By Moshoeshoe Monare
The New National Party, which banned the African National Congress and other parties more than half a century ago, is now banned by history.
Speaking at the 83th anniversary of the South African Communist Party, chairperson Blade Nzimande, said history, and not the ANC alliance, placed the NNP where it belonged - in the dustbin.
Ironically, the ANC has offered to be the "funeral undertaker" and bury the NNP with dignity rather than a pauper's burial.
The NNP's Federal Council decided over the weekend that members can join the ANC until the NNP fades away.
Anne Nash, the NNP Eastern Cape leader who attended the Federal Council meeting, says: "(Defence Minister) Mosioua Lekota told us there are options in the ANC, and one of them is dual membership."
ANC secretary-general Kgalema Motlanthe is dismissive and non-committal.
"Anyone who wants to join the ANC can join at branch level. The ANC's constitution does not allow dual membership. There are no exceptions" says Motlanthe.
Dissidents in the NNP, such as Johann Swanepoel in the Free State, says the NNP should have been left to die a natural death rather than begging for water in the political wilderness.
"We should have disbanded on our own and let the people choose where they would want to go," he says, adding that the Free State will decide the way forward at Saturday's head council meeting.
Roelf Meyer, a former Nat and its chief negotiator at the World Trade Centre talks, echoes Swanepoel's views that they should have closed shop years ago.
"It was quite clear it will come to an end. One could not expect the party of apartheid to stay on in the new South Africa unless it has transformed itself. It was inevitable that it will fade away. I recommended in 1997 that it should transform. Failing to convince the leadership, I left," says Meyer.
Given the NNP's dismal performance in the April elections, the party had no choice but to shut down, he adds.
The Nats got 257 434 votes in the elections, beating spoilt votes by a narrow margin. But the symptoms pointing to their certain death have been showing in their electoral performance since 1994 - from 20 percent in the 1994 elections to 6,87 percent in 1999 and less than two percent this year.
But Nash says the first move to co-operate with the ANC was hatched in her office in Bisho when she was still deputy speaker in Makhenkensi Stofile's provincial government in 1999.
"This was because of the way we co- operated with the ANC in the province, and we felt that it was necessary for this kind of co-operation everywhere, but the environment was not the same then," says Nash.
The Eastern Cape proposal was not the first attempt to reshape, restructure, reposition or reorganise the NNP.
The party has undergone a metamorphosis - from a giant apartheid party, which won 11 non-democratic elections successively since 1948, to begging for a lifeline from the ANC 56 years later.
Sampie Terreblanche, a Cape Town-based political observer, told The Star immediately after the April elections that death was certain for the NNP.
The NNP was punished for designing and dismantling apartheid. It was also punished by different races for different reasons. Blacks still see it as as an apartheid party, while Western Cape coloureds punished the party for getting into bed with the ANC.
Whites, who joined the Democratic Alliance or right-wing parties like the Freedom Front, felt the worst betrayal by what they had seen as a political home.
Neutralising the party further in the Western Cape was the birth last year of the the Independent Democrats, a party that appealed to the coloured working class.
However, the NNP has never been the same since democracy dawned in SA.
In 1997, after the departure of Meyer, F W de Klerk stepped down. Meyer formed the United Democratic Movement with Bantu Holomisa, which snatched the NNP support base, mainly in Gauteng.
NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk put up a brave face. But Sheila Camerer, then an NNP executive, admitted that the loss of NNP strongholds in Gauteng was due to "political disasters".
This began when De Klerk pulled out of the government of national unity two years after serving in the Mandela government. He described it as repositioning the party "to become a robust official opposition".
They were even weaker outside the government of national unity, forcing the NNP to marry the Democratic Party in 1999 to form a Democratic Alliance elections pact, which dwelled on white fears.
The marriage failed and the NNP felt the pinch of the alliance break-up, with more members jumping to Tony Leon's DA.
They then turned to the ANC, which obliged because it was denied the right to govern Western Cape despite a 42 percent result.
The bargain chip was the Cape Town mayoralty for the ANC and premiership for NNP. This was cemented when Van Schalkwyk accepted a cabinet position this year, in what the DA terms the last betrayal.
"This has got nothing to do with political principle. He (Van Schalkwyk) destroyed his party and abandoned his voters in return for a cabinet position," says Helen Zille, the DA's spokesperson. The political terrain is now very clear in SA: it is the ANC versus the DA."
And Nash says she does not see the existence of the NNP beyond 2009.
This is certainly the end of the party of JBM Hertzog, DF Malan, HF Verwoerd, BJ Vorster, GJ Strijdom and PW Botha.
The birth (and death) of the Nats
Born National Party, nicknamed Nats, christened New National Party.
1914: Founded by J B M Hertzog.
1924: Win elections in a Labour Party pact.
1934: National Party and South African Party fuse to form the United Party.
1948: D F Malan breaks away, forming the "purified" NP that first wins elections in 1948.
1982: Splinter group breaks away to form the Conservative Party.
1983: NP introduces the tricameral parliament, which still excludes blacks.
1989: NNP announces changes, including the release of prisoners like Walter Sisulu and the PAC's Jaftha Masemola.
1990: Nelson Mandela, SA's most famous prisoner, is released by President de Klerk.
1994: First democratic elections see the NNP out of power and serving in Mandela's Government of National Unity (GNU).
1996: De Klerk leads the NP out of the GNU.
1997: De Klerk steps down and Roelf Meyer resigns. Marthinus van Schalkwyk takes over.
1998: Renamed New National Party.
1999: NNP merges with the Democratic Party to form the Democratic Alliance.
2001: After the failed marriage with the DP, the NNP tries its luck with the ANC.
2004: Following co-operation with the ANC, Van Schalkwyk is given a cabinet post. Four months later the NNP Federal Council urges members to join the ANC.