DA’s chance to help break racial logjam

TODAY marks a milestone for the DA and South African politics. For the first time since the fall of apartheid, the official opposition party will have a black leader. While this hardly resolves the country’s problems, many of which are based on our divided history, the development goes some way in deracialising our politics.

For much of the past two decades, our political contest has been a black versus white affair, with the ANC seen as the party of the previously oppressed and the DA as a party of white interests.

The election of a new DA leader today will help change that — and possibly help the party attract new voters. It has been a long journey for the DA, which attracted a paltry 338 000 votes in 1994 and saw this grow to four million by last year.

While its growth has been impressive, it has not been enough to threaten the ANC’s dominance at the national level. Although outgoing leader Helen Zille and her predecessor Tony Leon did a remarkable job of growing the party at every election while all others declined, the truth is the party was fast approaching a ceiling and seemed unlikely to grow further under Zille.

That responsibility now falls on the shoulders of the new federal leader, be it Mmusi Maimane or Wilmot James.

While the racial background of the new leader will be an advantage as the party consolidates and grows its support in Soweto, Westbury, Diepsloot and other traditional ANC strongholds, he will have to be more than just a smiling black face.

He must have a message that appeals to the kind of voters who have not so far been attracted to the party, while not alienating the DA’s traditional voters. It is a tough balancing act.

Growth comes with its own challenges. Chief among those will be keeping the DA united and coherent in its programmes and message. Nothing tarnishes the image of a political party like flip-flopping on thorny issues.

In the past five years, as it tried to win over new voters, the DA has at times been guilty of this. The new leader, who will most probably also be the leader of the opposition in parliament, will have to guard against this in future.

The great advantage for the DA’s new leader is that he takes over at a time when the party’s biggest rival, the ANC, faces unprecedented turbulence. His success or failure will depend on whether he takes advantage of the ANC’s crisis in next year’s local government elections, as well as the general election two years later.