Politics of factionalism
Body politic at a phase where parties are beginning to fragment
AS I ENGAGED “Patricia De Lille: the DA is a hollow lie”, an opinion piece written by former DA member Patricia De Lille, and her public commentary it is clear that she is an old-timer who wants to reinvent herself as a contemporary revolutionary when her time to quit politics has come.
She seems to have drawn inspiration from the 38-year-old EFF leader Julius Malema, who uses a divide-andconquer strategy.
The EFF basically targets an individual – mostly of non-African descent – and pursues a particular agenda.
For example, it targeted Athol Trollip to remove a DA-led coalition government in the Nelson Mandela Bay.
In the interim, the EFF is targeting ANC NEC member and Public Enterprise Minister Pravin Gordhan, accusing him of being part of an Indian cabal that undermines African leadership. Gordhan is of Indian descent.
Accusing a white cabal of having captured the DA, the 68-year-old De Lille uses the EFF’s strategy to garner support for her new party, Good. This she ascribes to DA leader Mmusi Maimane’s “weak leadership”. Nevertheless, De Lille does not explain what she has done to fight racism within the DA, whose racial representation in Parliament epitomises managerial representations at the white-owned monopolistic conglomerate in our country, thanks to the ANC.
Clearly, De Lille does not know where the DA is and what Maimane, who is older than Malema by a year, has been doing to de-racialise it. As Vusi Pikoli wrote in
co-authored with Mandy Wiener: “All political parties go through phases in their life cycle, through infancy, growth, maturity and degeneration, with old leadership being replaced by newly elected members.” The DA is no exception to this trajectory. It is in the second phase of its life cycle.
Like any other party, the DA is not immune to a putrefactive disease of factionalism. Owing to its racial diversification, it has moved from cooperative factionalism to competitive factionalism, one phase away from degenerative factionalism, wherein the ANC is entangled. In this phase, the factions compete over policies and positions of power.
A decision by the DA to vote in four of the broad-based BEE and the Employment Equity Amendment Bills, pitted its former parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko against its former leader and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille, who described them as “Verwoerdian measures”.
Not long at the helm, a race storm hit the country and the DA found itself on the receiving end. It started with Dianne Kohler-Barnard, who had shared a Facebook post of veteran journalist Paul Kirk. Nostalgically, Kirk had called for the return of the apartheid system, declared a crime against humanity by the UN.
None other than Maimane himself pushed for a disciplinary action against Kohler-Barnard for breaching the party’s social media policy. Having pleaded guilty, she was expelled from the DA. Her expulsion was rescinded and she was fined R20 000 and ordered to resign from all her elected positions except that of a member of Parliament.
The race storm intensified when DA member Penny Sparrow referred to blacks at a beach in Durban as monkeys. The DA terminated her membership.
In 2016 Maimane delivered a moving speech on race and identity at the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, urging racists not to vote for the DA. Henceforth, the race storm within the party had somewhat subsided for a while until Zille, who has been embroiled in racist tweets, said not everything about colonialism was wrong. Maimane also pushed for a disciplinary action against her.
Zille frustrated the DA on procedural flaws, as did De Lille on her own disciplinary case. Eventually, the parties reached a settlement, as part of which the DA has confined her role to a premiership. In addition to policies, the factions compete over positions of power under Maimane, who wants to diversify the DA to reflect the country’s demographics, not only in Parliament, but also across its structures. He pioneered a diversity clause, adopted at the last DA federal congress last year, despite resistance from an old white guard, what De Lille calls the white cabal. The old white guard claims that his racial diversification of the party would alienate it from its traditional white constituency. The racial diversification threatens their power.
If a latest Ipsos survey according to which the DA’s support will dwindle to 14% in the forthcoming general elections, is anything to go by, the DA should bear with Maimane, who is leading the party during the most difficult period in the democratic SA, the period of populist policies by the ANC and the EFF.
The DA does have a prospect to grow. However, it lacks basic intelligence on how to hold its own against the populist politics. It is for this reason it needs an intelligence body to help Maimane in particular to make strategically informed decisions.
By now, for example, Maimane would have had intelligence that the populist policies will haunt the ANC and strategically put the DA on pole position to take advantage of the tougher times post the elections.
Political parties go through phases in their life cycle – infancy, growth, maturity and degeneration – with old leadership replaced