PETER BRUCE: Right now, does the DA have an economic policy?

Oh what joy. Shaun Abrahams, the national director of public prosecutions (NDPP), has gone, dispatched this morning with a stinging judgment delivered by the Constitutional Court, which found his appointment by former president Jacob Zuma unconstitutional (surprise!). President Cyril Ramaphosa has 90 days in which to replace him. I’d be amazed if he takes a week. There’ll be much more to say about this in the coming days, especially if Ramaphosa makes a quick decision. It surely has to be former NDPP Vusi Pikoli. Here, meanwhile, is a summary of the judgment. It makes great reading. 

Meanwhile the cockfight in the DA goes on. Today even. This time the issue is race. Should the party follow an economic empowerment path that specifically uplifts blacks, or should it find an economic policy that uplifts blacks but by default and not design?

The row, such as it is, in the party seems to have begun with an article in Business Day by the DA’s relatively new head of policy, Gwen Ngwenya. “There is now a commitment in the DA to an alternative empowerment framework,” she said in her piece. Here it is. Western Cape premier and former DA leader Helen Zille called the article “important”. Some sharp-eyed editor at News24 picked up the quote I’ve just used from it and obviously phoned Ngwenya, resulting in this piece, where she appears to confirm that party policy has actually changed.

Then the row really erupted, with former DA national spokesperson Phumzile van Damme tweeting: “Fake news. Reports that the DA’s Federal Council resolved to abandon BEE as part of its economic policy are untrue. The DA position (on) BBBEE is clear. We believe that race remains a proxy for disadvantage in SA today. We support — fully — the intent and spirit of BEE.” Federal Council chair James Selfe seemed to agree with Van Damme.

By then, though, the party’s leading liberals had piled in behind Ngwenya. “Great news,” tweeted MP Gavin Davis, “an important step forward.”

“An exciting development,” tweeted Michael Cardo.

Something had to be done.

First, Ngwenya and Selfe issued a joint statement basically denying any disagreement between them on empowerment and a few days later Mmusi Maimane, who had appeared to be missing in action while all this was going on, published his weekly newsletter, Bokamoso, in which he tried (and, I thought, failed) to be convincing that the party was not split on black empowerment. Count how many times he mentions the ANC’s BEE policies in here and when he ends with “Our alternative empowerment policy ideas will be discussed and tabled at the next federal executive. This is an ongoing discussion,” does he mean that, until a new economic empowerment policy has been crafted and agreed, that the DA, for the moment, doesn’t have one at all?

I only ask because a real discussion and a real alternative to ANC policies should take a while and party members should surely be consulted. Anyway, here’s Maimane’s piece.

If I’m not mistaken the DA’s Federal Council meets again this weekend, and this issue will probably top the agenda. Because just as Maimane and Selfe thought the waters might have settled a bit, a little war broke out again this morning.

It started with the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), where Ngwenya used to work, posting an extremely rude tweet about the DA. I was quite taken aback by it to which Van Damme quickly replied: “What’s it got to do with you? We’re a political party currently in the process of reviewing our policies … take several seats.”

Well, OK then. The IRR, you see, is sort of the coffee house of the DA’s liberal wing. This piece from Adriaan Basson wonderfully captures the insides of the DA at the moment and it goes to the heart of the cockfight.

There’s a flat-out racial slant to the row that doesn’t quite come to the fore in Basson’s piece though. Provincial leaders in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal have rebelled against the very idea of removing a specific reference to black people in the party’s new economic policy, whatever it may be. That’s understandable. That’s how they do their politics and it is hard to see how Maimane is going to straddle this divide going into an election in around seven or eight months’ time.

The DA always trots out its mostly black provincial leaders when it is demonstrating just how diverse its leadership is but provincial leaders are at the moment not even allowed to participate in the selection of candidates for parliament. They are underpowered. This issue may be their big moment.

A brief history of change

Briefly, the DA hired, earlier this year, a new head of policy. Her name is Gwen Ngwenya. She used to work at the Institute for Race Relations and is fiercely liberal in her politics. The policy she has changed, not surprisingly, is the DA’s version of Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment (BBBEE). Actually, she hasn’t changed it. She’s demolished it. It’s gone. Fuera ...

I have to say I never knew the DA had a black empowerment policy. Ngwenya wrote a 150-page policy document for a party executive meeting a few weeks ago and the change, her change, was accepted.

No it wasn’t, says DA Eastern Cape chair Ncaba Bangca. It was merely a thought, to be discussed further.

Yes it was, says liberal DA MP Gavin Davis. And so on. Even DA Federal Council chair James Selfe, who normally knows everything, took issue with Ngwenya’s initial view (in an opinion piece in Business Day last week) that policy had actually and irrevocably changed. The two then issued a joint statement about it in which, basically, Ngwenya, also an MP, got what she wanted.

This is all interesting because it goes to the heart of the contradictions in the DA. Is it a liberal party or an ANC-lite? I just cannot see how Mmusi Maimane, the DA leader, elected to chase black votes and to be an explicitly African face for the party, can now change horses. On the stump he directly appeals to blacks as blacks. At the same time, his policy head has produced a policy that makes no appeal to colour.

Rather it assumes, as I understand the debate thus far, that because black people by far make up the South African majority, any growth or housing or health or social policy will automatically benefit blacks the most because blacks are the most.

I have to say I rather like the ring of that. It’s sort of a new Democratic Economy. The liberals in the DA like it too. The Africanists are going to hate it. What will Maimane do?

It is true that BBBEE has been a flop. It has made almost no difference in people’s lives bar a fortunate few who are selected to do deals or are given tenders. Ngwenya proposes replacing BBBEE and all its impossible scoring with a range of measures, and mentions a paper containing a proposal for a new “social contributory pension, funded through property taxes, as an alternative to BBBEE.”

I have no idea what that means. Ngwenya is an academic so she will have to do some more explaining in small words. And either this is a real change of policy or it isn’t. In a newsletter yesterday afternoon Maimane seemed to be saying no, it hasn’t changed. Yet. “Our alternative empowerment policy ideas will be discussed and tabled at the next federal executive,” he wrote. “This is an ongoing discussion.” Well it either is or it isn’t

Inviting Ngwenya into parliament and giving her this job is a little like throwing a Molotov cocktail into a crowded room of sleepy folk. She is tough and uncompromising, which may or may not be a good thing for a political party. More than anyone I’ve seen join the ranks of the DA recently, she gets the liberal heart of it. And I think she’s a more fundamentally radical liberal than her peer MPs who think they’re liberals. She reminds me a little of Margaret Thatcher, a lady not for turning. She will become DA party leader one day.

Meanwhile, there will be a huge row inside the party now about how explicitly candidates can promise pro-black policies that are deliberately designed to uplift black people and black businesses. Having just about escaped the debilitating saga of Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, a fight now about core principles is the last thing Maimane needs.

But that is what he has got now. There is no fudging this, though Selfe tried when he and Ngwenya spoke together after the weekend. The fact is that Ngwenya represents the liberal purist wing of the party and she has given it a major victory over the Africanists or social democrats, who include Maimane.

What it does do for the party is make its outline sharper. It revives its distinction. And a recent effort to encourage a breakaway liberal DA MP into a new party was designed to do just that. So this policy change, if it is that, will be popular in the old base. Hermanus will like it. So will some suburbs in Johannesburg

The electoral politics of it are more complicated. Does the DA concentrate now on consolidating again in the Cape, with De Lille, it hopes, quieted? Does it leave Johannesburg to the ANC now that Zuma has gone?

Perhaps it’ll all come down to the money. DA donors, you see, they like Maimane. They want an actual alternative to the ANC now. I doubt they give a toss about ideological purity. This ain’t over yet.