On Monday, as Herman Mashaba humped Donald Trump’s leg and Helen Zille exhumed her defence of colonialism, many South Africans wondered aloud if the Democratic Alliance is deliberately trying to lose votes.
Certainly the two tweets in question seemed to be the latest example of the DA’s loose cannon unloading into both feet.
Zille’s tweet was more of the same, but Mashaba’s – a comparison of Donald Trump (labelled “Success”) and Cyril Ramaphosa (“Failure”) – was uniquely mad, citing as fact at least three blatant lies about the American’s “successes”. (One of these, according to Mashaba, was “Zero Violent Demonstrations”. So now we know that the mayor of Johannesburg doesn’t think that the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville counts as violence.)
What the hell is the DA doing?
The answer, of course, is that it’s splitting. It is starting the process of getting divorced over irreconcilable differences.
Mashaba and Zille are losing votes for the DA of Mmusi Maimane. But there are two Democratic Alliances. And the other half – or third or quarter or fifth – is lapping that stuff up.
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