Former South African president FW de Klerk has relinquished his New National Party membership (NNP) saying the party had gone too far in merging with the ruling African National Congress (ANC), SABC radio news reported on Friday.
The NNP announced a week ago that it had decided to merge with the ANC. NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk said he would become a member of the ANC and encouraged other members of his party to do likewise.
De Klerk on Friday said the NNP had abandoned its right to differ publicly with the ANC.
”I am accordingly withdrawing from the NNP. I am not considering joining the ANC and shall decide in due course for what party I shall vote,” he said.
In its response the NNP said it was ”a pity” that De Klerk did not support the party’s’ decision, but it respected his right to state his personal view on the matter.
Spokesperson Daryl Swanepoel said in a statement: ”The Federal Council of the NNP had to take its decision in the light of the hard political realities of the day, and is carrying out its leadership responsibilities in this regard.
”The NNP is convinced that the party’s decision is the right one to serve its voters’ interests.”
The party said De Klerk had brought about an important change in direction in South African politics with his speech of February 2 1990.
”However, those who had to continue in politics and had to deal with the realities of the political landscape, eventually realised that the new political landscape has changed fundamentally and that the ANC of 2004 is a completely different one from the ANC of 1990,” said Swanepoel.
Just a decade ago such a marriage would have been dismissed as a surreal impossibility, but the NNP is so enfeebled from successive electoral batterings that the wonder yesterday was how it managed to last so long since dismantling apartheid.
In the first democratic elections in 1994 it won 20% of the vote by promising to defend the rights of whites and coloureds, those of mixed race, in a black-dominated ANC-led government.
When FW de Klerk stepped down as leader two years later, the party lost a towering figure and direction. The Nobel laureate’s successor, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, was derisively nicknamed kortbroek (short pants). Tasked with transforming a racist dinosaur, he borrowed from British Prime Minister Tony Blair by putting ‘New’ in front of National Party and rebranded it as a mixed-race movement committed to the ideals of Desmond Tutu’s ‘rainbow nation’.
Its shrivelled support in Western Cape bought an alliance with the ANC, which was a few votes shy of a majority in the provincial legislature, but the writing was on the wall in April’s election when its national vote collapsed to 1,7%.
Whites disgruntled with the ANC backed the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties that were more vocal in criticising the ruling party, which won more than two-thirds of the vote.
Van Schalkwyk was appointed Tourism and Environmental Affairs Minister by President Thabo Mbeki, but his party lacked resources and morale.
Formed in 1914 by General JBM Hertzog, the NNP became a hardline Afrikaner party under Daniel Malan and in 1948 took power and entrenched the politics of racial separation. As opposition grew, it turned South Africa into a police state which murdered, tortured and jailed dissidents. It is difficult to find anyone today who admits supporting them, but the party enjoyed widespread white backing for decades. – Sapa