CAN LUYT
DO IT AGAIN?
APN has received many requests from overseas political scientists and commentators for information on Dr Louis Luyt and how his late entry in the coming election could affect that outcome. Obviously, this is of importance to all. On every side in SA today we see rampant failure. Almost every aspect of government reflects dismal defeat. "Government" in SA is simply not governing. People are desperate for decisive leadership. Could Luyt, a tough, hard headed realist, be the answer? We asked a political scientist in Stellenbosch for his comment. He faxed:
All South Africans, even those on the gravy train, must agree that five years of ANC/SACP rule have been ruinous to our economy, debilitating to our ethics and dangerous, often fatal, to our persons and our property. Yet this broad consensus appears to lead nowhere along the road in the search for solutions. The reason for this paralysis of will is that the broad public has been brainwashed into believing that the ANC is unbeatable at the polls, that no matter how badly it governs, it will by divine right, as it were, win the coming election and who knows how many thereafter.
In short, the public has no belief in the power of the polls in this democracy because it is intimidated by the ANC's claim to absolute moral ascendancy over every form of political opposition in perpetuity. This claimed moral ascendancy was engineered by the ANC/SACP alliance through its agents in (1) a largely partisan press and (2) the activities of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission, the state funded inquisition designed to becloud the well-documented brutalities and treacheries of the ANC by focussing a blinding searchlight on the excesses of the previous Afrikaner-run regime and those, mainly English-speakers, who failed to effect a change in apartheid policies through legitimate opposition politics.
The TRC, cheered on by an uncritical and sensationalist media (largely government controlled, as during the apartheid era) effectively destroyed the credibility of the National Party. It further seriously compromised, through a farfetched charge of subliminal complicity in apartheid, the Democratic Party and, by making all Afrikaners guilty of socalled apartheid crimes by association, effectively neutered Afrikaner led parties.
This is the background against which the elections of 1999 are to be contested: a failed, discredited and corrupt Black-led government, exempted from moral censure, versus a divided, morally discredited and principally White-led opposition. Thus far, "no contest."
"But what of opposition
Black parties?" one might ask. The fact is that these too have been
largely neutered in the run-up to these crucial elections. As part
of the government of national unity, Dr Buthelezi's IFP has often confused
its supporters by voting with the ANC on a number of populist issues,
including abortion and the new racially discriminatory labour legislation.
Many IFP adherents felt uncomfortable when the SACP publicly welcomed
IFP's entrance into the alliance. Nevertheless, Dr Buthelezi remains
an important figure on the SA political scene.
The PAC, cinderella party of liberation, has no patronage to offer its members, who tend to be resentful individuals who, for whatever reason, have not found favour with the ANC. Finally, the United Democratic Movement, an improbable alliance of political misfits. Bantu Holomisa, former homeland military strongman under the apartheid government, and Roelf Meyer, former National Party secretary-general and its chief negotiator in the countdown to the 1994 elections, have little beside their mutual admiration to offer the electorate. The party can, demonstrably, never achieve effective reform in government since neither of its leaders commands a majority in his own constituency.
That is the line up for the election or was until the arrival on the scene of a unique candidate: the former president of the SA Rugby Football Union (SARFU), Dr Louis Luyt. What makes this larger-than-life man unique is that he enjoys a celebrity status in SA, not least because of the enduring vindictiveness of the print media. That he has courage was evidenced last year when he challenged Nelson Mandela's presiden-tial right to appoint a judicial commission to investigate SARFU's affairs: and emerged victorious in the Pretoria Supreme Court.
His one political commitment succeeded, in 1989, in uniting a deeply divided opposition to the National Party to bring about the formation of the only opposition political party in the present dispensation that can command any credibility at all, the Democratic Party. This achievement commends him to the electorate in two ways: First, he was no friend to the Nationalists, actively advocating the unbanning of the Black liberation parties and the release of Mandela. Second, he established himself as a broker who may be able to achieve again the unification of the opposition parties, this time against an overweening and triumphalist ANC government.
This outcome, though profoundly desired by the public, threatens the incumbents in office of the opposition parties who, for the time being, are engaged in a cannibalistic orgy at which the National Party is the main course. Luyt, in the role of a unifier, has therefore not received the welcome he may have wished. The present proponents would rather be hanged separately than hang together.
The only way forward, in Luyt's view, is for his party, the Federal Alliance, to soak up the undecided voters (more than 20% at last count) and use this leverage, in the post-election parliament, to bring the other parties, all of which would be smaller, to the negotiating table. Luyt reckons that if this strategy can be realised, the combined force of those against the ANC could well bring the ANC/SACP alliance below 50% and might (a long shot at this time) even put the ANC out of government.
It might be argued that the Federal Alliance, having come so late to the proceedings and trying to promote an elusive unity among parties competing not just for seats but also for the livelihoods of their representatives in Parliament, offers very slender hope to the SA voter. What should be borne in mind is that the National Party may well be defunct by the time of the election and that the thousands of voters who have lost trust in it will be looking for a new political home. It is interesting, too, the number of Bloedsappe, the old United Party, who are rallying round Luyt.
The Federal Alliance, which must lose no more time in presenting its policies and leadership to the electorate, may easily give the growing numbers of voters, disillusioned with the ANC's gross incompetence, reason to believe in a last minute change in the course of history. This would not be the first time that a country has chosen to throw out a government which has delivered misery and destitution in pursuit of ideological goals. "It's never too Luyt" might yet become the Federal Alliance slogan.
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I am sorry that subscribers who ordered Jim Peron's controversial new book, Die, The Beloved Country, have had to wait a while for delivery. Publication dates proved later than we thought. The book is already attracting a great deal of attention from booksellers and will I am certain go far towards exploding the fashionable lib/left media myth of a benign ANC ruling over a democratic African paradise. APN is offering individual copies at the special price of R50 for subscribers. Five copies can be bought for R200, ten for R250 and 20 copies for R400. Address on Sub page. |
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