Marthinus Van Schalkwyk - Political Career

Political Career

Van Schalkwyk was the leader of the New National Party from its inception on 8 September 1997 until its dissolution on 9 April 2005. He also served as Premier of the Western Cape and Leader of the Opposition in the Parliament of South Africa.

Informally, he is referred to by his detractors as kortbroek (lit. "short pants"), a name he earned because of his boyish appearance and lack of political experience when compared to his predecessor, F.W. de Klerk. A significant part of the white Afrikaner population views him as a weak politician who destroyed the old National Party in order to rescue his own political skin by marrying the NNP with its old opposition, the ruling ANC. He was however one of the few nationalist politicians who remained active in politics after the decline of the National Party and took a high profile like FW de Klerk did with the coming into being of the Rainbow Nation in 1994.

In August 2004 it was announced that Van Schalkwyk would become a member of the ANC, and that the NNP would be disbanded in 2005 or 2006 at the latest. This decision was finalized on 9 April 2005, when the party's federal committee overwhelmingly endorsed its regional committees' recommendation to disband the party as soon as municipal election results were finalised.

Speaking after the decision to dissolve the party, van Schalkwyk said, "What we do today is part of our contribution to finally ending the division of the South African soul." He went on to apologize for the way the National Party (the forerunner to the NNP) had "brought suffering through a system grounded in injustice."

"What we do today is liberating," he went on. "It empowers us to throw off the yoke of history and to accept a new and important burden - the shared responsibility for building a South Africa that belongs to all who live in it."

On 29 April 2004, following the overwhelming victory of the African National Congress in the national parliamentary elections, Van Schalkwyk was appointed by President Thabo Mbeki as Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism for South Africa. He has held this position until May 2009, when a new Ministry of Water and Environmental Affairs was created and he became Minister of Tourism.