Democratic Party Demokratiese Party
Abbreviation	DP
First Leaders	Zach de Beer Denis Worrall Wynand Malan
Last Leader	Tony Leon
Founded	1989 (1989)
Dissolved	24 June 2000 (2000-06-24)
Merger of	PFP NRP Independent Party
Succeeded by	Democratic Alliance
Headquarters	Cape Town Western Cape
Ideology	Liberalism Conservative liberalism Anti-apartheid
Political position	Centre-right
International affiliation	Liberal International
Colours	Blue
Slogan	"Fight Back"
Politics of South Africa Political parties Elections

TheDemocratic Party (DP;Afrikaans:Demokratiese Party) was a South African political party that was the forerunner of theDemocratic Alliance. Although the Democratic Party name dates from 1989, the party existed under other labels throughout theapartheid years, when it was the Parliamentary opposition to the rulingNational Party's policies.

TheProgressive Federal Party had formed the main parliamentary opposition to theApartheid regime in the whites-only House of Assembly since 1977. But the party was ousted as the official opposition in the 1987 election and pushed into third place behind the far-rightConservative Party, which opposed even the limited reforms the NP had recently implemented. This led to great disillusionment amongst South Africa's white liberal community, and some questioned the merit of continuing to serve in the apartheid parliament. By 1989, they had regrouped, however, and aimed to strengthen the white parliamentary resistance to apartheid; the Progressive Federal Party merged with two smaller reform-minded parties, theIndependent Party and the National Democratic Movement (NDM), to become the Democratic Party. The new party had three co-leaders from each of the parties that had entered the merger:Zach de Beer,Denis Worrall andWynand Malan. De Beer, from the dominant PFP-faction, eventually became the sole leader, however.

The DP showed its political strength by winning a local by-election in the mostly AfrikanerLinden suburb in Johannesburg, described as a "shock upset" that showed the NP that voters were ready for change.^[1] It went on to win 34 seats in the1989 election, up from 20 before the vote.

In 1990, the NP shifted its race policies towards the centre.President F. W. de Klerk released Nelson Mandela and announced the unbanning of struggle organisations such as theAfrican National Congress, while embracing liberal democracy and opening up its membership to all races. This shift narrowed the political space available to the DP, and the party saw itself further marginalized during theCodesa negotiations which were dominated by the ANC and NP. In the1994 election, the party won a disappointing 7 seats in the democratic parliament.

Following the 1994 election,Tony Leon became the party's sole leader.

Under Leon's leadership, the DP would become the most active and influential opposition party in the National Assembly, despite its small size. A mid-term review in 1997 found that the party's seven members of parliament had asked 50% as many parliamentary questions as the members of the National Party, despite being more than ten times smaller. In 1998, political columnist Howard Barrell wrote that "Seven DP MPs make their National Party counterparts look like 80 feather dusters".^[2] The DP won its first local by-election in a traditional NP constituency in March 1997, and this was followed by several others.

By 1998, the party was growing its support base significantly, and after the1999 election, the DP, under the leadership of Leon, became Official Opposition to the ANC-led government, winning 38 seats. In theWestern Cape province, it achieved kingmaker status and became the junior partner in a governing coalition with the renamedNew National Party (NNP).

This electoral success came at a price, however. The party's new supporters largely came from the National Party and consisted overwhelmingly of ethnic minorities, mainly whites.^[3][4] The DP had contested the 1999 election with a highly negative campaign under the controversial slogan "Fight Back",^[4][3][5] and many, such as ANC PresidentThabo Mbeki, were of the view that it was "the transformation of the DP into a right wing political party"^[6] that allowed it to capture these voters. Leon and other party leaders dismissed this, however, maintaining that the new supporters would not lead the DP to change its principles. Instead, he said the new recruits would have to ascribe to the liberal-democratic values to which the DP had historically adhered.^[7]

To unify national opposition against the ANC government, the DP and the NNP began planning a merger of the two parties. Accordingly, they formed theDemocratic Alliance (DA) in June 2000. The merger agreement was short-lived, with the NNP leaving the alliance in 2001, but the DA closed ranks and retained the new creation, establishing it at all levels of government from 2003 onwards.

• Contributions to liberal theory
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Wikimedia Commons has media related toDemocratic Party (South Africa).

• Democratic Alliance website

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