The protracted death of ANC nemesis, the National Party (NP, later the New National Party (NNP)), was an extraordinary part of the ANC's ascent into power. The ANC gained in many ways from the demise of the NP. Its political nemesis that had retained power in the state structures, and in the ranks of the supporters of this opposition party, disappeared. The ANC won some additional elite and popular support. More than this, it was the symbolism of conquering the former oppressor that gave the death of the NP a special place in the ANC's consolidation of political power.

The NP's embrace of the negotiated transition and its subsequent handover of power emphasised some NP pragmatism and conversion of its leadership. Yet, ultimately it was the strain from the ANC's struggle to capture state power that had constituted the relentless pressure that forced the NP first into negotiations and second into inevitable decline. The NP had been artificially propped up by the 1980s National Security Management System (NSMS), its hit squads under the cover of the Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) and a vast military-industrial-NP complex. Its entrance into negotiations cut the umbilical military-political cord, while semblances of popular endorsement relentlessly dissipated. The pending death of the NP was patently evident in the decade from 1996 to 2006, despite the party's stalling tactics. This decade saw the relentless decline of the former apartheid monolith. Its party political presence faded and voter support dissipated. Staggering from one looming demise to the next, the renamed-reinvente d NNP repeatedly metamorphosed. It leapt into alliances first with the DP-Democratic Alliance (DA), and then the ANC. The NNP emerged emaciated and power-stripped from the DA alliance. It barely preserved a shell attractive enough to sweeten its self-sacrificial offer to the ANC. It went from juggernaut of racial engineering and apartheid political power for the five decades from the 1940s to 1980s, to change agent in the 1980s to 1990s, to ultimate party political casualty of early democratisation. This chapter focuses on the decade of its final decline, 1996-2006. The annexure to this chapter sets out the clashing ANC-NP power trajectories from 1911-1994.