In Johannesburg Mr Hernus Kriel, the tough-minded Premier of the Western Cape, yesterday emerged as the favourite to succeed Mr F.W. de Klerk as leader of the National Party following Mr De Klerk's decision to retire from active politics.
His experience apart, Mr Kriel (55) has one immense advantage in the manoeuvring for succession: he is the only National Party leader to preside as premier over the affairs of a province.
Under Mr Kriel's leadership the NP succeeded in winning the provincial election in the Western Cape in the April 1994 election, thus enhancing his image as a strong and successful leader.
A graduate of Stellenbosch University and a lawyer by training, Mr Kriel served in Mr De Klerk's cabinet as Minister of Law and Order.
A successor will be chosen on September 9th when a National Party electoral college convenes, Mr De Klerk said yesterday at the press conference at which he announced his decision to resign as NP leader.
Potential rivals for the leadership include Mr Sam de Beer, the party provincial leader in Gauteng, Mr Danie Schutte, his counterpart in KwaZulu-Natal, and, as an outsider, Mr Martinus Van Schalkwyk, the party's executive director.
Mr De Beer was elected to the provincial leadership to replace Mr Roelf Meyer, who was regarded as Mr De Klerk's natural successor until his decision to resign from the NP to form the New Movement Process. Like Mr Schutte, Mr De Beer served in Mr De Klerk's cabinet.
Mr De Beer's chances of succeeding in a contest against Mr Kriel are slight, particularly as he has failed to halt defections from NP ranks to Mr Meyer's new party. Mr Schutte's chances do not appear to be much better.
Mr Van Schalkwyk is projected in the Afrikaans press as an ambitious politician who helped plot the downfall of Mr Meyer in the party. But his ambition is tempered by prudence: he is unlikely to contest the leadership if it means challenging Mr Kriel, in whose shadow he has moved in recent months.
Mr Meyer's fall in the party was marked by the abolition of his position as chairman of a special task group mandated to explore the option of founding a broad-based movement capable of achieving two objectives: serving as a viable opposition to the politically dominant ANC and promoting a "fundamental political realignment" which would break the racial mould of South African politics.
Mr Meyer's primary drive was to woo black voters, whose support he judged to be critical to NP's hopes of regaining power as part of a wider more broadly-based movement.
Mr Kriel, while not opposed in principle to these long-term strategic aims, had a different tactical priority: to strengthen the NP's power base in the Western Cape and its appeal to the majority coloured community in that province.
To a large extent the NP defeated the ANC in the Western Cape because it succeeded in winning a bigger share of the coloured vote, a success which involved playing on coloured fears of blacks. As more and more blacks came to the Western Cape, they were seen as a potential threat to coloureds, many of whom regarded the white-led National Party as a better guardian of their interests than the black-led ANC.
Thus Mr Meyer's fall was a triumph for Mr Kriel's tactical option, one which was widely interpreted as "conservative" and even "racist".
If Mr Kriel is elected as expected on September 9th, his victory will not merely signal a personal triumph but an endorsement of his more cautious approach. It may, however, hasten the decline of the NP outside the Western Cape and turn the once proud National Party - which governed South Africa for 46 years - into a regional party.
If the NP survives and governs the Western Cape more efficiently than the ANC in the rest of South Africa (with the exception of KwaZulu-Natal, where the Inkatha Freedom Party is the majority party) it may appeal to a new generation of voters and begin the slow rise back to its former prominence.