GARETH VAN ONSELEN: On the DA’s changing nature
In wake of the Zille tweets controversy, there would seem to be two paths facing the DA, and the party seems to be struggling to decide which one it should embrace definitively, writes Gareth van Onselen
It is difficult, perhaps even unwise, to properly evaluate the consequences of any given controversy while it still lives. In politics, the task is harder still. The desire, while the creature spasms, is to follow power and how it responds to the beast. When it is dead, it is easier to understand its nature, and the implications of its life for the world in which it lived. Thus, with the agreement between Helen Zille and the DA, it is possible now to change tack and take a broader view of the party: what is the state of the DA today? A tension between principle and pragmatism has underpinned the party’s evolution over the past five years. That sort of conflict is not particular to the DA — any party seeking to grow into new markets is inevitably subject to this kind of test. How it responds — whether it can find in each case some compromise that does not fundamentally undermine or warp its core principles and values — tends to define its prospects. Submit entirely to pragmatism and ...
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