THE weekend resignation from the National Party of Mr Roelf Meyer - the man who played a pivotal role in negotiating a settlement agreement with the African National Congress - left the once powerful party looking vulnerable to further decline.
The resignation was the direct result of a decision by the party leader, Mr F.W. de Klerk, to disband a party special task team headed by Mr Meyer to examine how to establish a broader movement capable of challenging the ANC. The resignation was tendered and accepted without any outward display of animosity.
Mr Meyer, who committed himself to continuing his drive to help found a new movement outside the National Party, made it clear that he still hoped to draw the party into the process.
"I am not going to exclude myself from further talking to the NP in the process of [moving] towards a new future," he said.
Mr De Klerk responded politely: "My door will be open and the NP will look at any proposals coming from whatever source on their merit."
But Mr Meyer, party leader in the Johannesburg based province of Gauteng, left no doubt that he thought the National Party was unsuitable as a vehicle for establishing a new broader movement with substantial black support. He told the party's provincial council in his farewell speech that reformists in the party had been rebutted in last few weeks.
Refusing to put a gloss on the disbandment of his special team - "I was sacked" - Mr Meyer referred to elements in the party who had been opposed to his reform drive. While he did not name them, no one was in doubt that they included Mr Hernus Kriel, the party leader in the Western Cape and a strong protagonist of consolidating white and "coloured" support in preference to a drive to win black support.
The Western Cape, where "coloureds" outnumber blacks, was the only province where the National Party won a majority of votes in the 1994 general and provincial elections.
Mr Meyer's resignation was part of a broader pattern of departure from the party by reformists, including Mr Leon Wessels, a co representative with Mr Meyer at the settlement negotiations with the ANC, and the former Foreign Minister, Mr Pik Botha, who was opposed to the National Party's decision last year to withdraw from President Mandela's Government of National Unity.
Collectively, analysts observed at the weekend, these resignations left the party in the control of conservatives who have no hope of garnering black support. Mr De Klerk - who won acclaim as a bold reformist in 1990 - sided with the conservatives when he disbanded Mr Meyer's task team.
Mr R.W. Johnson, director of the Helen Suzman Foundation, offered a reason for Mr De Klerk's decision: stung by accusations from Afrikaner notables - including the political philosopher, Dr Hermann Giliomee, and the newspaper editor Mr Ebbe Domisse - that he has "surrendered Afrikaner sovereignty" - Mr De Klerk wants to prove them wrong, even if it means adopting a more conservative line.
Dr Johnson's observation coincided with a decision by the party to suspend ties with Archbishop's Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in protest at its alleged bias. But, as the influential Afrikaans newspaper Beeid was quick to point out, there is little future in post apartheid South Africa for a party based on appeal to white and "coloured" communities.