LETTERS Righting African wrongs
From Mr Tony Leon, MP Sir: Dr Essop Pahad, MP, Minister in the Presidency, South African Government, has now internationalised his usual domestic cocktail of bilious rhetoric, scurrilous innu- endo and half-baked assertion (Letters, 30 September).
He claims that my party 'has just comfort- ably merged with P.W. Botha's old crowd'. The truth is that the New National party has aligned itself with the Democratic party under my leadership and based on the liberal democratic principles that have, in essence, served the South African opposition cause since Helen Suzman's magnificent lone stand in the 1960s. Not only is Dr Pahad highly economical with the actuante but he is a hyp- ocrite to boot. Dr Pahad himself served in a coalition government with the National party from 1994 to 1997. Furthermore, many of the `old crowd of P.W Botha' are happily nuz- zling up directly to Dr Pahad and Mr Mbeki's ANC, the notorious former foreign minister of apartheid, Mr Pik Botha, being but the most recent and notable example of this tendency. The remnant of P.W. Botha's old crowd' which remain in the South African body politic are responsible for the bully-boy tactics being employed by the Pres- ident's office.
It is also noteworthy that, before my party concluded its consolidation of the opposition some three months ago, President Mbeki's ANC was in hot pursuit of the New National party, offering them every inducement to break their coalition agreement with the Democratic party in the Western Cape and to hand over the province to the ANC, there- by ensuring that the ANC controlled all nine provinces in South Africa. To their credit the New National party resisted.
Dr Pahad also claims that in the late 1970s my party was 'still grappling with the princi- ple of one person, one vote'. In fact, by 1978 our predecessor party had accepted the prin- ciple of universal franchise for every citizen in South Africa, thereby becoming the first, and only, party in the apartheid parliament to have taken what was, then, a very bold step. Ironically, at the same time the ANC did not admit non-Africans into its inner councils and national executive and had no place or time for a Bill of Rights in its consti- tutional thinking.
Tony Leon
Leader of the Official Opposition, Parliament of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa
Previous page
