CAN MMUSI MAIMANE CRACK IT?
Final phase of local government campaign will be vital, writes Natasha Marrian
With less than two weeks to go until the local government elections on Wednesday August 3, political parties are in the home stretch. The polls are being seen as a test of direction for SA’s democracy.
For the Democratic Alliance, the elections represent a crossroads.
In 2006, the DA faced a strategic task: to win the City of Cape Town. A decade later, it is facing a new challenge: to win a metro outside the Western Cape province.
Polls are predicting that the DA could beat the ANC on its home ground in some of its strongholds — metros such as Tshwane, Nelson Mandela Bay and Johannesburg.
But the party itself is cautious.
DA head of elections Jonathan Moakes says the only poll that matters is the one that takes place on August 3 and the Ipsos surveys commissioned by eNCA are a “sideshow”. What matters now is the “ground game”, he says. This refers to whether the party can outmatch the ANC on the ground, close to voters and where it matters most.
But as the official opposition embarks on this challenge, it is also grappling with an internal transformation that began in 2015 with the election of its first black leader, Mmusi Maimane.
He says he is committed to changing the DA to ensure that, in the long run, it is acceptable as an alternative government.
In the short term, however, the polls are being billed as an immediate test for Maimane in terms of his ability to appeal to voters beyond the DA’s traditional base.
Former DA leader Tony Leon, who has been campaigning for the party this year for the first time since 2006, describes the 2016 election as “crunch time”.
He has been canvassing for votes in areas traditionally held by the DA, from Houghton in Gauteng to Chatsworth in KwaZulu Natal.
“The big test for this election is Maimane’s leadership . . . he will be judged after August 3,” Leon says.
Though, in all fairness, the task of winning a metro outside the Western Cape should not fall on the shoulders of one individual, “politics is not fair”, he says.
Leon says it is imperative that the DA grows — if it fails to do so, it will have to do some serious introspection. It will also call
IN NELSON MANDELA BAY, ONE OF THE DA’S TARGETS, INSIDERS SAY A ‘PURGE’ HAS EFFECTIVELY SIDELINED MANY PARTY ACTIVISTS
into question the democratic project in SA as a whole because the country has never been more primed for change, he says.
With the economy in the doldrums, job losses increasing and a sitting president with a damning constitutional court judgment hovering over him, there is a prime opportunity for the opposition to consolidate its support.
Independent political analyst Aubrey Matshiqi concurs that the election is a “referendum” on Maimane’s leadership and that more votes should be easy pickings, given the state of the ANC. It is a referendum on whether he can attract black voters — despite the rise of the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is likely to attract disgruntled ANC supporters.
Matshiqi says if Maimane fails, he is unlikely to retain leadership of the party at its next congress.
It is not going to be easy for the DA to achieve its aims, despite the ANC’s many “own goals”.
Internal polling two weeks ago showed that the DA’s support remained above 35% but below 40% in the three Gauteng metros. The ANC continues to dominate with support at 50% and over in the three metros, according to these polls.
In Nelson Mandela Bay, one of the DA’s targets, insiders say the factional hangover from the party’s congress and a subsequent “purge” has effectively sidelined many activists who were expected to campaign for Maimane’s wingman, Athol Trollip.
His bid to take over the metro is floundering.
The DA had a shaky start to its campaign, with the spotlight being shone on its own internal contradictions on race.
It reversed the expulsion of MP Dianne Kohler Barnard for reposting a racist Facebook post after party leaders feared the expulsion would alienate a large section of its constituency.
The move created perceptions that the party continued to tolerate racists. These intensified after a member, Penny Sparrow, posted a racist diatribe on Facebook. The hard-line stance and then backtracking on Kohler Barnard is seen as evidence of the DA’s continuing identity crisis. Leon’s return to the campaigning ranks is also meant to consolidate and energise the party’s traditional base.
But Maimane says the party is “much clearer” on race and racism, as shown in his inaugural speech as party leader in which he said: “You don’t see me if you don’t see me as black.”
He says he has tried, in this election, to ensure that the party’s mayoral and councillor candidates are representative of the broader population.
But another campaign problem for the party is its selection of Herman Mashaba as its Johannesburg mayoral candidate.
Straight out of the starting blocks, he questioned the need for black economic empowerment and affirmative action, which caused an outcry.
DA Johannesburg regional leader Khume Ramulifho, who did not initially support Mashaba as mayoral candidate, says the candidates do not matter as much as the work the party is doing “on the ground”.
He says the DA is “more open now” and people can more easily relate to its activists.
He believes Johannesburg is still “winnable” as the DA has “out-registered the ANC” in the metro, but is wary of “own goals” or “flops” in the last phase of the campaign through “people making silly comments”.
Its campaigns since 2004 have had a history of this. Matshiqi recalls its poster of Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe holding hands in the 2000s and its “fight back” campaign before that. He says these were frowned upon and viewed as racist and anti-African.
Then in 2009, he says, after the ANC filled two stadiums in its campaign finale, former DA leader Helen Zille said this showed that most people did not have a problem with corruption.
This time around, the use of Nelson Mandela in campaign advertising and the suggestion that he would vote for the DA has been a foot-in-mouth moment for the party. Matshiqi says it is “ludicrous” and counterproductive.
Leon, too, believes the last phase of the campaign is critical. He recollects how in 2004, the ANC rolled out then president Mbeki in the final two weeks in a huge wave of activities which “blindsided” the opposition. “That is what the DA must be concerned about . . . it must sustain its own momentum,” he says.
Matshiqi admits that the polls have been difficult to analyse — there is a distinction between whether the ANC should suffer in the elections and whether it actually will.
That it should suffer is easy to argue, but whether it will is more difficult to predict. Voter turnout will be critical. Leon says getting the DA’s traditional base to the polls on August 3 will be a key factor and Maimane is hard at work creating infrastructure to attract new voters.
As parties head towards the final lap in the 2016 campaign, every step is vital to ensure that their constituencies pitch up to vote.
This is particularly so for Maimane.
“We take nothing for granted, but we are working damned hard,” he says.
MATSHIQI ADMITS THAT THE POLLS HAVE BEEN DIFFICULT TO ANALYSE . . . VOTER TURNOUT WILL BE CRITICAL