LETTER: DA’s John and Helen show is a fail

Despite the face-saving spin political leaders have put on their respective parties’ performance in the elections, the fact is that most of them did dismally, and none more so than the DA. Given the incompetent and chaotic state of the ANC a vastly increased vote of support for the DA should have been a walk in the park.

Despite their considerable talent and service to our country, the John and Helen show is not working. The DA’s valuable message to the voters of our country may well have resonated more successfully had it been carried by the Maimanes, Mashabas, Mazibukos and Ntulis of this world, and could have resulted in the DA carrying many more metros and municipalities.

The DA’s failure and arrogant stance on coalitions with the ANC has opened up the fearful prospect of the ANC teaming up with the EFF locally and nationally, which will just create more opportunities for state capture, cadre deployment and the application of ideologically ludicrous policy implementation, just for the ANC and EFF’s own self-preserving sake.

If President Cyril Ramaphosa, whose sense of the “smell of victory” in Soweto went badly awry and who rarely means what his smooth-talking tongue says, is really serious about “party leaders working together and setting aside differences” he has it in his power to create a government of national unity and glue together our fractured and fragile political establishments, as Nelson Mandela did in the 1990s.

The DA, whose influence and impact on our political environment are essential to our country’s success, and other realistic and common sense parties, should insist on this unity and generously embrace the proposition that while local government is crucial to effective management of municipalities and metros, it is impotent in the absence of a unified, effective and financially capable central government that provides it with the political policies and financial wherewithal to service our citizens’ most basic needs. They should and must be part of that government.

David Gant, Kenilworth

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