President of the African National Congress (ANC), Thabo Mbeki, has praised the New National Party (NNP) for its decision to disband.

Writing in ANC Today, on August 13, he called its decision “courageous and far-sighted.”

Applauding its further call on all its members to join the ANC, he said it showed that the party was not putting itself first, nor white interests first “but South Africa first.”

Although admitting that the developments “may have taken those who constitute the black majority by surprise,… they will not say they are amazed. They will say that, finally, these white Africans, whatever their numbers, have shed whatever remained that still tempted them to regard themselves as Europeans, and a European outpost in darkest Africa .”