Apartheid party bows out with apology
Andrew Meldrum in Pretoria
Sun 10 Apr 2005 19.02 EDT
The party which introduced apartheid and enforced racial segregation in South Africa for nearly 50 years disbanded and apologised for its racist policies yesterday, after an attempt to reinvent itself failed.
The New National party, renamed from the National party in 1997, voted itself out of existence after several electoral defeats. The once mighty and arrogant party ended its days with an apology for its apartheid policies.
"The National party brought development to a section of South Africa, but also brought suffering through a system grounded on injustice," its former leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, told the party's federal council on Saturday, while putting forward a motion to disband.
The move passed by a margin of 88 in favour, two against and three abstentions. The meeting was of the NNP members who joined the African National Congress (ANC) when the two parties merged last year. Now they will simply be members of the ANC.
"No party ... could hope to successfully atone and move ahead in the same vehicle," said Mr Van Schalkwyk, environmental affairs and tourism minister in President Thabo Mbeki's cabinet. He said that by dissolving, the party was throwing off the yoke of history and contributing to finally ending the "division of the South African soul".
Mr Van Schalkwyk's boyishly chubby cheeks and eager subservience to the ANC have led old line Nationalist derisively to call him "kortbroeks", Afrikaans for "shortpants".
The dissolution of the party was sharply criticised by the former National party leader and apartheid South African president FW de Klerk. He said the NNP's demise left the country without an effective opposition to the ANC.
"The dissolution of the National party creates a void in the party political scene in South Africa," he told the BBC. "We need a fairly young person without any political baggage to stand up and be counted and say, 'We are going to fill this void'."
Mr De Klerk released Nelson Mandela from prison, led talks to dismantle white rule and was in a power-sharing government with the ANC. But in recent years he has been critical of the New National party's close alliance with the ANC, and last year he quit the party when it merged with the ANC.
Mr De Klerk has said that whites and other minority groups feel powerless under the ANC's leadership and many go abroad in search of better prospects.
The ANC says white South Africans must do more to address the injustices of the past, but that it remains committed to establishing a non-racial and multicultural society.
The NNP was all that remained of the once mighty National party which came to power in 1948 and hardened already discriminatory laws into a system of racial segregation known as apartheid.
Apartheid was only finally dismantled at elections in 1994 that came after intense domestic opposition led by the ANC, international isolation and economic pressure.
The NNP was virtually wiped out in elections in April 2004, winning less than 2% of the vote, while the ANC won a two-thirds majority.
Once the political home of apartheid leaders such as John Vorster and PW Botha, the NNP tried to reform itself, first through a short-lived alliance with the liberal, white-dominated Democratic Alliance, and then through a cooperation deal with the ruling ANC.
Merging with the ANC infuriated some of the NNP's loyalists - mixed-race Afrikaans-speaking voters alarmed at the prospect of black majority domination.
"As the NNP's polices moved closer to those of the ANC in the last polls [in 2004], some of the minority groups abstained from voting," Carol Johnson, the NNP's media director said.
Analysts said the party had lost its roots. "The party weakened as its support base shifted from predominantly Afrikaner to predominantly Coloured, and it lost its sense of purpose and joined the ANC," Tom Lodge, professor of politics at Johannesburg's Witwatersrand University said. "I don't think it was a great asset to democracy, it wasn't providing any kind of vigour, even in opposition."
Yesterday the Democratic Alliance, the main opposition party, said it would try to capture the NNP's supporters.
"[Some] 257,000 people voted for the NNP in 2004. They are now without a political home. They have been betrayed by the NNP," said the party's leader, Tony Leon. "Our home must become their home. There can be no excuse for what the NNP has done."