YOUNG LEADERS SYMBOLISE FUTURE
The DA spotted the need for a young leadership much earlier than the ANC and appointed Maimane
THE ANC Youth League has finally admitted to the damaging effect President Jacob Zuma’s continued stay at the helm of the ruling party has had.
This embarrassing decline at the recent municipal polls has seen it losing major metros, including SA’s capital, the City of Tshwane, the City of Joburg and Nelson Mandela Bay.
The ANC only secured an average of 53% of the vote nationwide.
While still holding on to their vow to defend Zuma and absolving him from blame for the bad showing, the young lions are now calling for an early elective conference.
They are also demanding the inclusion of the youth in the ANC top six leadership to enforce regeneration within the party.
This call for infusion of young blood by the league could also be part of the realisation that the two major opposition parties – the DA and the EFF – that have dislodged the ANC in major cities, are led by young people.
EFF president Julius Malema and DA leader Mmusi Maimane are 35 and 36, respectively.
While South Africans have seen Malema grow through the ranks of the ANC over the years to become a formidable political player and leader of the opposition, very few expected to see Maimane rising so rapidly.
When Maimane ran as the DA’s mayoral candidate in 2011, very few people took him seriously, except those in the DA who knew him intimately.
This was because he was unknown and the country’s unshakable intercity politics led some to view him as a “rented black” by a white political party.
In his book, Mmusi Maimane, Prophet or puppet?, Sunday Times deputy editor S’thembiso Msomi details how well Maimane performed in his 2011 interview when he applied as one of the mayoral candidates for Johannesburg. Apparently, he was so good in the interviews that members of the electoral college contacted then leader of DA, Helen Zille, and said, “we got a guy here who we think is excellent and you have to talk to him about his future career”, Msomi writes. And so began Maimane’s meteoric rise in South African politics. From being the leader of the official opposition in the city to being a national spokesperson in one year, and then a premier candidate two years later. It was clear that the DA had big plans for the skilled orator from Dobsonville, Soweto.
Maimane’s elevation appears to have been a calculated move by the DA to fight against the stigma of being viewed as the vanguard of white interests.
But this did not shield Maimane from scrutiny. He was viewed as a tool used by the DA to woo black voters from ANC strongholds.
In the book, Msomi wonders whether Maimane is what the country has been longing for to move into a more nonracial society or he is just a black person used to entice black voters into a white party.
Msomi navigates Maimane’s early life growing up in the township through his childhood friends, including how he was cajoled to join the DA and how he finally gave in.
He follows Maimane’s journey as he replaced Lindiwe Mazibuko as leader of the DA caucus in parliament before he took over the party.
One criticism levelled at Maimane has been his association with Liberty Church and how this discredited him as the leader of a liberal political formation.
His polite attitude towards Zuma, despite building his political campaign around his shortcomings and failure, is due to his upbringing, Msomi suggests.
Msomi’s book details how the young impressionable pastor’s interest in active politics was also closely linked to what was happening within the ANC, including the fall of former president Thabo Mbeki and the rise of Zuma. While Msomi’s book is not an authorised biographical journey of Maimane, its incisive ventilation of his journey into the country’s turbulent mainstream politics is a productive contribution.
There is no doubt that Maimane is set to play a significant role in our body politic as, under his leadership, the DA, once only a 5% party secured above 30% of the vote for the first time.
While the call for a young ANC leadership might help the party relate to youth, however, the DA spotted this need much earlier when it appointed Maimane as the representative symbol of its future.