Post-apartheid
During the 1994 all-race elections, many Coloured people voted for the white National Party, which had formerly oppressed them. The National Party recast itself as the New National Party, partly to woo non-White voters. This political alliance, often befuddling to outsiders, has sometimes been explained in terms of the common Afrikaans language of White and Coloured New National Party members, opposition to affirmative action programmes that might give preference to non-Coloured Black people, or old privileges (e.g., municipal jobs) that Coloured people feared giving up under African National Congress leadership.
Since then, Coloured identity politics has continued to be important in the Western Cape, particularly for opposition parties. They see the Western Cape, in particular, as a place where they might gain ground against the dominant African National Congress. The Democratic Alliance wooed away some former New National Party voters and won considerable Coloured support. The New National Party collapsed in the 2004 elections. Coloured support aided the Democratic Alliance's victory in the 2006 Cape Town municipal elections.
Patricia de Lille, leader of the Independent Democrats, does not use the label Coloured to describe herself but would be considered a Coloured person by many. The Independent Democrats party has sought the Coloured vote and gained significant ground in the municipal and local elections in 2006, particularly in districts with heavily Coloured constituencies in the Western Cape. The firebrand Peter Marais (formerly a provincial leader of the New National Party) has also sought to portray his New Labour Party as the political voice for Coloured people.
There has been substantial Coloured support for and membership in the African National Congress before, during and after the apartheid era: Ebrahim Rasool (previously Western Cape premier), Dipuo Peters, Beatrice Marshoff, Manne Dipico, John Schuurman and Allan Hendrickse have been noteworthy Coloured politicians affiliated with the African National Congress. The Democratic Alliance won control over the Western Cape during the 2009 National and Provincial Elections and has since brokered an alliance with the Independent Democrats. The Congress has had some success in winning Coloured votes, particularly among labour-affiliated and middle-class Coloured voters. Some Coloureds express distrust of the ANC with the comment, "not white enough under apartheid, and not black enough under the ANC." In the 2004 election, voter apathy was high in historically Coloured areas.
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