NEWS & MEDIA LETTERS FROM THE PRESIDENT

"A matter of life and Dead"

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The National Party was established under the leadership of General J.B.M. Hertzog in July 1914. Ninety years later, in August 2004, it effectively decided to dissolve itself.

When General Hertzog led his faction out of the 1913 Congress of the South African Party (SAP), opening the way to the formation of the National Party the following year, he differed with his fellow Boer War Generals, Louis Botha and Jan Smuts, on two major questions.

These were the position of the Afrikaner, and the resolution of the Native Question, in the newly formed Union of South Africa. In 1912, to the anger of his colleagues in the SAP, and the consternation of English-speaking South Africa, he said, "South Africa is to be ruled by Afrikaners."

In the same year, as Minister of Native Affairs, to the anger of the South African Native National Congress, later renamed the ANC, and the African masses it represented, he started formulating what became the 1913 Native Lands Act. He argued that "separate development", based on the formation of what later were called Bantustans and Group Areas, was the only logical and correct response to the Native Question.

The New National Party decided to cease to exist in 2004, shortly after our third democratic General Election, having campaigned on the platform that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, and that the country's future and the welfare of all our people could only be guaranteed by the entrenchment of a non-racial democracy.

As General Hertzog put down his markers in 1912, and as the ANC was born, the weekly periodical, 'South Africa', published in London, carried a small snippet of news. Under the heading, "A Very Raw Kafir", it reported: "The 'Pilgrims and Sabie News' commiserates with a lady in camp who was trying to break in a raw boy. Calling him into the bedroom she told him to throw the bucket of water away. He did so promptly - across the carpet. Scolding him, she told him to get a cloth and wipe it up quickly. He did so with the master's shirt from the bedrail."

During January of the same year, appalled at the idea of political rights for very raw Kafirs, 'South Africa' issued dire warnings against Dr Abdurahman, leader of the African People's Organisation (APO), after he had made an Address, which the journal described as "A Dangerous Speech". At the most recent Congress of the APO, Dr Aburahman had said that as a result of the racist policies of the Union government, "a deep-seated feeling of passive hatred is being engendered against the white races", and that "white policy means a war of extermination against coloured races and natives."

'South Africa' said, "The Whites of South Africa are now united and, while on perfectly good terms with the Blacks, will make short work of any who try to bring further bloodshed into their country. Anyone who incited to such crime as the stirring up of one colour against another should, on being found guilty, receive a sentence of ten years' penal servitude. The only way in which the natives of South Africa can be helped is by being taught to help themselves. They will not learn this lesson if their minds are inflated by grossly coloured misconceptions implanted to serve the reckless ends of agitators and notoriety hunters.

"We believe there is a place in South Africa for the Black as much as the White, and that the two races may serve each other well, both playing their part in building up the country's great future.The man (such as Dr Abdurahman), who seeks to subvert South Africa's unique social system is no less a danger to the community because he may be acting with no deliberately malicious intention. Whether knave or fool, he must, in the public interest, be taught to exercise restraint."

The journal 'South Africa' was accusing Dr Abdurahman of what in modern parlance would be denounced as "playing the race card"!

Two months later, the journal praised "Mr John L. Dube, of Natal", contrasting him with Dr Abdurahman. Of him it said that the " 'first Inter-African Native Congress of all South Africa' elected Mr Dube, in his absence, as its President." It saw him as one of the "few educated natives who, it is hoped, will come to exercise a beneficial influence upon the millions of their fellow-countrymen who are living on the neutral ground between civilisation and barbarism."

It went on to say, "For the present the natives would certainly do well to eschew politics and to concentrate upon such matters as education and social elevation, a larger amount of technical skill tending to the promotion of both. It is not in competition with the White man, but in the uplifting of his own race that the native of South Africa may best find an outlet for his legitimate aspirations."

In three long articles at the end of the year, 'South Africa' summarised South African developments during the year 1912. It was so certain about the correctness of its injunction that "the natives would certainly do well to eschew politics" that it completely excluded any mention of the establishment of the "first Inter-African Native Congress of all South Africa".

The following year, in March 1913, 'South Africa' published an editorial headed, "Towards a Native Policy". It wrote: "While we have pointed out the absurdity of General Hertzog's segregation fad, which would have cut off from one another the White and coloured varieties of humanity, like different kinds of animals separated by iron network in some urban Zoo, we none the less recognised several important facts.

"One of these, and a very important one, is the impossibility of White and Black living side by side in South Africa under any conditions of political, economic, or social equality. The races can come into contact most amicably so long as the White is the employer and the Black the employed, or they may even meet in the course of business - which is a great leveller while the business lasts - or occasionally in a professional capacity, such as in legal, educational, or religious matters, but in these latter directions it is always well understood that the Black man represents only his own people, and that he does so by virtue of his superior education.

"Assured (by the 1913 Land Act) against occupation of their land by European settlers, it would rest with the natives themselves as to how soon and to what extent they may be charged with the administration of purely local affairs."

And yet, despite this Native Policy, in essence no different from that of General Hertzog, 'South Africa' hated the General with rare passion. One of the reasons for this hatred was the General's Afrikaner nationalism, which came to be represented by the National Party, and was seen as hostile to the interests of English-speaking South Africa.

The other was his call for "South Africa first", expressing his opposition to the continued British imperialist domination of South Africa. When Louis Botha dropped Hertzog from the Cabinet in 1912, Hertzog's supporters said he had become "a victim on the altar of Imperialism." Hertzog himself said Louis Botha "has embraced (British) Jingoism, and this is sufficient reason why he should not continue in office."

The periodical 'South Africa' drew great pride in the reality and strength of the British Empire, and placed its hopes to 'keep the Native in his place ', on white Anglo-Boer unity. Accordingly, it could not but oppose General Hertzog, regardless of the coincidence of views and policies with regard to the Native Question, and the shared commitment to the maintenance of white supremacy.

So intense was its aversion to the General, that, hardly four months after he was dismissed from the Cabinet, it wrongly forecast his almost immediate disappearance from the political scene. The editorial it published, entitled "The Fury of Hertzog", was so eloquent that it is worth quoting at some length. It said:

"There is much virtue in not knowing when one is beaten, provided that the stubbornness is in a good cause. But there is another kind of obstinacy which seems utterly useless, especially to the person exercising it.

"Such is the magnificent but futile courage of those swarms of lemmings (small arctic rodents), which, every year, plunge into the water off the Scandinavian coast and try to swim across the North Sea, oblivious of the fact that it is now a good deal wider than when their ancestors acquired this curious habit and passed it on to their unfortunate descendants. General Hertzog is rather bigger than a lemming, but his present actions are just as useless, and as self-destructive.

"He resembles an angry buffalo turned out of the herd, seeking a blind revenge by butting against the rocks of the nearest krantz.The Hertzogian drum is a noisy nuisance, but it is not a weapon of which anyone need be afraid, and General Botha will not be scared out of office in this fashion."

In time, the successors of General Hertzog chased General Botha's political descendants out of office. The National Party came into its own. At last, it had realised the objective to institute Afrikaner rule. It gained the possibility to wrench South Africa out of the clutches of the dying British Empire. It acquired the freedom to "cut off from one another the White and coloured varieties of humanity, like different kinds of animals separated by iron network in some urban Zoo", through its apartheid policies.

It could now treat the very raw Kafirs according to their deserts, with no need to engage in a deceitful pretence that "the Whites of South Africa (were) on perfectly good terms with the Blacks", pontificating that "the two races may serve each other well, both playing their part in building up the country's great future." Robben Island prison was ready to accommodate the "agitators and notoriety hunters".

Whatever the journal 'South Africa' thought were the "legitimate aspirations" of Black South Africans, and whatever the political descendants of General Hertzog thought about the permanence of Afrikaner rule, history proved both wrong.

The natives had refused to eschew politics. They had rebelled against the attempt to rob them of their country and to consign them to a Zoo, separated from the rest of their motherland and other South Africans by Hertzog's "iron network".

In 1994, four decades after the National Party was established, Hertzog's political descendants participated in our country's first democratic General Elections, the struggle of the oppressed having given them no choice but to negotiate a political resolution of both the Native Question and White fears.

The very fact of those elections as well as their outcome, spelt an end to the Afrikaner rule for which General J.B.M. Hertzog had fought, and an end to the Anglo-Boer domination represented by General Louis Botha. However hesitantly, the National Party had come to the conclusion that what it had stood for and done was wrong. It had decided that the future lay in an honest acceptance of the proposition that "the two races (must) serve each other well, both playing their part in building up the country's great future".

When it adopted these positions, it "committed suicide". It condemned itself to its own demise. Nature itself would not allow that those who had been the architects of a pernicious racist order, built on the foundations of white racism that was centuries old, should, overnight, become the midwives of a society in which Black and White would live side-by-side, in "conditions of political, economic, (and) social equality", with nobody confined to a Zoo.

As the National Party celebrated its 80th Anniversary in July 1994, one of the questions that remained to be answered was when, finally, the ghost of the National Party would be laid to rest. The second was whether the members and supporters of the Party would perish politically with their historic Party, or redefine themselves to help determine the future of what had permanently become a non-racial democracy.

For eight decades, and longer, the politics of our country had been defined by an unrelenting contest between two perspectives - one in favour of democracy and non-racism, and the other in favour of racism and white minority domination. In our first democratic elections the one had emerged the victor, and the other had lost power forever.

The Democratic Party walked into the breach. It understood that even though the political apartheid system had died, apartheid ideas in the minds of those who had derived comfort and benefit from this system had not died. As the party of apartheid necessarily and inevitably committed suicide, the party of white liberalism opened its doors to those who refused to redefine themselves as opponents of the system and ideology they had upheld for generations.

Never able to play any significant role in the previous four decades, the death of the apartheid system gave the party of white liberalism an unprecedented lease of life, with the possibility to thrive as a meaningful opposition and, hopefully, - and in real terms - a government-in-waiting. To achieve this objective, its first task had to be attract into its ranks and contingent of supporters those who could not think beyond what had evolved from the legacy left behind by General Hertzog.

Immediately after the 90th Anniversary of the National Party, in August 2004, the leadership of the New National Party took the unavoidable decision that the time had come to lay the ghost of the Party to rest. At the same time, it took another decision that was by no means inevitable, and that cannot but be described as courageous and far-sighted.

It recommended that its members and supporters should join the ANC. Having accepted the inevitability and justice of a non-racial democracy, it took the logical step to encourage its members and supporters to join and support the oldest political formation in our country, which is even older that the National Party, that had for 92 years upheld and fought for the realisation of the vision of a democratic and non-racial South Africa.

By this means, it gave a new meaning to General Hertzog's call - South Africa first! It made the statement that the Party it led had to die, so that Black and White could, together, "play their part in building up the country's great future". It made the statement boldly and unequivocally -not the Party first, not white interests first, but South Africa first!

These developments may have taken those who constitute the black majority by surprise, despite the fact that for many decades they have accepted that the Afrikaners that the National Party led are Africans like themselves. But they will not say they are amazed. They will say that, finally, these white Africans, whatever their numbers, have shed whatever remained that still tempted them to regard themselves as Europeans, and a European outpost in darkest Africa.

Those who have not accepted this historical and historic outcome have already started their campaign to denigrate and belittle this result, as they were bound to, in their own interest. What would have best served their interests would have been for the leaders of the New National Party, as they laid to rest the ghost of a Party whose time had passed, to recite a funeral oration proclaiming the fears they continue to harbour about the future of those they had represented and led.

But, remarkably, the political descendants of General Hertzog have taken the decision that they will not be lemmings that seem condemned to demonstrate magnificent but futile courage. They have decided that they will not engage in a useless and self-destructive exercise to defend as much of the past as they can, simply because they find it impossible to break with a curious habit they acquired from their ancestors, thus burdening themselves with the destiny forever to remain the unfortunate descendants.

But others have taken their place, who should learn that perhaps there is much virtue in not knowing when one is beaten, provided that the stubbornness is in a good cause. But, like lemmings, they demonstrate a kind of obstinacy that is utterly useless, because the historical setting has changed fundamentally and irrevocably.

Bereft of any good cause, they arrogantly and falsely present themselves as the sole bulwark against an impending and assured emergence of an anti-democratic one party state. Like General Hertzog, these are rather bigger than lemmings, however equally useless their efforts.

The drum they beat is but a noisy nuisance. It is not a weapon of which the democratic and non-racial order need be afraid. And the masses of our people will not be persuaded by empty noise to abandon their long established national movement for democracy and non-racism, which members of the New National Party have opted to join and support, merely because of a drum that is nothing more than a noisy nuisance.