TOM EATON | Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake

The DA's urgent appeal to Western countries to monitor our upcoming elections has shocked and confused many, implying, as it does, an inexplicable belief that the ANC has the organisational skill to rouse itself from its current state, slowly mashing a custard doughnut into its own face, to steal an entire election.

I understand the DA’s anxiety, at least in theory. The ANC is the only political party in South Africa that has helped to steal a national election and if Thabo Mbeki was willing to cancel democracy in Zimbabwe just to do a friend a favour, I can imagine some people are worried about what the current lot might do to stay attached to the Treasury teat.

I remain unconvinced our ruling cabal of cabbages has either the skill or the ambition required to steal an election in just over two months from now. It doesn’t even have the past to draw on: the old Mugabe-Mbeki Democracy-B-Gone™ routine might have worked in Zimbabwe, but beating up large numbers of opposition voters in this country is an altogether tougher ask. Most DA voters have ADT on speed dial and only a fool would take on the EFF’s fighters after the years they’ve spent honing their skills on parliamentary ushers and the rubbish bins outside Clicks stores.

Zuma’s MK party knows it doesn’t have the muscle to steal the election, but it understands every blow it lands on the IEC is a step closer to a scenario in which it could make serious inroads: the chaos following a disrupted, disputed poll

Mostly, however, the ANC would have had to hollow out and discredit the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) years ago and this clearly hasn’t happened, perhaps because the eternally underfunded IEC didn’t have enough cash floating around to attract the average crew of extraction cadres.

Thanks to decades of excellent and principled work by its staff, the reputation of the IEC is close to impeccable. When the inevitable controversies happen in May, whether they be shortages of ballot papers or 100 votes found in a dumpster, an overwhelming majority of voters will see them as anomalies rather than evidence of a corrupt or broken system.

No wonder Jacob Zuma’s new plan to stay out of prison — sorry, I mean party — has been working so hard to turn potential voters against the IEC and why it got a special mention with the ANC in the DA’s request for help from abroad. Zuma’s MK party knows it doesn’t have the muscle to steal the election, but it understands every blow it lands on the IEC is a step closer to a scenario in which it could make serious inroads: the chaos following a disrupted, disputed poll.

Which brings me to the other reason I’m slightly baffled by the DA’s appeal.

It goes without saying that having elections monitored by respected, accredited observers is always a good thing. I also don’t think it’s terribly controversial to suggest some Western countries — say, Denmark or Finland — do democracy very well and should always be welcomed to come to keep an eye on things.

Where things get tricky, however, is when political parties start asking ideological allies to help safeguard polls, thereby implying there aren’t already legitimate observers lined up and, more damagingly, that they don’t entirely trust the IEC to run a free and fair election.

Again, the DA would no doubt point to the inherent logic of its appeal. It would explain to critics it wants democracy to prevail in May and so it has asked for help from countries which mostly believe in democratic principles and best practice. (I would suggest the jury is still out on the US, but that’s not quite accurate as the criminal trials of one of the two presidential candidates haven’t started yet.)

But I wonder if the DA has understood the door it’s opened for the ANC, the EFF and perhaps even Zuma’s crowd. Had the DA simply made the right noises about trusting in democracy and the IEC or asking to see the list of monitors accredited by the IEC, its political opponents would have had to do the same or risk looking like wreckers.

By hand-picking a list of its favourite arbiters, however, and by including on that list the US and UK, reviled by a great many South Africans as colonisers and war criminals, the DA has instead opened the door to its opponents to do exactly the same — and perhaps more.

Last week if the ANC or EFF had appealed to Russia, China or Venezuela to make sure the polls in May were free and fair, it would have been a scandal — and rightly so, with allegations of treason and looming election fraud flung around.

If they did it today, it would look petty and transparent — but to millions of voters it would also feel somehow fair, as if a sly attempt by the DA to invite the invaders of Afghanistan and Iraq and the enablers of the catastrophe in Gaza had been cleverly rebuffed by the heroic vanguard of the international Left.

In other words, the DA has unintentionally invited the ANC, EFF and MK to join it in wrenching the election away from the calm professionalism of the IEC and flinging it into the nightmarish contested spaces of virulent social media, demagoguery and geopolitical skulduggery.

If only the DA had listened to Napoleon’s advice: never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.