The DA leadership needs to be decisive with Zille or face wrath of electorate
Impunity of those in high positions corrodes confidence in institutions
Leadership matters. This is a lesson that South Africa has been too slow to learn since the transition to democracy.
If the DA is to keep its hope of becoming a governing party alive, it will need to demonstrate that it has indeed learned the lesson.
There is nothing more precise in destroying trust in public institutions and in the legitimacy of a political system than the misconduct of politicians in office.
Larry Diamond and Richard Gunther, in their book Political Parties and Democracy elucidate this point: “declining or persistently declining low levels of trust in public institutions are driven much less by economic or policy performance than by ‘conduct in office’.”
This is as true for political parties as it is for other institutions such as parliament and the courts. Right now, Helen Zille is in hot water over her tweets in support of colonialism.
It was fascinating listening to Zille, the Western Cape premier, dismissing the impact her tweets might have on the electoral prospects of the DA.
In an interview on Power FM on Wednesday morning, she boldly declared the party’s recent by-election victories are evidence that her utterances have not affected the DA’s standing with voters.
Zille’s persistent defence of her tweets is seemingly informed by her confidence that she has done enough to prove she is behind the transformation agenda.
She said she stepped down although she was nominated unopposed because she felt it was time for the DA to have a black leader – as if that gives her a licence to glorify a system that destroyed the lives of Africans.
But this is naïve complacency and a failure to understand politics in modern society.
It is also a demonstration of arrogant comfort – a belief that “it can happen to others but it won’t happen to me or us”.
The DA needs, now more than ever, to take a leaf from the ANC’s book and understand that in the short term it may seem the character, conduct and values of a leader have no bearing on the party’s performance.
But it is this kind of complacency and failure to act decisively against the slightest hint of unethical behaviour that has added to the growing trust deficit in the country.
Indeed, the DA may continue to enjoy large electoral victories.
They may become emboldened, defend the indefensible while obfuscating and excusing the misdeeds of their leadership, feeling invincible behind good election results
The trouble is that, in the case of the ANC, it does not just hurt the party but it goes on to compromise the government and undermine confidence in the political system and public institutions in general.
A 2016 Afrobarometer survey shows that trust in the country’s political leadership – opposition included – is at its lowest since 2011.
The survey states, “Trust is inversely correlated with perceptions of corruption and positively associated with perceived performance of leaders and institutions.
“Among citizens who think that most or all government officials are corrupt, trust levels are low; among those who think that officials are performing well, trust levels are higher.”
In a nutshell, nothing destroys confidence in public institutions than bad political leadership.
Although the question surrounding Zille’s conduct is not about corruption, it is rather about ethics, with a significant bearing on perceptions about her prospects as a leader.
Has she acquitted herself in a way that promotes or jeopardises the nationbuilding project in SA?
If the aim was to highlight the lessons that South Africa can learn from former colonies such as Singapore, she surely did not have to invoke what she calls the “positive” legacy of colonialism.
In short, if the DA fails to deal decisively with a leader who has clearly gone out of line, it will undermine confidence in the party.