A strong opposition is an important bulwark in a thriving democracy. But in SA, opposition parties are struggling to attract support, either from unregistered voters or those who are abandoning the ruling ANC. In fact, disaffected ANC voters would rather disengage from the political process entirely than join alternative organisations.
It’s putting SA’s democratic project in dangerous waters.
As the largest opposition party, the DA should be best placed to capitalise on the ANC’s missteps. But critics say it has lost the appetite to grow and is instead looking to consolidate its traditional, largely white base.
“Where is that ambition?” asks former party stalwart Makashule Gana. “There was a time that the DA was bullish, even arrogant, about growth. Now, in 2022, the DA has lost that.”
Gana is the latest leader to leave the DA, announcing his departure last week after 20 years in the party. He joins a long list of black leaders who have jumped ship since the 2019 national election, the first in which the party suffered a drop in support.
While the battle in the DA has been dubbed a “race war”, the truth is that the party has stagnated — whether it works to attract black voters or consolidate its base, it is still widely perceived as a “white party”. This is, perhaps, the result of the yawning credibility gap that remains between the party and large sections of the electorate.
However, DA leader John Steenhuisen tells the FM that the perception of the DA as a “white party” is one that was created — and is pushed — “by the media itself”.
“No black leader ever left the DA who wasn’t first welcomed into the DA. The DA has gone, and will continue to go, to great lengths to attract and grow a diverse leadership base with as many black leaders as possible, including through our young leaders’ programme,” Steenhuisen says.
“We will continue to counter the perception by continuing to do our best to attract and support the development of more and more black leaders in the future, who share our core principles and values of individual liberty, the rule of law, personal responsibility, a culture of accountability, democratic institutions that separate party and state.
“Anyone, of any race group, can adopt these values and any leader, of any race group, is welcome in the DA if they share these values.”
Gana’s departure has been casually brushed aside by DA federal executive chair Helen Zille, who on social media posted a list of black public representatives who remain in the party.
It was a flippant reaction to the departure of someone who committed most of his adult life to the organisation, including as a former leader of the party’s youth wing and member of the Gauteng legislature. Gana had been an ardent DA defender and worked hard to build it on the ground in Gauteng, running a political school that met every second Sunday from 2012 until 2019 to thrash out ideas on ethical leadership and other issues.
He was committed. Exactly the kind of leader an opposition party would want in its ranks.
Voter numbers show a clear retreat from the electoral process. About 13-million of 39-million eligible voters remain unregistered, and less than half of SA’s 26-million registered voters turned out for the 2021 elections
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“The DA can’t focus on consolidating when there is a vacuum in society ... we are at a point in our democracy where the gap between the governed and those governing is too wide — so wide that people are opting out of the democratic project,” Gana says.
The numbers show this to be true.
As elections analyst Dawie Scholtz explains, voter statistics show a clear retreat from the electoral process. First, a whopping 13-million of SA’s voting-age population of 39-million are not registered to vote. That’s fully a third of eligible voters who have chosen to not even register for the political process.
Second, of the 26-million who are registered to vote, only 11.5-million turned out for the 2021 local government election, meaning 14.5-million failed to pitch up on election day.
Taken together, this suggests as many as 27.5-million are disengaging from the political process — from an eligible voting pool of 39-million.
Of those who voted, 5.4-million voted for the ANC, 2.5-million for the DA and 1.2-million for the EFF.
It’s a political marketplace ripe for the plucking — but the DA, in Gana’s view, has lost the appetite to tap it.
DA insiders say there may be truth to this view. Historically, the DA sought to grow its share of black voters by winning them over directly or merging with smaller opposition parties — measures taken with the aim of building a formidable alternative to the ANC.
But something happened in 2019 that threw the DA off course. It lost about 500,000 of its traditional white voters and, despite its efforts, failed to win over the black electorate.
A review of what went wrong culminated in a report that saw the departure of party leader Mmusi Maimane.
Since then, the DA’s approach has been to win back its mainly white base. But the consequence has been a complete stall in momentum. Its ideological debates about pure liberalism, redress, nonracialism and “anti-wokism” have alienated black voters — and if by-election results are anything to go by, it hasn’t won back the votes it lost to the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), for instance, in the 2021 election.
This was the necessary first step to provide a solid foundation on which to grow, not least because our main donors are in this group
— John Steenhuisen
Still, Steenhuisen denies that the DA has chosen consolidation over growth. The party’s strategy, he says, is “to do both”.
“Consolidation and growth are not mutually exclusive,” he says. “After the general election of 2019, it was clear we needed to consolidate our traditional base. This was the necessary first step to provide a solid foundation on which to grow, not least because our main donors are in this group.”
But, he adds emphatically, “the DA is extremely keen to win the support of black voters, both poor and middle-class black voters”.
Steenhuisen argues that a DA-led national government “is in the best interest of both poor and middle-class black voters. In government, our top three priorities will be to deliver jobs, tackle crime, and end poverty. These objectives are obviously and strongly in the best interest of the poor black majority.”
But the perception of the DA as a party in retreat is rife, given its performance in by-elections since the 2021 poll.
It must be said, however, that the political environment has shifted dramatically over the past 15 years. Where small opposition parties were once on the decline, they’ve seen a resurgence of support.
Parties such as the FF+ are benefiting from the DA’s perceived tactical blunders, while the IFP is gaining from the hot mess that is the ANC in KwaZulu-Natal.
New players are also entering the space at breakneck speed. The EFF has been the most successful of these, but at least three new formations are on the horizon to contest the 2024 polls — not least of which is ActionSA, a breakaway from the DA under former Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba.
For a fledgling party, ActionSA outstripped expectations with its 2021 performance. It also became a significant player in coalition arrangements, in Gauteng metros in particular — all three of which are now run by the DA.
Gana is in discussion with former Business Day editor Songezo Zibi about forming a party to contest the 2024 polls.
Zibi, founder of think-tank Rivonia Circle, has outlined his vision for SA in his new book, Manifesto. In it, he suggests that he will contest the polls in two years’ time.
Another initiative on the horizon is an amalgamation of organisations under the All African Alliance Movement, which has reportedly asked former chief justice Mogoeng Mogoeng to stand as its presidential candidate.
At this rate, the 2024 election is likely to be a frenzy of newbies vying for a share of the vote. The big question is whether any of them can capture the imagination of traditional ANC voters — because it is here that the biggest shift in SA’s electoral politics is taking place.
SA’s opposition parties are cannibalising support from each other. But, says Scholtz, they’re failing to tap into the motherlode of unregistered voters or lure disaffected ANC voters. The EFF is seen as too radical and unrealistic by the largely moderate electorate, while the DA is seen as a white, racist party, he says.
We are at a point in our democracy where the gap between the governed and those governing is too wide — so wide that people are opting out of the democratic project
— Makashule Gana
Within this space, what’s next for the DA?
The party’s formal position, that it is both consolidating and targeting growth, doesn’t seem to be yielding tangible results.
From its Gauteng structures, at least, there is a call for the DA to “rebrand” itself — as it did in 2000, when it dropped its former identity as the Democratic Party. But there seems to be some resistance to the idea from its top leaders.
SA has also firmly entered the era of coalition politics, as was made clear in both the 2016 and 2021 local government elections. So coalitions seem a certainty come 2024.
Steenhuisen says the party’s aim for the forthcoming election is to take the “largest share of the vote” to the negotiating table, so it is able to implement its core values where it governs.
It is essential that Steenhuisen, as party leader, delivers on this seemingly impossible task. Should he fail, he may suffer the same fate as Maimane did in 2019. If he doesn’t, the DA will have proven its naysayers correct — that it is still seen as a party designed to protect and maintain white privilege.
Once again, the DA is in an existential bind. And once again it is one of its own making.
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