DA’S claim to ‘exceptionalism’ limits its potential for growth
The party needs to become more recognisably South African, writes Eusebius Mckaiser
MANY DA leaders, members and supporters think the party is exceptional. They think it is not susceptible to ideological battles, factionalism, class warfare, racial conundrums, personality clashes, deep policy disagreements and the familiar symptoms of organisational growth.
But the party is not exceptional. And this is not a bad thing. It is the market price you pay for growing more quickly than any other political party.
Yet, many DA leaders are uncomfortable with the fact that internal differences now emerging publicly mean the party reflects the society it lives in more accurately than before.
It raises a rather curious question: What on earth is so embarrassing about being a recognisably South African institution?
Mail & Guardian journalist Verashni Pillay recently contrasted the personality traits, backgrounds and internal career trajectories of two of the DA’s deputy federal chairmen, Mmusi Maimane and Makashule Gana.
Pillay drew on my interviews with Gana — chronicled in the chapter “Gana: the wrong kind of black?” in my book Could I Vote DA? — and delivered an insight the DA does not like to speak about.
Gana has not been as successful in the party as Maimane — have you even heard of Gana? — because they have different class backgrounds. Gana is less eloquent when he speaks English, less trained in the art of giving a catchy phrase to journalists, less able to walk to a podium at a rally and passionately implore the crowd to “believe”.
But this is not because Gana lacks talent. No resources are spent on working-class black leaders in the party.
Ironically, unlike Maimane, Gana has been in the party much longer, having joined in 2002, and has built a steady base in the structures on the ground, especially in Johannesburg, where he even has a political school for DA members and aspiring supporters.
A working-class black leader in the party is not the poster child for the communications team trying both to appeal to the black voter and keep the traditional white voter on board.
Yet, working-class South Africans and poor South Africans and South Africans who are not fluent in English are precisely the elusive group of voters the DA must win over.
This story about Maimane and Gana demonstrates two insights. The first is that the party is very much race conscious despite claims to the contrary.
If not, where were leaders like David Maynier, Athol Trollip or
Working-class South Africans and poor South Africans are the elusive group of voters the DA must win over
Dianne Kohler Barnard during the elections cycle? Or even Auntie Pat? It is simple: a deliberate strategy was in place to project an image of a party that is a home for black voters. Is that not interesting for a party wanting to school us all that race is not important?
Second, the Gana-Maimane contrast shows class warfare at play. The DA strategists know they need to kill perceptions that the party is white, but if Gana is really as talented as some claim, why on earth has he not been as prominent all along?
The truth, really, is what one senior white DA leader told me in confidence: that Gana is, in his opinion, a fool that should be exposed for being that. That is what he thinks, secretly, of a black politician that did not go to school with white kids and is not fluent in the social grammar of whiteness.
There are many Ganas in the party. You will not know them. They are good for pictures taken from the stage or for election to a post such as “deputy federal chair”, but not good enough for real power in the party, let alone caucus leader, premier candidate, national spokesperson or successor to Helen Zille.
Yet, can you think of any big organisation — in corporate South Africa, academia, politics, civil society, legal institutions, sporting bodies — that does not grapple, uncomfortably and imperfectly, with issues of race and class? No.
The party’s first response to these observations should not be defensive denial, but simple embracing of social reality. “Duhuh! We are a South African outfit. We are not a party of six like-minded people in a laager!”
In a similar vein, the DA really does not have to undergo an existential crisis about the leadership battles about to play out. Maimane is ambitious. And it would not surprise me if he tries his best to become caucus leader of the DA in parliament, thereby positioning himself, too, for the ultimate prize — successor to Zille as leader of the DA. That is perfectly fine.
But an open contestation should be allowed. Various leaders have different visions. Let them each sell their political CVs and visions to members of the party and also MPs in the caucus.
Role-model to the ANC how healthy it is, furthermore, to do so publicly and let the most compelling leaders be elected to the vacant positions.
Sadly, it took a scathing, though insightful, column by former DA staffer Gareth van Onselen in the Business Day before the party admitted — as if it were shameful — that there were internal squabbles between leaders.
I chuckled when I saw these admissions, grudgingly made while responses simultaneously, and conveniently, focused on Van Onselen’s motives.
The reason I chuckled was because, as with issues of race and class, there is no need to pretend to be exceptional.
Why would an expanding organisation pretend every senior leader has the same understanding of, say, liberalism, whether the party is liberal (still), whether it needs a new philosophical foundation for its future, whether BEE sucks or not, whether race matters, what the right policy strategies are to grow the economy or create jobs or, more mundane but as important, where and how to invest the biggest slice of the budget for an election campaign?
Own these differences. They, too, simply demonstrate diversity in the party. The next few weeks will see whether the party has the guts to let these personality differences surface and to create a transparent and fair process visible to even the public for nominated leaders to make their case, rather than having a communications team in overdrive with unnecessary headacheinducing spin.
I still maintain that the DA’s underlying problem is a more general resistance to self-examination. The party did well in the election to grow by some 6%. But it fell short of the initial 30% many DA leaders claimed it feasibly could, and would, achieve.
The DA must ask itself why, for example, more than a million voters rejected the ANC and voted for the Economic Freedom Fighters, rather than voting DA?
One basic part of the answer, I am afraid, is that the EFF is more recognisably South African in how it sounds, what it speaks about and what it looks like.
The DA should stop trying to be exceptional. That is a losing attitude if the objective is to not just grow, but realise your potential fully. It is not too late.
In ‘ Could I Vote DA?’, McKaiser explores these and other challenges the DA faces beyond 2014