c. 1996 Religion News Service

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (RNS)-A few days after it announced it was withdrawing from the coalition government formed with the African National Congress, the National Party and its leader, F.W. de Klerk, uttered a message central to its new opposition stance: Family values.

What emerged from the collapse of the coalition, religious leaders and political observers here argue, is a potentially much stronger National Party, one that is in a position to appeal to a broader section of the electorate. The NP, the architect of apartheid that dominated South African politics for 44 years, can now concentrate on erasing its image as an oppressor and billing itself as the bearer of Christian values, potentially drawing not only from its traditional white base but also from the majority black community, observers say.”Family values is a growing theme in this country,”said Edward Antonio, a professor of religious studies at Johannesburg’s University of the Witwatersrand.”People here are deeply concerned about growing crime, abortion, the death penalty and pornography. Using these issues, the NP can very well turn itself into a South African Moral Majority.” At the same time, observers say, the National Party will try to paint the African National Congress as a threat to Christian and family values.”The National Party is going to have a good time playing on topics like abortion that the ANC is seen as supporting,”said Albert Nolan, a Catholic theologian at the Institute for Contextual Theology in Johannesburg.”The ANC also has all that past baggage of being communists. Now the NP is in a position of presenting itself as Christian while presenting the ANC as ungodly.” The coalition arrangement-known as the Government of National Unity- was forged by the two parties during negotiations leading up to the first all-race elections in 1994. Meant to last until 1999, it was seen as a transitional arrangement aimed at placating the white minority and business interests nervous about a sudden takeover by an inexperienced ANC.

At the time, the NP, with 82 seats in the National Assembly, insisted on the coalition. But recently an increasingly savvy ANC (with 252 seats) has sidelined the National Party. Party leaders made the decision to withdraw from the government before it was scheduled to expire, betting they would be more effective as a true opposition party.

Aside from its waning influence in the coalition, the National Party was also beginning to see its supporters shift to more conservative parties such as the Freedom Front, a minority party with 7 seats in the National Assembly.

The National Party was seen as a strongly religious party but a religious party of South African whites. Throughout the apartheid era, the party was closely associated with the Dutch Reformed Church, which espoused the separation of the races. Just as the National Party is attempting to present itself as a party of all races, the mainline Dutch Reformed Church itself is undergoing a reformation, abandoning its separationist ideology.

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The ANC has been closely associated with the Communist Party during the half century of its struggle against apartheid. Most here see the ANC as supporting a division of church and state and of abortion rights, and as an opponent of the death penalty-views that run contrary to the National Party’s positions.

By using Christian messages, the National Party could attract an enormous following, according to Antonio, Nolan and others. In recent years South Africa has seen an explosion of black membership in Christian churches. In 1960 about 7 million blacks belonged, but by 1991 that number was up to about 22 million-or some 77 percent of all blacks, according to”Meeting the Future: Christian Leadership in South Africa,”a book edited by Duncan Buchanan and Jurgen Hendriks.

Most of those who have joined churches in the past few years (about 44 percent of all black Christians) have tended to join the non-aligned African Independent Churches that have no links in membership or administrative control to non-African churches, according to the book.”Some of these issues strike very close to home for African Christian churches,”says Antonio.”Recently the Supreme Court ruled that certain pornography can no longer be banned in South Africa, and that is particularly upsetting coming from an African background. Now, whether it is fair or not, people will see the ANC as responsible for that while the NP will be seen as opposing it,”he said.

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Perhaps one of the biggest pools of votes the National Party could tap is the huge Zion Christian Church (ZCC), an African Independent Church with a following of some 3 million.

Traditionally the church (run by one bishop and a small number of advisers) has steered clear of politics, fearing contentious issues would sow dissent among followers. But now may be the time, some argue, for the National Party to make inroads in the church.”There is a real possibility that an undemocratic church such as the ZCC could become an easy catch for the NP,”said Rev. Senamo Molisiwa, the General Secretary of the Council of African Instituted Churches, of which the ZCC is a member.”Although people here have very strong political views, if the ZCC bishop openly endorsed the NP, his opinion carries so much weight that most of the members would go along with him.” Molisiwa says the National Party already has a much better relationship with the church than any other political party, and that the party will be able to use the anti-abortion argument especially as a message to the church.

Still, many argue that the National Party, with a decent following among the Indian community, made up of Muslims and Hindus, would be making a mistake by sounding its Christian message too loudly.

And Nolan says that while the National Party may very well be able to draw from churches such as the ZCC, the chances of reaching other African Independent Churches are very slim.”Most of those members are working class and very sympathetic to the ANC,”Nolan said.”Many even played a part in the struggle against apartheid. I don’t imagine they will budge at all from their support of the ANC.” Others wonder about the history of the National Party, its identification with apartheid and its commitment to change its image.

Archbishop T.W. Ntongana of the Apostolic Methodist Church of South Africa argues that blacks, no matter how religious, will not so easily forget the days when the NP oversaw apartheid.”Much of what happened to us during apartheid was done to us by the Christian government of the National Party,”he said.”Now it will take us a while to forget about that.” But Ntongana added that while most blacks harbor deep resentment toward the National Party and doubt its commitment to change, the party could still draw a huge black vote by presenting itself as standing for Christian and family values. “Miracles do happen you know,”said Ntongana.”They could very well touch on the issues that are important to (the African Independent Churches). If they do it in the right way and show us that they are no longer the party of the past, well then maybe we might come aboard.”

MJP END FLEMING