The DA knows what it needs to do to displace the ANC to become the country’s biggest political party, but it just can’t bring itself to become a black party. It’s too ghastly a thought to even contemplate.
Yeah, it has flirted with the idea, electing Mmusi Maimane as its president and allowing him to lead its troops into the 2019 elections. It was an experiment, to use the DA language, gone horribly wrong. The result was frightening enough for the party to recoil. It flinched back in fear.
The emergence of the Freedom Front Plus (FFP) in the last general election made the possibility of the DA being displaced by a new white force much clearer. The fact that the DA under Maimane was not seeing concomitant growth in the black areas meant it risked losing its loyal, though right-wing, white voters without gaining possible black voters. This would have meant the premature death of the party. So it got rid of Maimane, stopped all pretences of wanting to appeal to the broader, race-conscious black constituency that is necessary for one to push the ANC over the edge.
The resignation this week of Makashule Gana, once the DA’s shining star, demonstrates the above. He resigned on Thursday, uttering words to the effect that the DA is not ably led, lacks ambition and its pronouncements are not supported by its actions. Gana, interviewed by Eusebius McKaiser for TimesLIVE, uses words that must make us afraid for what the future holds. If you think the ANC is messing up our country, Gana’s words mean we should not look to the country’s second biggest political party to take over because, again, the party is focused on fighting the FFP instead of aiming for the Union Buildings.
Due to the disrespect, undermining, bullying and bossy tendencies from the DA leadership, we have decided to resign from the council and as DA card-carrying members.
— Rose Maake and Mike Mokhari, Tshwane councillors
Gana says the DA is preoccupied with consolidating electoral support the party already has. He argues, correctly, that to unseat the ANC, the DA ought to be focused on growth. “There was a time the DA was bullish about growth,” he says. That’s in the past. When McKaiser tells him: “No-one enters politics wanting to only focus on marginal seats and incremental wins. Surely John Steenhuisen seriously imagines that it’s feasible that he could become the next president,” Gana says “there’s what you say you want. And there’s what you do to show you want it.” In his view, Steenhuisen says he wants to become the country’s next president, but his actions shows he wants to fight off the FFP and not the ANC, which is vulnerable going into the 2024 elections with a president ensnared by the Phala Phala saga.
Gana is suave and calculating and would not want to engage in a screaming match with ol’John and his coterie. So he settles for words that steer clear of racism while still alluding to a paucity of strategic thought.
Others though don’t care much for such niceties. Take Tshwane councillors Rose Maake and Mike Mokhari, who said in their resignation letter to the DA last year: “Due to the disrespect, undermining, bullying and bossy tendencies from the DA leadership, we have decided to resign from the council and as DA card-carrying members.”
It is in this party, of course, where a member can call another a “bobbejaan”, as happened in Nelson Mandela Bay. It is in the DA where some leaders will publicly share social media posts of people hankering for the return of PW Botha, the racist apartheid-era former president. Some critics have said the “DNA of the DA is racist” and this is why it struggles to keep black leaders.
Maimane, the party’s first black leader, was simply an experiment gone wrong, we found out after his ejection. But then there is Lindiwe Mazibuko, Herman Mashaba, John Moodey, Bongani Baloyi, Mbali Ntuli and Phumzile van Damme. If we are charitable, we can say the DA is failing to hold on to black talent. But if we are honest, we must tell ol’John that the environment within the DA is making it hard for black leaders to remain in the party. Ol’John might have grade 12 as his highest qualification, but it doesn’t make him stupid. He and other party leaders know what the DA ought to do to increase its appeal among the black population. What Gana calls the disinterest in growth is the disinterest in black people. He can put his head in the sand, as he is wont to do, but this can only prove Gana and many others who left the party right.
We all know change is a painful thing. It certainly must be very painful to change from being a home of right-wing politics, competing with the FFP, to becoming a place where people like Gana, Baloyi, Ntuli, Van Damme and others feel at home. That they don’t is a terrible indictment of a party that, to return to Gana’s words, says one thing but does another.
Granted, the last general election results may have made the DA lose confidence not just in Maimane but its own ability to appeal to a broader constituency of this country and to retreat to its laager, but this is a position that is unhelpful to both the DA and the country. Now it has lost Gana and it’s a shame.
PODCAST | Makashule Gana quits DA and explains why
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