President Thabo Mbeki has thrown his weight behind the African National Congress and New National Party cooperative government in the Western Cape, in the hope of boosting its popular support ahead of the 2004 elections, now only months away.
The show of support from the president comes at an important time for the province’s governing parties. A recent opinion poll by research agency Markinor indicated that neither party, nor the opposition Democratic Alliance, would achieve sufficient support to form a provincial government by itself.
Even optimistic ANC pundits think the organisation is only likely to secure between 43% and 48% of the vote in the province.
Also, the ANC is in the process of compiling its provincial and national lists of candidates for the coming poll, while the NNP is struggling to reassemble its structures following its break with the DA. The NNP has turned in disappointing results in the handful of ward polls it has chosen to contest recently. These are regarded as important indicators of election trends.
Last weekend’s presidential imbizo was used to showcase the achievements of the 18-month-old cooperation government and to impress on Mbeki that it is not only delivering services, but is also starting to bridge the historic divide between African and coloured communities in the province.
Many credit ANC provincial leader and economic affairs MEC Ebrahim Rasool with giving the cooperation pact direction and credibility. He has assembled a young and able team of ANC MECs who have launched concrete initiatives to tackle issues like black economic empowerment and the problems in the social security system in the province.
While Mbeki is said to have expressed his continued support for the cooperation pact during a private meeting with the provincial executive, his public support came at the Worcester imbizo in the local agricultural showgrounds.
In response to an ANC member’s angry ”to hell with the National Party [sic]”, Mbeki replied: ”That’s fine. The rest of us will work with the NNP. If he doesn’t want to, that’s fine.”
For the next three days, Mbeki tried to play as non-partisan a role as is possible for the president of the ANC. Nevertheless, wherever the president went ANC supporters donned new election T-shirts with the slogan ”Forward To Election Victory in 2004”, or older models from previous polls.
It was clear they felt their president was visiting them — something that was politically unthinkable under the previous DA administration. NNP supporters were less visible, but nevertheless there in their party sun visors, flags and T-shirts.
For Marthinus van Schalkwyk, next year’s elections will be a crucial test of his two-year high-stakes game, which saw the NNP leave the opposition DA alliance and throw its hand in with the ruling party.
When a Worcester schoolgirl asked Mbeki whether he was there because of the pending elections, ANC supporters ”tut-tutted” but the president took up the issue. ”After elections, I do not know who will be president. The president might be [NNP leader] Marthinus van Schalkwyk,” he said.
Although clearly unlikely, the remark must have been a relief to Van Schalkwyk, who was repeatedly introduced as ”the longest serving premier in recent times”.
Despite their cooperation agreement, there is still a lot of competition between the ANC and the NNP ahead of the poll. The composition of a future provincial administration, and its premiership, is up for grabs, and the party that performs most strongly during the poll will probably be able to call the shots.