So the DA, the official opposition, is in pain. Its leader, Mmusi Maimane, a sincere and good man, failed to get his candidate, Athol Trollip, elected as chair of the party’s federal council, its highest decision-making body, this past weekend.
Instead, as widely predicted, the former party leader, Western Cape premier, Cape Town mayor and opposition leader in parliament, Helen Zille, came out from one of the shortest political retirements on record to stand for the job and win it. Easily.
As a direct result of the weekend’s events, Joburg mayor Herman Mashaba resigned from the party and will step down as mayor, following agreement with Maimane, at the end of November. This leaves the DA’s hold on the biggest metropolitan government in the country hanging by a mere thread.
Maimane was there to accompany Mashaba on Monday morning as he announced his resignation. Ostensibly, he was going because “the DA has taken a resolution at this weekend’s federal council meeting to question the role of the party in the governance relationship I find myself in [Mashaba runs Joburg with the tacit support of the EFF] and the way in which we communicate on that relationship”.
Indeed, resolution 11 of the federal council meeting says exactly that, but while Mashaba might have felt the ground beginning to shift beneath his feet with that resolution, his recent public behaviour has been erratic even for a relatively eccentric man like him. He has been playing the race card, criticising his own (white) councillors for daring to suggest that perhaps people in the areas they represent need some attention and suggesting that the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has somehow taken control of the DA.
Like much else in politics, it is about creating distraction. Nonetheless Maimane, whose idea it was that Mashaba become mayor, held Mashaba’s arm above his head like a prizefighter’s, calling him a “hero” after his criticisms of, and resignation from, the party Maimane leads. What’s going on?
There is a correction happening in the party. When Zille left the leadership to Maimane, whom she handpicked, she was happy to remain Western Cape premier. It kept her busy and relevant. Then one fatal day in early 2017 she set off a huge “debate” or argument by tweeting to her million-plus followers observations that looked kindly on the legacy of colonialism in Singapore.
The more she fought back, the more embarrassed Maimane became. He quickly distanced himself from the tweets and then, after many months, reached an agreement with her that effectively ostracised her from the party machinery other than her job as premier. In the meantime, Maimane set about creating the party, or its message, on his own terms.
His great problem has been an inability to take the DA’s largely conservative white and coloured base with him as he tries to lure black urban voters into the DA tent. There was a good result in the 2016 local government elections, when Jacob Zuma was still running the national government. That was followed by a singularly poor performance in the May 2019 general elections when Zuma was longer a factor.
Yet instead of crafting a different policy message for different times, and to counter those of the ANC (BEE) and of the EFF (socialist hyper-nationalism), he continued to beat the corruption drum despite clear evidence that bodies like the Zondo commission and the inquiry into the SA Revenue Service were making a real dent in the criminality he was talking about.
One of the other resolutions the DA made this weekend was to call an early congress. This would be an elective gathering. Maimane has called for it, but in political parties it is paid-up members who get to vote, and after Zille’s convincing victory this past weekend, his chances of holding onto the leadership, or of gathering around him more supporters in top positions, look slim.
The congress won’t happen this year. But it will have to happen early next year because the next local government elections are in 2021. If Maimane is going to be voted out of the leadership, it has to happen soon.
And then what? There isn’t an obvious successor. Mashaba may be self-aggrandising and vainglorious but he has many positive qualities that would attract black and white voters. Too late now though. Probably. Dependable and calm Western Cape premier Alan Winde would rather jump into a vat of boiling oil than become party leader. Trollip couldn’t do it.
Zille? Surely not. Surely too much has changed? Zuma has gone. Patricia de Lille has gone. Great swathes of white supporters have gone over to the Freedom Front Plus.
You have to be a streetfighter to lead the DA. That is why Tony Leon and Zille succeeded, and may be why Maimane is struggling.
Still, a decision will have to be made. Actually, lots of them. My favourite resolution from this weekend was no 3: “That a policy review committee be established, convened by the newly elected chair of the federal council, to undertake a comprehensive policy review of the party’s positions on a number of key matters, most particularly on economic justice and jobs. The process followed by the committee must involve consultation with party structures and should be discussed by provincial councils. He or she must cause a policy conference to be convened before the federal congress.”
The DA has to compose an economic policy that goes beyond its absolutely useless “opportunity economy” slogan and actively intervenes to make our market economy more democratic. The more democratic, the less race becomes a factor. The resolution above requires of Zille that she forms a policy review committee (I would include some foreign development economists and invite local trade unionists to join), consults widely with the “structures” and holds a policy conference before an (elective) federal congress.
That’s a lot to be getting on with and she will have her work cut out. But if anyone can get through the work, Zille can. In the meantime, Maimane’s lionising of Mashaba on Monday notwithstanding, he has to decide if he still wants the job of leader or if he shares Mashaba’s more dismal view of the party’s future. If he does want to keep it he needs to declare so, again, loud and clear.
And then he and Zille have to sit down, or be forced to sit down, and hammer out a believable partnership ahead of the coming election rounds. “I will stay in my lane,” says Zille, indicating she is comfortable playing second fiddle. For his part Maimane will find, with Zille replacing James Selfe, that money will slowly begin to trickle back into the party. The IRR cannot be part of that. In action and deed they have shifted to a place no SA party with a liberal heart should go.
Perhaps they should start chaperoned talks. Let notes be taken. Is there room on either side for movement? Are they not liberals, after all, before anything else? Ryan Coetzee, the former party strategist and leader of the panel Maimane asked to looking into the failure in the May elections, had this to say as he surveyed the wreckage and the hope of the past few days: “Here is a list of things one can be all at the same time: liberal, in favour of redress, opposed to race-based policy, passionate about vanquishing poverty, pro competitive markets, understanding of the emotional impact of SA’s past. The DA should be all of those things.”
Of course it should. Do Zille and Maimane have the courage to be all those things together?
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