Political realignments in South Africa

By M. S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, NOV. 2. Major political realignments appear to be in the offing in South African politics, following the decision last week by the New National Party component of the opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) to leave the alliance, bringing to an end a political marriage that was just over a year old.

The break-up of the DA, initially expected to affect the provincial government in Western Cape which is controlled by the DA and some of the structures of local government, is likely to have a more far reaching impact nationally. The ANC in Western Cape has already formally declared its readiness to govern the province.

However, the remarks of the ANC National Chairperson, Mr. Mosiuoa Lekota, envisage more far reaching political realignments. Mr. Lekota who has been holding talks with the NNP has suggested that the Constitution be amended to enable a `government of national unity' (GNU), at all levels of government which would include the NNP. According to an SABC radio report on wednesday morning, Mr. Lekota said that such a coming together of the ANC and the NNP would facilitate the national objective of a non-racist South Africa.

The idea of a GNU is not new; nor the idea that the coming together of the ANC and the historically white National Party in a working arrangement of joint governance. South Africa had such a Government of National Unity during the first two years of democracy, a structure which was provided and indeed mandated by the Interim Constitution to run for the full term of five years, the life of the first democratically elected Parliament.

However, at the adoption of a new Constitution in May 1996, the leader of the National Party and Deputy President of the country, Mr. F. W. de Klerk, decided to walk out of the GNU on the ground that the new Constitution had not made any provision for continued power sharing (`joint decision-making in the executive branch of the government', in the words of Mr. De Klerk), though the NP was constitutionally entitled to stay in the GNU for the duration of the first five years of the government.

That action of Mr. De Klerk in a sense marked the beginning of a more rapid decline in the political influence of the old National Party, culminating in the miserable showing of the NNP in the June 1999 general elections where it secured only 28 seats compared to the 82 seats it had won in 1994, trailing behind both the DP (28) and the Inkatha Freedom Party (34). It was as much as the poor electoral performance in 1999 as more devious political calculations related to the local government elections that were due in December 2000 that persuaded the triumphalist DP and a rather chastened NNP to come together and forge the Democratic Alliance in June 2000.

Why is the idea being revived now by the ANC, when the ANC has on its own a near two thirds majority of seats in Parliament and heads a government which includes the IFP and the Azanian Peoples Organisation ? The stated reason, of ensuring racial reconciliation, is not very convincing and indeed gives credence to the claim of diehard supporters of the old order that the ANC, with an admitted mass African support base, is only a `black' party and not the truly non-racial organisation that it has always rightly claimed to be.

A more convincing explanation is that by this tactical concession to an enfeebled and politically marginalised NNP, the ANC will put paid to the pretensions of the DP to be not merely the natural party of the opposition but also potentially the natural party of a future government. Further, the ANC and even more so its core support base instinctively recognises the pretensions of DP to be what they are - a continuation under a liberal veneer of the of the old rancour of the English speaking whites of South Africa towards the Afrikaners.

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