BEYOND THE BLUE HORIZON
‘Even if I lose, I win’
Before Mbali Ntuli announced that she was challenging the interim federal leader for the DA’s top job, it was almost unimaginable that a relatively inexperienced 32-year-old politician would do so.
Nine months later, she has mounted a formidable campaign and given a glimpse of how millennials will lead the world.
It may not yet be her time, so the first question is: “What happens when you lose?”
Without hesitation, Ntuli replies: “Even if I lose, I win.”
She says the support she’s received has been overwhelming. “When I started this race, people didn’t think I would even get two votes, and now I have people saying they will vote for the DA if I become the leader. I took a shot at the highest office of SA’s second-biggest political party. I don’t think there is a possible loss for me.”
Ntuli is going up against the incumbent, John Steenhuisen, a leader with a national profile who has had endorsements from some influential quarters in the party, but that has not dissuaded her.
“I have already won just by staying in this race for this long. It’s been nine months — that is half my daughter’s life — and it has cost a lot of money. I have put out what I believe should happen in the party. I’ve run a campaign that has been very authentic to myself and to what I think needs to change in SA.”
When we first spoke, just before her announcement nine months ago, Ntuli was cautiously optimistic but nowhere near as confident as she is now.
Last week it was apparent that either I underestimated her then, or she was playing her cards close. Whichever it was, she has grown in stature. She may not beat the man who has a tendency to forget to mention that he is at present only an interim leader, but her future in politics is alive with possibilities.
Dad was a liberal
Ntuli’s life has always held promise. Unlike many black South Africans of her generation, particularly women, she grew up in an environment without fear and was encouraged to believe in herself.
“My dad was a liberal,” she says, “especially for those times. The way he treated me as a daughter gave me a lot of confidence, even though I knew him for only eight years. When we moved to the suburbs there was some hostility because we were the first black family in that area. He would tell my brother and me not to hide in shame, that we had a right to occupy any space. That thinking has stayed with me.
“I never feel scared, I go for what I want. A lot of people are shocked by my audacity to think that I should be leader of the DA, but my father would have asked me: ‘Why can’t you be leader of the DA?’ That was how he approached life. He was unapologetic about who he was, and because of what he taught me I have never had a moment where I wanted to give up on myself.”
Ntuli’s father, Bernard “Big Ben” Ntuli, was a successful and feared taxi boss in KwaZulu-Natal. He died from malaria in 1996 in Durban after returning from Mozambique, where he had gone after he was accused of involvement in the death of his mentor, another taxi boss.
Ntuli remembers her father as a pioneer in formalising the taxi industry. At his death he was president of the Durban & District Taxi Association. She remembers him as a leader who pushed for the widows of taxi operators to be allowed to continue running their husbands’ businesses. He created a fund for families who chose to leave the business after a breadwinner’s death.
“I still meet people who come up and tell me how my father paid for them to go to university,” says Ntuli. “People were always coming to our home to see him when he was alive.”
She read about her father’s death in a newspaper before the family could tell her. Her mother took over her husband’s taxi business to provide for her children but they were targets for rivals and there were attempts to kill them. Despite these challenges, Ntuli says, her mother continued instilling in her children a sense of confidence.
“She sent us to good schools, took us to The Playhouse to see plays, took us on holidays. She really tried to raise children who would view the world as their oyster. And here I am, viewing the world in a way that made me think I should lead the DA.”
Ntuli’s campaign has transcended the attention of the DA’s voting delegation. She is often in the hot seat on social media and doesn’t shy away from difficult questions.
Town hall tactic
Stringent rules prohibit DA leadership candidates from running public campaigns in the media. They are also barred from holding public debates in the run-up to the national conference. Ntuli feels that this compromises democracy because it prevents all
South Africans, particularly those outside the DA, from seeing what each leader has to offer. She has devised a last-ditch plan to be more inclusive.
“I am going to have a town hall for the general public, because if you can’t deal with potential voters then maybe you shouldn’t be a leader. That’s why I don’t block people on Twitter. My job is to convince them to come to the DA and you can’t achieve that if you don’t talk to people.”
Her internal campaign has been through virtual town halls across all provinces. She says she has had a pleasant experience, even in the Western Cape, the province with the most voters at the DA congress.
“I am not nervous about Western Cape,” she says.
“It is the province where I am least known and the biggest province in terms of delegates, so it is very important, but the wonderful thing is that people don’t have to vote according to what their leaders think. There will be people there who will vote for me. I have been phoning delegates and I have found people to be very receptive.”
Ntuli says she has had only one moment when she was really hurt, and that was when the leader in the Western Cape accused her of using the leadership race as an exit strategy.
“I don’t think anyone likes to be misunderstood, or have their intentions questioned. When the Western Cape provincial leader starts saying I want to leave the DA, that is a painful statement. That is why it is important for me to stay in the race, to show people that in order to effect change you have to go through such things.”
She dismisses the suggestion that she will leave if she loses, as well as claims that her criticism of the DA means she is not capable of leading the party.
“It would be the most expensive exit in politics,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I just leave with my money? Those people are deflecting some of the substantive questions I have asked. Because I have been direct and I am not afraid of conflict, it makes people think I am attacking, but it’s just a difference of opinion. When you say what you think is wrong in your party there is an assumption that you must be disgruntled, you must hate it, so you will leave. I believe that it shows political maturity to disagree freely.”
Ntuli says her leadership would bring the DA out of “the corner it has confined itself in”. She would like to cultivate more high-profile leaders and build a party that prioritises the growth of the organisation over factional groupings, one with policy stability.
“We don’t want the organisation to become about one personality, because when they leave or tweet something stupid, the whole organisation comes to a standstill. The public doesn’t know there are plenty of other people who have different opinions and who are just as strong as leaders. We need to move towards a larger number of leaders that are just as high profile.”
She is sceptical of the “classical liberal” ethos embraced by party leaders. “It excludes everyone who
might not subscribe to that ideology, but might have seen us as a potential alternative. The minute you say we are a party that doesn’t see race, you start to drift away from the broader society. What you should rather do is not define yourselves as what you are not but what you could be and what people will feel in your party.”
She says a DA that reacts to political and government developments by opening cases, going to court or writing petitions has reached its sell-by date.
“The DA, now more than ever, needs to prove to South Africans that we have something different to offer. With me, nobody would know what to expect. People would be interested in what the DA has to offer and that would give us some forward momentum, rather than just being seen as the same old, same old.”
Disagreeing with the DA’s “colour-blind” strategy does not mean she disagrees with its aims. Ntuli dreams of a SA where the colour of a person’s skin will not determine their life, where race will not matter. But she wants politicians and leaders to have conversations about race, apartheid, inequality and trauma.
“Our whole country needs catharsis,” she says. “The trauma of dispossession, apartheid, racism, poverty and inequality is inherited. People don’t speak about white trauma: can you imagine what it’s like to be a 50-year-old who was conscripted during apartheid to go shoot at people, then a few years later to find out that you were on the wrong side of history and maybe you killed people? That is trauma that needs to spoken about as well.”
No matter what the result, Ntuli is happy with her decision to run in this race.
“As a person who comes from a lineage of ancestors who never had this opportunity, it’s just amazing that I can do this in SA. I hope more people, and more younger people, start stepping up, especially in political parties. As I said, there will be no loss for me.”