Pay attention to the DA’s shortcomings
How democratic is the DA? The question is rarely, if ever, asked. Reporters and commentators obsess over every aspect of the ANC’s internal workings and its attitude to democracy, largely ignoring the DA.
The reason is obvious. The ANC governs nationally and no one expects the DA to do this any time soon. But this gives the official opposition a free pass.
The DA’s image of itself — as the party that takes democracy more seriously than its opponents and is in some senses its guardian — is rarely questioned simply because the people who shape opinion are looking the other way, towards the governing party.
This is a problem for two reasons. First, the DA is hardly unimportant. It is the secondbiggest party in SA and governs one province and half of the metropolitan areas. Second, last week’s DA congress suggests that it may not be quite as democratic as it claims to be.
The main reason for wondering about the DA and democracy has been widely reported — the “De Lille resolution” — although it reportedly won’t be applied to the person who inspired it, Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille. The DA has inserted a clause in its constitution that says any party member elected to an executive position in government can be recalled by the party. If it tells a public office holder to resign, they must do this within 48 hours or face expulsion from the party. They will be allowed to make representations to the DA.
This does something of which the DA regularly accuses the governing party — it confuses party and state. People elected to government positions are state officials: they are responsible to voters and to the elected forums that represent them, not to a party.
Like many in the ANC, the DA seems to think that the fact that office holders are elected on a party ticket means they work for the party.
They don’t — they work for everyone. The DA’s frequent complaint that Luthuli House tells elected representatives what to do seems to be directed not at the principle of the party controlling the state but at which party is doing it.
A second reason is barely noticed and may seem trivial. It isn’t. This is the way in which the DA announces leadership elections. The public is not told how many votes each candidate received; we are told only who won. We are not even told who the losing candidates were. To discover that, you have to go back to the announcement of who was nominated.
Why should this matter? Democrats are meant to believe that we need an informed public: democracy needs an active citizenry that can act in its own interests only if it is well informed. How many people voted for which candidate is important information to which we are entitled, whether we are DA supporters, opponents or neither.
The DA’s refusal to share the information also shows a particular attitude to the public — that its internal workings are none of our business unless it chooses to share them with us.
This is precisely the view some DA leaders took when they justified the party’s opposition (since dropped) to laws forcing political parties to say who funds them. It is, they said, a voluntary association (much like a football club) and so does not have to tell the public where it gets its money.
A political party, however, is not like other voluntary associations. Unlike them, it may govern, as the DA does in some important parts of the country. Even when a party does not govern, people elected on its ticket sit on committees that make rules and laws. Who funds it is important to the public since it may show whether decisions are influenced by funders.
Nor is this all the public is entitled to know about parties. Since they are contenders for public office, voters are entitled to know everything about them so that they can make an informed choice at the polls. The claim that a party is a private club is, therefore, deeply undemocratic.
Democracy places the citizen at the centre. The DA leaders who hold this view place themselves and their party at the centre and relegate citizens to the margins.
These democratic shortcomings do not seem to worry those within the DA who see themselves as guardians of liberalism. As the congress showed, they are more interested in fighting race and gender quotas, which, judging by the congress’s elections, are a problem for them because they might end the current pattern in which white men are elected to almost all important positions. But they should worry citizens, DA supporters and opponents alike.
Democracy is most likely to strengthen when we hold smaller parties to the same standards as those we apply to the party that governs nationally. When, as it has done over the past few days, the DA acts in a way that weakens democracy, citizens need to tell it that it has erred.
VOTERS ARE ENTITLED TO KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM … THE CLAIM THAT A PARTY IS A PRIVATE CLUB IS, THEREFORE, DEEPLY UNDEMOCRATIC
Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.