GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Inside the battle for the DA’s Gauteng leadership
What is the DA of 2017, exactly? It is busy trying to answer that question as it goes along, but its strategy is often at odds with its tactics
Political parties are a lot like the ocean. There is the open water, the face of the party, subject to nature’s whims. Calm or choppy, this is how the party is perceived. And then, below the surface, there run deep and powerful currents; mighty forces that move megatons of water effortlessly in one direction or another. This is a party’s internal condition, unseen but omnipresent and, often, all-determining. Whatever the environment on the surface, and the for the DA today it is not calm, it pales in comparison to what lurks beneath. There are potent undercurrents at odds with one another, if you sink into the party depths. Now and then one can see evidence of them if you follow the flotsam and jetsam. You get the sense, however, it wouldn’t take much for it all to come together in the perfect storm. One significant tremor on the ocean floor and there is a tsunami in the making.The DA is overextended. The party has, in recent years, been pushed to its absolute organisational limit, ...
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