wiseMusings

The Democratic Alliance is the official opposition in South Africa. It also has had a certain perception over the years as a “white party”, owing to its membership of white men within its ranks initially.
It has not quite been able to shake off these claims over the years, even when they have included more and more black people within their ranks, even voting in a black Federal leader in Mmusi Maimane.

Whenever black people in this country speak about white privilege and certain white South Africans’ sheer inability to recognise it in themselves, the DA almost always crops up. That’s been the nexus problem when speaking to people about their problems with the Democratic Alliance. It’s not necessarily the party itself, it’s not always those within the party, but it is the stink that the DA carries. It is what the DA represents, even when it tries hard to make a clean break with its past. And that is what the electorate see in their mind’s eye when they think about the DA.

I have feared writing about the DA for a long time. I did not fear writing about the DA because I feared some sort of punishment or rebuke within the party (I am but a mere activist within the KZN Youth wing, and a member of their Student Organisation in UKZN Pietermaritzburg. I have little to no platform, never mind clout).

My fear came from how it would look to those who read my writings. How would they reconcile the political commentator who points out the DA’s failings with the activist who hands out pamphlets and speaks about #OneSAForAll?
Because politics is what happens in a public setting, and while I can criticise a party and still support it, I do not know if that will translate to people on the ground. Hence I did not write a planned article dissecting their election manifesto because of the perceived conflict of interest.

I also fear writing about the DA because I can’t not show my biases. I cannot write about the big three parties, that being the DA, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the African National Congress (ANC) without expressing my preference for the DA. There are many good things about the DA, some of those being its fairly recent understanding of the injustices of racism and colonialism, and their attempts to reflect this in their policies. I can also speak about how I see diversity (not just in the sense of race but in every sense) being a priority within the DA structures, with activists and members reflecting all ages, all races, all sexual orientations, all class backgrounds and every such identity markers. I could speak to its attempt (along with the EFF) to bring about accountability to South Africa under the disastrous presidency of Jacob Zuma. I could bring up the fact that the DA brought about a youth-based political project to South African politics, with other parties piggybacking off the work of the DA in that regard.
This, and many more elements, is what keeps me within the DA. This is why I campaign for the DA on social media and in actual life. This is why I voted for the DA in the national elections a few days ago.

Of course, the DA also has weaknesses. Some of those weaknesses are from within. Some of those weaknesses are more external. But every one of those weaknesses contributed to the decline of the DA’s support for the first time since 1994.
From receiving 22.23% of the vote in 2014, the DA received 20.77% in the 2019 elections.
Why is this? We cannot discount the role of the Patricia de Lille saga in influencing this decline. After all, de Lille is a well-beloved figure in our body politic, and while her new party isn’t battle-tested as yet, her brand was enough to amass a GOOD 0.40% portion of the national vote.
We would be amiss not to acknowledge the resurgence of the ANC, as Cyril Ramaphosa won the ANC presidency in late 2017 and the presidency of the republic a few months after. This was the shot in the arm that the ruling party needed to push through these elections. As soon as Cyril won at Nasrec, the DA’s fate was sealed.

But what I attribute as the biggest source of the DA’s decline
is their perennial paralysis towards race relations and white privilege.
Mmusi Maimane once spoke about the DA embarking on a new direction that would be focused on redistribution and acknowledged the role of race in where most South Africans land in the poverty line. Some DA voters (and even some within the party) chastised him, even questioning his liberal credentials. To them, the DA was the home of a more classical liberalism. If the DA became a party that pointed out that one is not free to act as they want if they’re poor and without resources to pull themselves up, then the DA would somehow not be liberal anymore (for some strange reason?). And so began a battle within the DA – and outside of it – for the mantle of ‘liberal’.

Personally, the new direction of the DA is what secured my eventual membership within the party. I identify as a social liberal, and while I stand for the importance of the individual and self-determination, we can’t just pretend that society is equal and that we all begin from the same starting line. There are inequalities, there is poverty, and there is a cycle of these social injustices manifesting themselves generationally. If you, as a DA-led government, give many individuals within that community an opportunity to improve their lives, suddenly you have a more equal society.
This work is not easy, sure. I don’t profess to have all the answers. But my opinion is informed enough to boldly say that fixing inequality and providing redress is not incompatible with liberalism. Not at all.

However, many within the DA disagree. Thus began the Cold War within the party that has significantly weakened it. This conflict has even made it into newspapers when Maimane once uttered the words “white privilege” and was rebuked from others within the party because of it. [This does not even take into account those who broke away from the DA and voted for parties such as the Capitalist Party of South Africa (ZACP) and FF Plus (VF+).]

Does the DA have a crisis of leadership under Maimane’s rule? Depends on which way you look.

You can see Maimane’s bravery in taking a traditionally conservative, “white party” and transforming it into a truly inclusive party that got hundreds of votes even in rural Kwa-Zulu Natal. Whichever way one looks at it, one cannot doubt his boldness. He took the party and shaped it in his image, just like Helen Zille and Tony Leon had done before him. That is why the “Mmusi-is-a-puppet” talk never held water with me. Mmusi’s tenure as party leader hasn’t been easy-sailing, and yes, he has had to make concessions because he is a leader of a party that is now a broad church of liberalism. Concessions made by a leader don’t necessarily make said leader a puppet. They make him a leader who wants a united party.

The other lens of Mmusi’s reign as DA leader can be judged purely on the results he’s shown: the first DA leader to record a decline for the party post-democracy by using populist methods and wanting to get into power. It is fact, after all. However, this view is reductionist and does not properly examine the state of the DA in the last year. When there is a contestation of ideas within the party you lead (add to that some ugly wars with a certain segment of the DA faithful), is it fair to look at the bottom line, and not the methods that actively sabotaged that project?

There is yet another view of Mmusi: Mmusi the ideologically confused puppet who finds a backbone when his white handlers aren’t around to police him. This view is, quite frankly, rubbish. However, perception is politics. Politics is perception. Let the music play.

The question seems to be how the DA can regroup and reflect on their mistakes. Certain people within the DA have noted that we might have insulted the right-leaning loyalists who then voted FF+ and/or ZACP, and so we must work to reconcile and bring them back home. I disagree.

If the DA’s aim is to remain as an opposition party, then it is viable for them to return to the centre-right and lure back some of their lost support. But if the DA ever wants to be in power (and why shouldn’t they? Occupying the Union Buildings is the best way to bring about change on your terms), then they should deepen the project of redress.
The parameters of this will vary from each person, but going forward, I want to see a DA that uses its power and influence to shift the ball towards redistribution and acknowledging the true effects of the apartheid government. It created a highly unequal country – the most unequal country in the world – and if the DA will huddle back into its comfort zone of economic conservatism, they will have wasted the best political party shift since the ANC of old and its Mandela-led vision.

But a DA that takes inequality seriously is a DA that will have to do something unprecedented: it will have to, from top to bottom, recognise white privilege and its effects on making South Africa what it is. Because of the DA’s affinity to some white South Africans – those who haven’t jumped ship – they are in prime position to change minds, shift ideologies and trigger a mass transition into true social change. But of course, that would mean some within the DA would themselves have to confront white privilege.
Do I see that happening? Quite frankly, no. But it’s what I would like to see happening.

Regardless of whatever direction the DA ends up taking, it will have a progressive element to it. It will forever have voices that speak to the electorate everyday, and know what they expect of the DA going forward (cue the diversity I spoke about earlier). These voices have entered the very fabric of the DA, and are part of the party’s very DNA. These voices will stay long after Mmusi is gone (whether that’s tomorrow or five years from now).

These voices will influence – with due political decorum – the true position of South Africa, and they will win out.
It is these voices that I campaign for. It is these voices that I represent when I wear my DA t-shirt. It is these voices that are the future of the DA.