It’s time the DA told voters of its policies
Iwent on the radio this week with the DA’s chief whip, John Steenhuisen, on Eusebius McKaiser’s morning talk show. I’ve known McKaiser for more than 12 years and we’ve had our differences, but he is easily the best broadcaster in the country.
Being in his studio was quite an experience for me, a print man. One of the things I learned is that although drawn to politics, I’d be a lousy politician. I can’t talk and I’m too easily persuaded by logic.
The subject was the DA in 2018. Obviously, any year you’re polling less than you did the previous year can’t have been good, but the DA has only itself to blame. It has split on replacing its version of the ANC’s broad-based black economic empowerment and right now doesn’t have any empowerment policy at all.
Steenhuisen said they were working on it. There is an election in five months.
The DA also handled the departure of Patricia de Lille badly and still suffers from the way it treated Helen Zille over her colonialism tweets. Her replacement as leader, Mmusi Maimane, has not been able to stamp his authority on the party.
And as the DA heads towards the election it is business as usual — attacking the government rather than talking its own policies. The results will be the same. Or worse. Recent credible polling has the DA losing ground nationally in 2019. Voters aren’t interested in what a fiasco the ANC is. We already know. We want to know what the DA is offering and it won’t tell us.
I missed the 1994 election but since then I’ve voted DA in the province and, in the nationals, from 1999 it’s been the UDM, ANC, DA and DA. This time I’m waiting for a sign the DA is still there for me.
Steenhuisen suggested they were shooting to take over the national government. I know he has to say that, but actually hearing it makes you question the DA’s sanity. Getting into government for the DA will mean it forms coalitions with either the ANC or the EFF.
They have the Western Cape but hopes of cobbling together something with tiny parties in Gauteng after a May election will depend on its getting more than 40% of the provincial vote, and the polls indicate that’s not going to happen either.
But Gauteng will be close. If the ANC falls below 50%, both the EFF and the DA would be potential partners.
What has the DA done to prepare for a coalition with the ANC in the richest province? Steenhuisen said the DA wasn’t interested in coalitions where it was a junior party.
So it has to be in charge or there’s no coalition at all? Like in the Johannesburg metro? That’s just grotesque. Ask any DA councillor in Johannesburg and they’ll tell you mayor Herman Mashaba (nominally DA) is an EFF prisoner. In Johannesburg, where the street and traffic lights still don’t work and the litter is worse than ever, no tender and no appointment happens without EFF support. Yet the DA would leave Gautengers to the EFF after an election if it can’t be the biggest party in a coalition?
If the DA wants my vote again I want to know it is there for me. Before the election, President Cyril Ramaphosa is likely to put words to the constitutional amendment he needs to make legal the expropriation of land without compensation. He has no choice. His presidency depends on him following the resolutions of the party conference that elected him ANC leader.
My bet is the amendment will be mild. Ramaphosa perfectly understands the threats to investment if it isn’t. It could add something as basic as “fair and equitable compensation could in some cases be zero”. Expropriation legislation already prepared with DA input identifies those cases, yet the party has set its face against any constitutional change. Once you start fiddling where would you stop, asked Steenhuisen.
Really? So it’s okay that Limpopo and the Eastern Cape have the same powers over basic education as the Western Cape? Obviously not, but you’d have to change the constitution to save the kids who are at the mercy of those miserable provinces.
The US constitution’s been amended 27 times.
The DA says the constitution doesn’t need changing; that it already allows for expropriation without compensation. Fine, but as a voter I’m anxious about the climate of uncertainty that exists about how the constitutional question of land is resolved. If Ramaphosa’s amendment merely makes explicit what the DA says is already there, why would they not support it?
It is hard to see the EFF going along with something so unrevolutionary, so Ramaphosa would not have the numbers, without DA support, to pass the amendment and the question, the anxiety, would be left hanging over our politics and our economic prospects.
Zille argued this week that the best way to support Ramaphosa’s reforms was to vote DA. Let’s see what Ramaphosa proposes.
If things get to the point on the land issue where the DA cannot, should Ramaphosa need it, support a mere clarification of something it says is already in the constitution, it will not see my vote for a very long time.
AS THE DA HEADS TOWARDS THE ELECTION IT IS BUSINESS AS USUAL — ATTACKING THE GOVERNMENT RATHER THAN TALKING ITS OWN POLICIES