The New National Party (NNP) and the Democratic Party (DP) announced June 24 they had formed the Democratic Alliance, with the principal goal of challenging the ruling African National Congress (ANC), which controls 66 percent of the seats in Parliament. The two will be separate in name only until national elections in 2004 to avoid a loss of parliamentary seats, but for all other intents and purposes will function as one entity, including joint campaigning in local elections later this year.

The NNP is the remains of the National Party, which presided over apartheid white-minority rule from its birth in 1948 until the democratic, nonracial elections in 1994. The party changed its name in 1998 in an attempt to slough off some of its past.

Having won about 20 percent of the national vote in 1994, the party slumped to about 7 percent last year. Today it also draws support from a section of the black population--those whom apartheid classified as "Coloreds," who had relative privileges in housing, education, and employment compared with Africans, the majority. However, last year a larger number of so-called Coloreds from the working class and middle classes voted for the ANC than before.

The main beneficiary of the NNP's declining support was the Democratic Party, historically the liberal capitalist opposition to National Party rule.

The DP went from less than 2 percent of the vote in 1994 to about 10 percent last year. A host of prominent right-wingers from the NNP have also defected to the DP.

The Democratic Party and its leader, Tony Leon, have emerged as the most vocal opponents of ANC-sponsored measures to wipe out apartheid's racist legacy. The party has sharply opposed affirmative action measures, called for a repeal of labor legislation guaranteeing workers' rights, and attacked the ANC as corrupt and "racist."

It campaigned last year under the slogan "Fight Back"--which many working people summed up as "fight blacks." This stance has earned it kudos from the big-business press, which continually insists on the need for "an effective opposition" to the ANC.

Leon, who heads the new entity with NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk as his deputy, emphasizes that its goal is to win growing black support. Both parties give lip service to nonracialism.

The ANC's National Working Committee called the merger an attempt to "bring back racism through the back door." It said its purpose "is to weaken the ANC and the government and thereby block the transformation process. In the event of the [success of] this merger, which goes under the new tag Democratic Alliance, succeeding in weakening the government, the end result would be to justify their timeworn assumption that a black government cannot succeed."

Democratic Alliance spokespeople responded by charging the ANC with "racial prejudice" and "sowing the seeds of needless racial conflict."

DP and NNP leaders say apartheid is a thing of the past and therefore no special measures are needed to dismantle its legacy. They argue that affirmative action is discriminatory to whites and reject the nonracial program and record of the ANC, claiming it is out to help Africans at everyone else's expense.  
 
 
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