DA will survive, nonracialism might not
The DA did not die last week with the departures of Mmusi Maimane and Herman Mashaba, but did the ideal of nonracialism?
What the DA did was to close ranks. After an expensive and bruising two decades of trying to win black votes, it has conceded failure. It won a larger share of the black vote immediately after its formation in 2000 (4.9%) than it did in 2019 (4%). That is according to the review report done to investigate the causes of its waning electoral fortunes.
In the process of seeking out black votes, which included affirming black leaders, edging towards race-based redress policies and occasionally mounting the racial bandwagon, it lost white votes. This happened, former DA federal council chair Douglas Gibson told SAfm’s Stephen Grootes, because of the “constant harping on racism, which is making white people very tired, very sick of it”, driving them into the arms of the Freedom Front Plus.
The decision, flowing from the panel and endorsed by the federal council, is that the DA will “return to its core values”.
This means the pursuit of individual freedom is its raison détre and all political action will follow from this. Group rights and all forms of nationalism cannot be entertained in this framework. It will no longer be distracted by trying to attract groups of voters on the basis of identity, which is exactly what it had done by appointing a young black man as leader simply because he was black.
The framework can be interpreted widely. It could, as the review suggests it should, acknowledge that people need more than constitutional rights to be free. And, because of that, it is imperative that liberals act to transcend the discrimination, division and inequality that are the legacy of racial oppression, and promote reconciliation.
But it is also a framework that provides permission for those who want to be absolved of the responsibility for injustices of the past. It puts a stop to all that “harping on about race” so we can all just get over it and get on with living.
This is the ambiguity that worked for the DA before its leadership corps began to change complexion. Identifying as “liberal” allowed white, welloff, English-speaking South Africans to feel virtuous, while they increased their power by gathering some Afrikaans speakers, many of them former champions of apartheid and anything but liberal in outlook.
To arrest the electoral decline, the DA wants to return to that state. Perhaps this will bring the white Afrikaans speakers back. The DA, which conducts weekly tracking polls, says the uptick has begun. The project to attract black voters in numbers is off. There are and will be black liberals who share these values and who will join. As Thabo Mbeki said back in 2014 as he tried to prevent the Johnny-come-latelys who never fought against apartheid from taking hold of the ANC: “Better fewer but better.”
It was always questionable whether the party, which had subsumed the remnants of the architects and enforcers of apartheid, could be the authentic champion of “nonracialism”. And while in 2016 the DA’s share of the black vote rose to 5.9% at the height of the Zuma nightmare, it was always a very small share and fell when Cyril Ramaphosa appeared on the scene.
Trust in the DA among black voters had never taken root. The tragedy of last week’s events, when to all appearances a white leader replaced a black one, means there is even less prospect that it ever will.
The ANC, which invented the concept in the 1950s on the basis of the racial solidarity of a tiny handful of white people, moved away from those roots and, under populist pressure from its own ranks, descended into a damaging mindset, championing race above competence. It is this tendency, fuelled by corruption and jobsfor pals, that is responsible for bringing the state to its knees.
SA is reaping the fruits of its terrible past. While a nonracial SA is the best shot it has for increased prosperity, political conditions are not in its favour.
● Paton is writer at large.