Mmusi Maimane and his brains trust are quietly rewriting the DA’s policies on racial redress and the economy ahead of the party’s 2018 congress. They plan to entrench greater racial diversity in all DA structures — particularly at leadership level — as party policy. These are crucial parts of the DA’s strategy for 2019: if there is one thing that keeps tripping up the party in its quest to become credible to black voters, it is its ambiguous stance on race. The Helen Zille tweets, the Penny Sparrow and Diane Kohler-Barnard social media sagas and the party’s spectacular split and flip-flop over employment equity legislation in 2013 have time and again, to use Maimane’s words, "interrupted the conversation" on reconciliation it has been trying to hold with the nation.With the ANC having largely abandoned nonracialism – a concept it invented in the 1950s and championed – the opportunity now exists for another political party to occupy this space. Maimane aims to be the champion of the ...
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