delivery record and once said the Madiba jive would not deliver houses.
“We [the ANC and NNP] were opponents in the past. They also made anti-NNP comments. When one is an opponent one puts one’s differences on the table. But the landscape around us has changed substantially.”
He answers suggestions that the ANC will not deliver on its promises to the Nats, particularly at provincial and national level, by insisting that the pact is phased. First came the Western Cape, Cape Town, and the floor-crossing law, which will now be followed by negotiations to implement the full November 2001 agreement.
Van Schalkwyk is riding the crest of a wave, having staved off his own removal from the DA and the disappearance of his party last year.
“I am now illustrating that I can bring our constituency to the centre. It is also good for the ANC. It’s good for the country. It’s good for us,” he smiles.
The real test of whether he is on the comeback trail will come in 2004.