In a wide-ranging interview on Eusebius on TimesLIVE, former Midvaal mayor Bongani Baloyi explained why he did not vote for his now former party, the DA, in last year’s local government elections.
He was at pains to to tell host Eusebius McKaiser how he started feeling estranged from the DA after policy shifts that did not resonate with his political and personal convictions. In particular, he said, the party abandoning using race as a proxy for disadvantage entrenched his belief that there is a lack of empathy from the DA and its leader, John Steenhuisen, of the lived experiences of black people.
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Baloyi also revealed that he began to feel like a poster child for the party, but was never really “seen” by its leadership. This manifested, he said, in a refusal to engage him intellectually on his views about the party. When asked whether he was implying the DA had “infantilised” him despite his record of leadership and years of service, he answered in the affirmative.
The latter part of the interview focused on why Baloyi joined ActionSA. When pressed on similarities in the political convictions of his new leader, Herman Mashaba, and the politics of DA leaders Helen Zille and Steenhuisen, Baloyi tried to make a case for differences between their politics.
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