Eight New National Party MPs will cross the floor to the African National Congress during the defection window period in September next year, ANC chief whip Mbulelo Goniwe said on Thursday.
The eight will defect to the ANC as individuals, not as a group, he said, adding that they were officially welcomed to the ANC caucus at Parliament on Thursday.
”Because you join as an individual, you do so because you believe in the strategic objectives of the ANC,” Goniwe told reporters at Parliament.
”Institutionally, they would still be recognised as members of the NNP and that arrangement will be in place until the next formal window period that will allow all of them to cross over and be ANC public representatives.”
The NNP has nine MPs — seven in the National Assembly and two in the National Council of Provinces — and eight of them have agreed to join the ANC.
Stanley Simmons, the NNP’s chairperson in the Tygerberg area in the Western Cape, is the only one who has not decided to join the ANC.
The eight NNP MPs who will defect to the ANC are Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the party’s leader and Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism; Carl Greyling; Francois Beukman; Carol Johnson; Freddie Adams; Andre Gaum; Cecil Herandien; and Kenneth Sinclair.
Goniwe said ”as members of the ANC, they are entitled to all that the ANC has and what the ANC does”.
The two parties have agreed to have joint caucus meeting every fortnight for practical reasons, not because the ANC does not want the NNP to be privy to certain information.
A similar arrangement has been made regarding study groups, Goniwe said.
Greyling initially told reporters that he was happy to join the ANC, but when asked if his move was not a betrayal of his voters, he did not want to respond.
”I really think that that was discussed in the media by the party [NNP] leadership … at numerous occasions and I honestly think that this is not the opportunity to open that debate.”
When pressed further, Greyling said: ”I have studied … [the NNP] federal council majority decision, I have studied the Freedom Charter as well as the Constitution of the ANC.
”And in my region … I consulted my structures and all of them also decided to join the ANC,” he said. — Sapa