PRETORIA - Mr Roelf Meyer, estranged ally of the former South African president Mr F.W. de Klerk, said yesterday he was forming a new political movement to challenge the ruling ANC and the National Party, which he quit at the weekend.
"I am announcing today the establishment of a New Movement Process (NMP)," he told a news conference in Pretoria, saying he hoped the movement would grow into a party to fight the 1999 elections and change the new South Africa's political landscape.
An architect of South Africa's post apartheid politics of reconciliation, Mr Meyer resigned on Saturday from the former ruling National Party (NP) and from parliament after a dispute with Mr De Klerk over the party's political future.
He played a crucial role in negotiating the peaceful handover of power in 1994 from white rule, but has effectively been sidelined by NP rightwingers who see him as too liberal.