TWO of South Africa's smaller political parties have declined in the politest of language an offer from President Mandela to join the government of national unity.
A common concern prompted Mr Tony Leon's Democratic Party and Mr Stanley Mogoba's Pan Africanist Congress to reject what Mr Leon labelled Mr Mandela's "generous" offer fear of being swallowed by ruling the African National Congress.
In the watershed April 1994 election, the two parties, known by their initials as the DP and PAC, won less than 4 per cent of the vote between them, against the ANC's 63 per cent.
Mr Mandela, eschewing models of coalition government where minority partners are permitted to voice their opposition publicly, sought to restrict criticism of government policy to debate within the cabinet. As Mr Leon said. "The DP would have been bound by cabinet decisions and collective cabinet responsibility and thus unable to play the role of a vigorous, probing critical opposition."
Mr Mandela referred to the merger between Mr Robert Mugabe's Zanu and Mr Joshua Nkomo's Zapu in his discussions with Mr Leon and Dr Mogoba, a precedent which increased their anxieties. Zapu, which won nearly 20 per cent of the vote in Zimbabwe's independence election, disappeared after Mr Nkomo became a deputy president in Mr Mugabe's government.
As the PAC deputy president, Mr Motsoko Pheko, told The Irish Times, the mandate given to the PAC at its conference last December was to build the party and to seek greater inter party co-operation to help resolve South Africa's problems, not to preside over PAC absorption into the ANC.
Mr F.W. de Klerk's National Party, which withdrew from the government of national unity last May, welcomed the rejection of the Mr Mandela's offer by the two minuscule parties. It said the ANC regarded multi party government as "a method of silencing the voices of opposition parties" rather than a means of promoting inter party co-operation.
The NP has just launched its own campaign to create a broad based opposition movement of like minded parties.
Mr Leon, however, sees the NP as source of DP votes rather than a potential opposition partner. "We anticipate further and dramatic growth, especially in light of the attrition which is visible in the ranks of the DP." The ideological gap between the NP and the PAC, a radical offshoot of the ANC, appears to be too large for them to find common ground.