New Uncertainty Gripping South Africa National Party Withdraws From Mandela’s Government

The National Party, the one-time architect of apartheid that was reduced to a marginal role in a black-run administration, said Thursday it is bailing out of Nelson Mandela’s national unity government.

Party leader and former President F.W. de Klerk announced the move a day after he reluctantly voted for a new constitution that further consolidates power in the hands of Mandela’s African National Congress.

Thursday’s move ushers in a new era of uncertainty over South Africa’s fragile government and economy.

In the two years since Mandela’s election as president, the National Party has acted as a counterweight to socialist radicals within the ANC.

Investors responded by running for cover. Shares on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange plunged 2.3 percent - the equivalent of a 125-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average. The South African currency continued its decline to close at 4.51 rands to the dollar.

De Klerk, who has served since 1994 as one of Mandela’s two deputy presidents, said his party’s decision “should be seen as an important step in the growing maturity and normalization of our young democracy.

“We have reached the point where we will be able to exercise greater influence on the economic policies of the government by publicly adopting a vigilant and critical role than by exercising our diminishing influence behind the scenes,” said de Klerk.

The announcement is the latest chapter in the National Party’s extraordinary self-inflicted decline, which dates back to de Klerk’s 1990 decision to release Mandela from a life term in prison.

Faced with the reality that South Africa could not function under international sanctions and censure, de Klerk began dismantling apartheid - a process that brought the ANC to power.