After a 2% showing at the polls, the ‘New’ National Party, the people who brought you apartheid and inspired the classic I’ve never met a nice South African (a work of art far better than any inspired by the National Party’s own cosmetologists) have decided to call it a day. They’re merging with, er, the ANC.
Seems as if they’ve found enough within the ANC’s economic and social programmes to consign themselves to the dustbin of history. It can’t help that the ANC have been hammering at the NNP with precisely the same state appuratus that the NNP once used on them. And the ANC’s economic apartheid surely has some resonance in the NNP’s core constituencies.
The splendid Peter-Dirk Uys, in a mimicked conversation between Thabo Mbeki and P.W. Botha has the latter, referring to the former’s denialist policies on HIV/AIDS, saying “You killed more black men than I did, and you didn’t fire a shot”. Harsh, but fair.