Marthinus van Schalkwyk
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Marthinus van Schalkwyk is a South African politician, formerly both Premier of the Western Cape Province and Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of South Africa. He was the leader of the New National Party from its inception on 8 September 1997 until its dissolution on 9 April 2005. He was appointed minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism in the South African cabinet as a reward for aligning his party with the ruling African National Congress, despite his party's poor performance in the 2004 General Election.
Informally, he is referred to by his detractors as kortbroek (lit. "short pants"), a name he earned because of his boyish appearance and lack of political experience when compared to his predecessor, F.W. de Klerk. A significant part of the white Afrikaner population views him as a weak politician who destroyed the old National Party in order to rescue his own political skin by marrying the NNP with its old opposition, the ruling ANC.
In August 2004 it was announced that Van Schalkwyk would become a member of the African National Congress, and that the NNP would be disbanded in 2005 or 2006 at the latest. This decision was finalized on 9 April 2005, when the party's federal committee overwhelmingly endorsed its regional comittees' recommendation to disband the party as soon as municipal election results are finalized.
Speaking after the decision to dissolve the party, van Schalkwyk said, "What we do today is part of our contribution to finally ending the division of the South African soul." He went on to apologize for the way the National Party (the forerunner to the NNP) had "brought suffering through a system grounded in injustice."
"What we do today is liberating," he went on. "It empowers us to throw off the yoke of history and to accept a new and important burden - the shared responsibility for building a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it."
External links
- Announcement (http://www.afrika.no/Detailed/6728.html) of Van Schalkwyk's cross-over to the ANCfr:Marthinus Van Schalkwyk