The party of Malan, Strijdom, Verwoerd and P W Botha - rock-solid defenders of the volk all - has finally given up the ghost. It ended with a whimper at the weekend. For a gargantuan monster that had terrorised the populace for decades, the end was an anticlimax. Its victims would probably have wished for something more befitting or dramatic, like death by firing squad.
It's been a slow, clumsy and ponderous death for the Nats. The faithful merely assembled to administer the last rites and to torch the funeral pyre. There were no reminiscences. Nobody even had the inclination or the lungs for a spirited rendition of "Sarie Marais" or "Die Lied van Jong Suid-Afrika", if only for old times' sake. A lone voice apparently shouted amandla, an attempt to get into the swing of new things, I suppose. It stuck in the craw. They must have found it embarrassing even to hang around longer than necessary. The corpse has been lying around awhile; the stench overpowering because the party died years ago. Verwoerd took the script with him to the grave. The death of Verwoerd also heralded the eventual death of the party. Only the patronage of the state kept it alive - and dangerous. Once out of power, it was only a matter of time before it went belly-up. It was naive for it to have thought its victims would keep it in business.
There is obviously no cause to mourn the death of so despicable an aberration. But there's reason to be concerned about the future of our democracy. Fewer hands hold most of the levers of power. Everyone, including the Nat honchos so eager to bury their party, wants a piece of the action. But politics is not simply about the pursuit of power. It is primarily about the promotion of ideas. The contesting of ideas encourages democracy to bloom. Too much power in fewer hands breeds arrogance, then tyranny.
We should continue to make a case for more voices, irrespective of the views expressed. That Voltairean injunction should be our guiding principle.
It was perhaps fortuitous that the NNP went kaput as the SACP tentatively began thinking out aloud about life outside the tripartite alliance. Perhaps the communists find it difficult to maintain a comradely spirit with their Nat partners in the alliance. The ANC has become something of a political hermaphrodite. The SACP should be encouraged to stick its toe outside the tent. We should pray for its total liberation.
Time to boast: Stephen Cranston won the award for best weekly column for his Investor's Notebook column in the Citadel Words on Money awards last week. He won the award in 2003 and was the first-ever winner of the overall Citadel award in 2000. Well done, Stephen.
