Apartheid's final surrender

The Mail and Guardian reported recently that "the party that built apartheid and turned South Africa into a pariah state completed its march to oblivion on Saturday by deciding to merge with its one-time nemesis, the African National Congress. The New National Party, heir of a mighty movement that jailed Nelson Mandela and built nuclear bombs, said its shrunken membership would dissolve and fight future elections under the banner of the black ruling party. A meeting of the NNP's federal council proposed that members join the ANC, a bitterly ironic twist for a party founded almost a century ago to promote the interests of white Afrikaners and keep blacks from power.Officials are to retain their party membership and parliamentary and local government seats as a transitional arrangement until September 2005. 'Individual members of the NNP would be encouraged to join the ANC in their respective localities. The NNP will in future contest elections under the banner of the ANC,' the NNP said in a statement".