ON THE WATER
NEELS BLOM: The answer, Mr Maimane, is to break free of collectivism
‘What the DA leader calls liberalism and proposes for a post-ANC country is too banal to inspire hope or action’
DA leader Mmusi Maimane is right about one thing: South Africans are looking to his party for a way out of the quagmire their lives have become under the ANC. This, anyway, is what he told alumni and guests at the Wits School of Governance last Thursday. He is right because, well, the ANC is haemorrhaging support and the DA is the obvious beneficiary, making room for a catholic range of ANC dissidents and everyone else across the ideological spectrum. Maimane said a few other things too, but he said nothing new. His now-hackneyed message is that the DA is against corruption and nationalism and big government, and that small is beautiful, so to paraphrase. That is, the DA’s policy is to be against the ANC. That’s it. Granted, it is the curse of opposition politics, and its blessing, but it is not enough. The narrative is determined by the incumbent; the incumbent is an easy target.Material comforts and status may be motive for corruption, but corruption would not be possible without ...
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