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Former Apartheid Party Seeks Merger With Old Foe

By Global News Digest

With their support steadily dwindling in the country, members of the New National Party of South Africa have decided to fold the party's independent existence and join the ruling ANC.

The Johannesburg Mail and Guardian carried the story on August 8 under the headline "Apartheid's Final Surrender."

The National Party was established in 1914 by General JBM Hertzog to promote the interests of white Afrikaners and keep blacks from power. Under the leadership of Daniel Malan party politics turned hard-line racist. In 1948 the NP succeeded in gaining power and proceeded to entrench the politics of racial separation called apartheid.

The party's widespread support among whites kept it in power for over 40 years and in that time it turned South Africa into a murderous police state as it pursued its apartheid policies.

ANC leader and former President Nelson Mandela, along with other freedom fighters, was jailed for 27 years during the racist reign of the National Party. Many other Black and white people who supported the liberation struggle were tortured and murdered by the regime.

Growing domestic and international condemnation and resistance against the apartheid policies of the regime led to a change of direction under FW de Klerk. Mandela and other political prisoners were released from jail in the late 1980s and the first free and democratic elections took place in 1994.

The ANC won the 1994 election with an overwhelming majority. The National Party, promising to defend the rights of whites, managed to win 20 per cent of the vote. That was a high-point for the post-apartheid NP. FW de Klerk stepped down as leader two years later. In an attempt to transform the old racist party, new leader, Marthinus Van Schalkwyk added "New" before the party's old name and repositioned it as a mixed-race movement committed to the ideals of Desmond Tutu's 'rainbow nation'. The New National Party continued to lose more of its share of the vote in subsequent elections. Disgruntled Whites turned instead to the Democratic Alliance and other opposition parties that were more vocal in criticizing the ruling party. In the April 2004 election, the NNP managed only 1.7 per cent of the vote.

The Mail and Guardian has called the decision to fight future elections under the ANC banner "a bitterly ironic twist."

According to the statement announcing the NNP's demise, party officials will retain their membership and elected positions until September 2005. Van Schalkwyk has said he would join the ANC within weeks.