Whites are already in a minority in somesenior National Party committees and in the only region where it holds power

Whites are already in a minority in somesenior National Party committees and in the only region where it holds power, the Western Cape.”Our campaigning is strictly policy based. But the National Party believes it can claim to have helped bury apartheid and must show the ANC has no monopoly on political vision.The National Party wants to project itself as the main, multiracial centre-right party, while the ANC, still firmly allied to the Communist Party, becomes the leading party of the left Race is no longer an issue. “It is our right and duty to promote our policy and to attack, criticise and oppose the ANC as our main opponent in the political arena,” hetold more than 1,500 delegates in Johanneburg’s World Trade Centre.His comments about being “viciously insulted” and “bullied” in a cabinet row with Mr Mandela on Wednesday sounded petulant coming from a leader whose party systematically repressed South Africa’s black majority. And the forging of that new identity is also the reason that its leader, F W de Klerk, seized the opportunity to capitalise on the biggest rift in his nine-month partnership with President Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress in the government of national unity, inpower until elections in 1999.Mr de Klerk has served notice that his party is determined to build up an image as the chief party of opposition.

It shows there’s a new South African culture emerging.”
The National Party has certainly reinvented itself since losing last April’s multiracial elections. “Afrikaners are usually reserved, but they too got up and sang. “It’s totally different, it’s spontaneous, it’s wonderful,” enthused Martinus van Schalkwyk, the party’s spokesman. There were paradoxical scenes aplenty at this week’s congress of the National Party, racist rulers of South Africa for 46 years. Black chiefs sat beside Afrikaner madams, Indian suburbanites chatted with coloured businessmen and a toyi-toyiing white choir led the whole swaying assembly through a pulsating Zulu melody.

More than 60 people were reported killed in political and criminal violence this week.. We’ve always agreed to compromise, and a good compromise is painful.”n Durban (AP) – With political killings again reported to be soaring, Jacob Zuma, chairman of the African National Congress, said yesterday that troops may need to be deployed in KwaZulu/Natal province.The independent Human Rights Commission reported that 75 people were killed in political violence in December, the highest total in five months. Passions have often run high, but each time the two men have risen above them in the end.”We have a working relationship We have never had a close relationship,” Mr de Klerk said “We have never dined together or gone out together But we’ve always been civil to each other. But he attacked my integrity and good faith,” Mr de Klerk said.Mr Mandela and Mr de Klerk had regular crises of confidence during the tortuous negotiations from 1990 that led up to multi-racial elections in 1994 and the subsequent formation of a government of national unity.

Mr Mandela is then alleged to have said this “would not cause a ripple”.”He did not call me a liar per se. “The country stood on the abyss of the government breaking up. I am extremely grateful for the sake of South Africa that this is not the situation.”After the two men talked for 90 minutes, Mr Mandela said he was prepared to let bygones be bygones in a relationship that is the key to the success of the country’s five-year transition from white rule to multi-racial democracy. The two men then issued ajoint statement accepting each other’s “good faith and integrity” and an agreement “to make a fresh start”.Both said they would act jointly to remove uncertainty that has surrounded the applications for indemnity from prosecution for apartheid-era political offences by 3,500 policemen and two former ministers, Adriaan Vlok and Magnus Malan.Transcripts of the Cabinet meeting leaked to the Johannesburg press, quoted Mr Mandela accusing Mr de Klerk of incompetence, after which Mr de Klerk said he would have to reconsider his position. It wasn’t a personal affair,” he told reporters, smiling and bouyed by the sudden attention.