MAKHUDU SEFARA | DA’s modus operandi is to beat ANC while creeping in the shadows

The DA this week announced a mini reshuffle of what is colloquially referred to as its “shadow cabinet”. If we strip the announcement to its basics, the key thing is that Natasha Mazzone has not impressed as the party’s chief whip, as reported by the Sunday Times early this year. Instead of just firing her, party leader ol’ John Steenhuisen has done what ANC leaders do: reshuffle a cabinet. Create a veneer of change.

At the time of Mazzone’s appointment, Steenhuisen sought to shine a light on her competence: “She helped write the rules of parliament, she is competent and knows what needs to be done and that’s going to help manage a smooth transition in this period (after the resignation of former leader Mmusi Maimane).” Three years later, our “competent” Mazzone is shunted aside to the shadowy world of spooks, as if shadow cabinets aren’t themselves shadowy enough! 

Earlier, Tshwane DA mayor Randall Williams thought to bamboozle officials into entering into a R26bn energy tender without embarking on an open tender process. Williams told officials, including chief operations officer James Murphy and acting city manager Mmaseabata Mutlaneng, that theirs is not to question but to implement his decisions. You’d think the Big Men of the Wantoks of Papua New Guinea, the ones American scholar Francis Fukuyama describes in his book The Origins of Political Order, operated like this. Don’t ask me questions, just implement. Is Williams cultured like this — that once his seniors have taken decisions, the juniors must just implement? The Municipal Finance Management Act, in fact, implores the senior managers to report politicians behaving like him. So, if he didn’t get it from the law, is this the DA culture he’s bringing into the municipality? We must hope not.

You don’t have to wonder why the DA is not going in the right direction. Or why black leaders leave.

Some will excuse his actions as those of someone who didn’t understand basic tenets of public procurement. But that would be a very charitable view. Others will say he was stopped in his tracks while embarking on what seems a corrupt process — which thing makes him no different to the very ANC leaders his party is trying to remove. This brings us back to our initial question — if the DA isn’t behaving like it’s ready to govern, what happens the day after the ANC is removed?

Please indulge me further.

Patricia Kopane, former DA leader in the Free State, kicked off the week with these words: “You are speaking to a free woman today. It’s like I’m from prison,” she said during a short phone call with TimesLIVE after her resignation this week.

“It was bad. After Mmusi left, things were really bad. What I’m trying to say is, it [the DA] wasn’t going in the right direction. You realised, ‘here, this is no longer the movement that I thought I’m joining to do what is right’.”

She repeated similar sentiments on PowerFM and other platforms. You don’t have to wonder why the DA is not going in the right direction. Or why black leaders leave. The real question is how blind must you be to not see when you’re squandering the country’s chance of putting up an alternative to the ANC? And these blind Wantoks of the DA, the ones who can’t be questioned, are the country’s hope after the anticipated demise of the ANC?

The ANC, on the other hand, keeps scoring own goals. It mismanages its own employees’ pensions and must now pay R86m in tranches of R10m per month. Those who run companies know how employees are the first assets of the company. If you don’t take care of them, you become a magnet for crises.

Briefing the nation on the ANC’s nomination process ahead of the party’s elective conference in December, former president Kgalema Motlanthe said 25% of NEC members should be the youth. Yet, you’d think the time for an overhaul is now. He said a few other good things about electing people with integrity and good societal standing and ensuring 50% women representation. But it was disappointing that this 25% youth representation could mean a large majority of the old guard will still stage a bid to return. The ANC doesn’t get that the old people in its midst created what has become its existential crisis. 

As it shoots itself in the foot, though, our opposition is just as bad. They seem a bunch hopeful to ascend the throne not because they’re good, or that they have done their bit to earn voters’ trust, but because citizens are hopefully sufficiently pissed off with the ANC. Let that sink in. The DA is hoping to win because the ANC is bad and not because it has made itself more relevant. This is a defeatist strategy.

It’s a strategy that will help the ANC to still attract a significant number of votes not because it too is getting things right, but because some citizens look at the shambles that is the DA and others and feel it’s better to still vote for the deeply flawed oldest liberation movement than to vote for an opposition that’s not even trying to show that it is ready to govern. That is the greatest shame.

The DA gets away with doing the minimum simply because it doesn’t get much attention. It also comes across as uncomfortable with attention. The focus is, correctly, on the ruling party. The time has come to put all the pretenders to the throne under the spotlight.