TOM EATON | Stop DA bus, I want to get off at the rational centre

The headline was startling. John Steenhuisen, the Sunday Times was claiming, would “work with Cyril” in a coalition government, but not DD Mabuza.

In our intensely partisan and Balkanised political set-up it was fairly dramatic stuff, but Steenhuisen’s party seemed to absorb the blow without its usual shrillness.

Perhaps it didn’t think the piece deserved a bigger reaction, as DA stalwart Ghaleb Cachalia took to social media to insist Steenhuisen’s words had been twisted to make it sound as if he was willing to bend the knee to the ANC. (The paper’s op-ed editor has released the audio clips from the interview, so we can judge for ourselves.)

Either way, Steenhuisen was at pains in the interview to talk about something called “the rational centre”, which I assume is a mall that doesn’t have a Pick n Pay and a Checkers right next door to each other. But former DA leader Mmusi Maimane was having none of it.

In an elegantly dismissive tweet-stream on Sunday, he insisted that by opening itself to the possibility of working with the entirely corrupted ANC, the DA “are officially out of opposition and are now themselves a faction of the ANC. It’s an admission of defeat. A recognition that they can’t grow.”

It was fun to read, and I appreciated the chutzpah of a politician who oversaw a decline in his party accusing its new leadership of not being able to grow it. But for all its fire and potency, and the good points it raised, it was only half right.

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It is true the DA has given up on its ambitions of national government, a decision it announced when it fired Maimane and elected Steenhuisen as his replacement. I mean, yes, it’s possible that a white, English-speaking man may one day be president of a democratic South Africa, perhaps because he’s swum out to a sandbar and called it “Democratic South Africa”, and named himself president, but even the most ardent “classical liberals” must admit it’s simply not a realistic prospect any time soon.

For Maimane, who believed the DA could govern, this would look like a defeat. But I’m not sure the DA still thinks in those hyperbolic terms. Instead, I think its chief priority is simply surviving long enough to somehow profit from the inevitable destruction of the ANC. And if that requires a staged retreat — shoring up territory it knows it must hold, and turning its attention to the second front that has been opened on its far right flank by gatvol voters scampering FF+-wards — then that is what it will do as the ANC does the rest.

It was fun to read and I appreciated the chutzpah of a politician who oversaw a decline in his party accusing its new leadership of not being able to grow it.

In 2018, a Stellenbosch academic named Leon Schreiber published a book called Coalition Country: South Africa After the ANC, outlining various scenarios in which a weakened ANC has to enter into coalitions with smaller parties. A few months later, Schreiber was scooped up by the DA and is now a shadow minister. Clearly the party understands that the era of coalition government is coming and wants experts who can help navigate that transition.

What is less certain, however, is whether the ANC will enter that era with the DA.

After all, if the ANC is required to form a coalition government in 2024, it will mean it has failed to gain a majority. Such a defeat would probably have been visible from a long way out, with this year’s local government election being a canary in the electoral coal mine.

If President Cyril Ramaphosa hasn’t been recalled by 2024, he will be the second the ANC goes under 50% nationally. And once he goes, it’s women and children first. If a President Ace Magashule ever came to power, it would be for life. And don’t blame the Zuptas: that playbook was written by former president Thabo Mbeki, signed with a kiss and posted to Harare 20 years ago.

In short: coalition government will only happen if Ramaphosa stays on. And yet if coalition government is required, how can he?

It’s a nasty paradox, which is why Steenhuisen’s options are so limited. And while he can grab a few headlines and sound stern, what he can’t do is be honest.

He can’t fire up a Zoom meeting with the ANC’s NEC, drop to his knees and cry out: “For the love of God, the rand and what little infrastructure we have left, please don’t ditch Cyril!”

He can’t do that because it would make him sound like what he (and all of us) are: passengers on a bus being driven by a drunken nihilist who’s still deciding whether to park it and let us off, or drive it off the road into a veld fire and call it radical economic transformation.