Johannesburg - The Democratic Party, heir to South Africa's small but durable liberal tradition, has chalked up three spectacular by-election victories against the once powerful National Party (NP) in the past week, writes Patrick Laurence.
In the latest of these successes the Democratic Party (DP) trounced the former ruling party in a Johannesburg constituency once described by a National Party deputy minister as the "safest NP seat in the country." The DP took nearly 90 per cent of the votes cast and turned a decisive NP majority in the 1995 local government elections into a humiliating defeat.