LETTER: DA leaders have lost their way

Your article on the DA, "Why Can’t the DA Capitalise on a Broken ANC?" (Cover Story, June 10-16), has it right. That party’s leadership has lost its way and retreated into a cosy, self-congratulatory clique of whites whose only strength is that they are broadly honest, except about themselves.

Surely the objective of a political party is to obtain votes to win elections so that it can implement its political objectives through control of the country’s government? This seems to have escaped the DA, which has been more focused on trying to win back its Afrikaner, Indian and coloured voters, largely without success.

The voting population in SA is black. The DA’s only appeal to the electoral majority is that it offers hope of an honest government. Never mind that its internal processes involve accusing members it struggles to get along with of unsubstantiated dishonesty, or instituting disciplinary charges in one form or another.

If the DA really wants to be the next government of our beautiful country, it should form a committee that includes Mbali Ntuli and other people of colour, as well as a few whites. It should hold private, in-depth discussions with the many black people who have left the party — Lindiwe Mazibuko, Herman Mashaba, Mmusi Maimane and others — and seriously consider their advice. They know what it means to be black and will have an infinitely better understanding of what the DA should be doing to oust the ANC as the governing party.

The absurdities of the DA’s stance on race — or nonracialism, as Helen Zille and many others insist in the face of reality — must go out the window. Honesty and efficiency in government are not enough to attract the majority of voters; to win, a party must have slogans they can relate to and people of their own in leadership positions too.

Robert Stone
Linden

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