The Democratic Alliance (DA), established to unite South Africa's two main opposition parties and to challenge the political dominance of the African National Congress, collapsed at the weekend less than 18 months after its formation.
The death of the DA was signalled by an announcement by the New National Party (NNP), one of the DA's two main founding parties, that it was withdrawing because DA was "on the road to nowhere". Mr Tony Leon, whose Democratic Party (DP) was the second major party in the alliance, accused the NNP of betraying its own voters who voted for the DA candidates in last December's local government elections.
The NNP withdrawal was preceded by widespread speculation that it had been involved in secret negotiations with the ruling ANC, aimed at co-operation between the two parties.
It was confirmed at the weekend that there had been clandestine discussions between the NNP leader, Mr Martinus Van Schalkwyk, and the ANC national chairman, Mr Mosiuoa Lekota. The withdrawal was announced by Mr Van Schalkwyk, who took over his party's leadership from former President F W de Klerk in 1997.
He presided over the change in the party's name to the New National Party and its disastrous performance in the 1999 general election, which saw its share of the vote fall from 20.5 per cent in the 1994 election to less than 7 per cent in 1999.
The withdrawal came after weeks of bitter infighting with the DP, which increased its share of the vote from 1.74 per cent in 1994 to just under 10 per cent in the 1999. It scored most of its gain at the expense of the NNP. There were two main focal points in squabble: the decision of the DP component of the alliance to suspend and then dismiss the Cape Town mayor, Mr Peter Marais, a notable in the NNP.
Marais was accused of gross extravagance and of dishonestly manipulating the results of a survey on his street-renaming initiative to boost the positive vote.
Marais insisted, with the support of the NNP, that the hearings which led to his sacking were procedurally unfair.
The second focal point in the dispute was an alleged conspiracy by the NNP to secretly boost its membership and thereby wrest control of the DA from Mr Leon's DP faction.
The immediate gains for the ANC of a "co-operative" accord with the NNP would be control of the Western Cape legislature and of the Cape Town city council.
Mr Nelson Mandela, the chief mediator in the Burundi peace process, has called on international donors to double to $880 million the amount of aid they pledged to Burundi. --(AFP)