creasingly strained, but COSATU continued to provide political support to
the ANC on the basis of racial solidarity.f? while the PAC and other black
organizations still offered no serious challenge to the ANC. There was also
a process of consolidation among the ANC'S adversaries. After being su-
perseded as the official opposition by the Democratic party in the 1999
elections, the National party gradually withered away. Many of its mem-
bers switched to the Democratic party, and in May 2000 its survivors
formed an alliance with that party, which had moved to the right to be-
come the political home of most Whites, as well as many Coloureds and
Indians; but it had scarcely any African support.f"
Mbeki reaffirmed his belief that sustained and rapid economic growth
was the answer to South Africa's economic problems and that it was to be
achieved through persisting with GEAR. 94 In practice, all that his govern-
ment did, like its predecessor, was to try to streamline the public services,
limit the size of wage increases, privatize the parastatals, and diminish the
power of labor over business. COSATU opposed those efforts, which were
throwing thousands of workers out of their jobs. It also claimed that the
government was doing little to alleviate the poverty of the African masses.