The New National Party’s federal council is to meet in three weeks — on Saturday June 5 — to assess the party’s future after its poor showing in the national and provincial elections.
Party spokesperson Carol Johnson, MP, was commenting on reports in the Beeld newspaper that the Free State region of the party will motivate that the party should disband.
”With a great amount of respect the NNP in the Free State can’t take the decision. The future of the party is something which is in the jurisdiction of the federal council.”
The federal council of what was once South Africa’s predominant party in apartheid politics and ruled the country for 46 years from 1948 to 1994 comprises about 70 members of the party, including the provincial leaders, the national leader — Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism Marthinus van Schalkwyk — and secretary general Daryl Swanepoel.
The council is likely to look ”at several options” but none of them, Johnson said, will be to disband the party.
”We have just got 250 000 votes and we can’t leave them in the lurch,” she said. The party dropped from just less than 7% of the vote nationally in 1999 to less than 2% on April 14. It lost representation in all the legislatures except the Western Cape and Northern Cape — where in both cases it slipped behind the Democratic Alliance, which emerged as the official opposition.
Inus Aucamp, the Free State leader, is expected to resign shortly after motivating the need to disband the party. He was not immediately available for comment. Aucamp lost his seat in the legislature as well in the recent election.
Johnson said, however: ”Each province is going to bring its particular options to the table on June 5. There the future plans for the party will be discussed.”
In Parliament the NNP gained just seven seats compared to the 28 it achieved in the National Assembly in 1999 — although this figure went down to 20 after the defection period in 2003. The party will be focusing on the future of about 350 municipal councillors who defected back to the party in 2002 after the NNP’s abortive absorption into the DA.
In many local governments in the Western Cape it has a pivotal role in maintaining the African National Congress in power — including in Cape Town.
Only four of its officials now hold executive (Cabinet) positions either nationally or in the provinces — Van Schalkwyk is the only party member in the national Cabinet, while PW Saaiman, one of two representatives of the party in the Northern Cape legislature, is the provincial minister of environmental affairs and tourism. In the Western Cape Pierre Uys is the provincial minister of health and Kobus Dowry is the provincial minister of agriculture.
In addition, Johan Gelderblom is chairperson of the standing committee on public accounts in the Western Cape legislature and PietMeyer is deputy speaker. The NNP has five members of the 42-seat legislature — its biggest representation in any legislature in the country. — I-Net Bridge