EDITORIAL: Is SA ready for the DA’s ‘modern’ alternative?

Race has dominated SA in the modern era, putting the National Party in power in 1948 and giving the ANC a decisive majority in 1994. Between apartheid and ANC-style nonracialism a third way has offered itself to voters, but its inability to challenge the racial monoliths of our politics has routinely condemned it to the margins; a podium finish but never the big prize.

Which is why the DA’s jamboree at the weekend to sceptics suggests a case of let’s do it again, this time with meaning. Whether this attempt is any more successful than previous iterations remains to be seen. 

DA leader John Steenhuisen, flushed with his election victory over political lightweight Mpho Phalatse, set the tone for the party’s assault on the ANC’s near three-decade rule by making two points: that ANC electoral support will implode below 50% in the 2024 elections, and that SA faces grave danger from the prospect of an ANC-EFF coalition. 

Luckily for the DA and Steenhuisen, substantial differences remain between the ANC and the EFF, but their commonalities are apparent. Events in the Gauteng metros, most recently in Ekurhuleni where the ANC and EFF voted to get a political unknown elevated to the mayoralty, give a taste of the expedience and the total absence of principle at play. Nonracialism and economic good sense, and SA’s future prosperity, could be put at risk. 

There so clearly is another way. One had only to look at the scenes of jubilant and enthused delegates at the DA’s jamboree for tangible hints that the DA is far more “nonracial’’ than the ANC, by all measures more demographically representative of race, class, region and language in SA than the ANC. It has become a truly SA party, modern in its outlook and energised by the future rather than the past. Its detractors see this as a cloak to obscure its alleged protection of white and minority interests. 

Some of the positions put forward at the conference, for example the removal of race as the determining factor in establishing identity, speak of an attempt to strip race of its historical significance, while striking a blow at its more egregious policy manifestations in the form of BEE, preferential procurement and threatened expropriation of land without compensation.  

Keeping Steenhuisen on as leader might seem too counterintuitive by half when the idea is to attract the black vote. But the DA clearly feels its track record, its stated commitment to clean governance and its obvious success in governing the Western Cape, will win over even black voters, tired of ANC mismanagement, corruption and lethargy

But that is to appeal to the rational instinct of the voter, and not necessarily the emotional. In an odd twist, the continued tenure of President Cyril Ramaphosa offers the DA a potential coalition lifeline, for he almost single-handedly holds the line against the tidal wave of economic illiteracy that has overcome the ANC in recent years, driven by the new “young lions” in the national executive.

If the ANC does slip below 50% — which is far from given — good sense would hope under Ramaphosa it would find common ground with the DA, setting aside historic and often quite artificial differences. But the ANC could also play the populist card, inadvertently parroting the EFF’s message and legitimising its leader Julius Malema’s brand of destructive politics. 

It’s easy to get ahead of oneself, with the great flux in SA politics capturing the headlines but not necessarily the true drift of underlying currents. What if the ANC isn’t on its way out anytime soon? Power is one thing, but an important corollary is opposition, and our politics needs it in abundance. By acting as a watchdog, in the courts, in parliament and in a host of different legislatures and councils, the DA can and must continue to perform an invaluable task in holding the ANC to account and curbing its more extravagant and destructive tendencies. It needs to set an example, raise the bar.

The clockwork-like running of the DA’s gathering contrasted with the ANC’s shambolic December conference. The party will be hoping voters draw an obvious conclusion, and that the mind will trump the heart, perhaps for the first time in our politics. Meanwhile, the DA itself needs to communicate clear and viable policy alternatives and behave like a party ready and able to be part of a coalition government.