LETTER: DA must exit while the going’s good

I hope President Cyril Ramaphosa remembers the words he uttered when referring to the DA’s stance in the recent budget debate — “don’t interrupt your adversary when he is making a mistake” — when the ANC sinks beneath the increasingly stormy seas of local politics.

Another reading of the situation argues that the DA was trying to persuade the ANC to ditch its now multigenerational policy of tax and spend, since the taxation pips have already squeaked and the ANC’s corrupt, inefficient and criminally wasteful economic policies have essentially bankrupted SA.

The ANC was supported by 40% of those who voted in the most recent election. Recent polls suggest it would now achieve 32%. The DA mistakenly tried to save its GNU senior partner. Now that its advice has been rejected, the DA should leave the GNU before the ANC disintegrates. Better to be adrift in a lifeboat than on the aft deck of the “TitANiC”, trying to play Nearer my God to Thee on a wet violin.

Even big business’s crass advice that the DA should stay in the GNU for market stability was thankfully rejected by the ANC; all that means is that SA will sink in a more or less level position rather than going down bow first.

For the DA, the National Assembly is more important than seats in a hostile cabinet. There is no point worrying about an MK/EFF nexus as this bunch of misfits may never amount to much. Even if they do their nascent nationalistic totalitarianism can be dealt with in due course.

With their original constituency behind them for once, the DA must now use its votes in parliament to pass a motion of no confidence in Ramaphosa and then execute a coup de grace in the almost inevitable subsequent election.

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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