The first public verbal battles in South Africa’s election campaign between the traditional parties of the white minority have focused not on domestic economic policies or development issues — but on the perennial problem of neighbouring Zimbabwe.
New National Party leader and Western Cape Premier Marthinus van Schalkwyk — who withdrew his party from the official opposition Democratic Alliance more than two years ago in a messy political divorce and jumped into a ”working relationship” with the ruling African National Congress — has come out with guns firing over the Zimbabwe issue.
Van Schalkwyk told national newspapers on Monday that the ANC-NNP election campaigns would seek to discredit the DA’s ”message of fear”, which warns the electorate to vote for it or face the possibility of a South Africa that will degenerate into a Zimbabwe. Van Schalkwyk has repeatedly argued that an NNP vote will be one that will have influence with the government.
But DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said on Tuesday the NNP, the former apartheid party, has abandoned its supporters by climbing into bed with the ANC ”and its supporters have, in turn, abandoned the NNP”.
He argued that Van Schalkwyk ”is clutching at straws in his desperate attempt to spin his way out of the hole into which he has dug his party”.
”He tries to argue that his party’s path of cooperation with the ANC will prevent South Africa going down the road of Zimbabwe.
”Perhaps Mr Van Schalkwyk should get his facts straight on Zimbabwe. [Zimbabwe African People’s Union leader, the late] Mr Joshua Nkomo was co-opted from being the leader of the opposition to being the vice-president, which signalled the end to parliamentary democracy.
”It is precisely the co-option of the opposition by the ruling party that allowed Zimbabwe to go down the road to one-party rule, with its consequent corruption, maladministration and intolerance of dissent. This is the path the NNP has chosen.
”Fortunately for South Africa, it [the NNP] has become an insignificant party, and the opposition will not be much poorer for its demise.
”Mr Van Schalkwyk chose the route of co-option because he could not do without the perks and privileges of office. Neither could he conceive of an independent alternative challenging the ANC.”
President Thabo Mbeki is scheduled to call the national and provincial election on February 11. — I-Net Bridge