DA has integrity

In all the kerfuffles about the DA recently, Mmusi Maimane’s Sunday Times article seems to have gone unnoticed. In it, Maimane stated the platform for the party’s election positioning — one of a drive for national unity.

If I read it correctly, that signals the DA has sorted out its issues with its liberal heritage and correctly avoided the temptation to pick up the race card other parties have been playing to further their agendas.

It seems the DA is returning to traditional liberal values. It’s a brave choice because it’s clearly not the popular one — but it’s also the only positioning that could actually work. Well done.

The next challenge is to have that message heard and understood by the populace, in rural areas too. I hope the DA is also making plans to get into rural areas scarred by the VBS Mutual Bank theft, to drive home its unique selling point: “We don’t steal money.” On that note, the DA comes across as a party of integrity with people committed to a nonracial SA. But surely they could make better use of spin?

The DA has been lambasted for the Patricia de Lille debacle as though it’s a sign of its inability to govern. From my perspective, since De Lille refuses to answer straight questions about whether she sent the incriminating text messages, this is rather a case of the DA standing up for its zero-tolerance-of-corruption policy.

“Spin” doesn’t always mean lies: it can simply mean “re-orientating” an unfair public perception to more accurately represent the truth.

Dino Galetti Sandton