High cost of Zille’s tweets
Internal survey shows Zille saga is likely to hit party in next election
BLACK support for the DA has plunged to new lows since Helen Zille’s colonialism tweets.
According to a confidential internal party survey seen by the Sunday Times, support for the party among this constituency has dropped by almost half, from 17% to 10% in the past two months.
The poll reveals that Zille’s approval rate also took a knock.
The biggest beneficiaries of the Zille controversy are the ANC and EFF, whose popularity shot up during the period.
The survey bolsters the tough stance DA leader Mmusi Maimane has taken against Zille — including persuading his federal executive to suspend her membership.
Maimane hopes to unseat the ANC in the 2019 general elections through a coalition with smaller opposition parties.
But that will remain a pipe dream should the current approval rate among the majority of voters persist.
The results may also be used during Zille’s disciplinary hearing as proof that her tweets brought the party into disrepute by damaging its image among a section of voters.
The DA conducted the survey after Zille’s tweets on colonialism caused an uproar, with some black people saying they were offensive.
Some party insiders said the survey was conducted at Zille’s insistence when she was first told by DA bosses that her tweets would prove damaging to the party.
However, the Western Cape premier denied this claim on Friday.
“That allegation is devoid of all truth,” she said.
Zille was coy about claims that she had conducted her own private polling on the matter.
“I am not commenting on anything else,” she said.
The internal party support poll states that “progress made since the LGE2016 [last year’s local government elections] has been wiped out”.
The survey found that support for the ANC among black voters, which stood at 50% before the tweets in March, had shot up to 64%.
Support for the EFF increased marginally, from 14% to 16%, among black voters.
The poll revealed that Zille had lost popularity as a politician among black voters, with 61% “viewing her unfavourably” by the end of March this year compared to 48% in April 2015.
“Expressed differently, her net favourability is down from 43%, when she quit as federal leader in 2015, to 25%, and has plummeted seven points in the 10 days between our polls,” the research document states.
As for Maimane, who has been pushing for the DA to swiftly take action against Zille, the poll shows that his popularity has been on the rise among voters since he took over as the party’s No 1 two years ago.
“However, his favourability . . . dropped 13 points, from 37% to 24%, in just the 10 days following Zille’s tweets.
“Despite this drop, he is still much more popular than Zille. And her tweets have hurt her among white voters. Mmusi’s net favourability is now 30 points above Zille’s,” reads the research document.
The survey says the tweets have “imperilled our ability to achieve the 2019” election target set out by the federal executive.
“Clearly these tweets have reawakened doubts about whether or not the DA is for black South Africans.
“A majority of black voters say that as a result of these tweets, they no longer ‘respect and admire’ the DA, i.e., they have lost esteem for the party. In the opinion of black voters, then, Zille has brought the party into disrepute.
“The DA’s support has plummeted, Maimane’s favourability is falling to pre-2017 levels.”
DA support grew in last year’s municipal elections to 27%, from 23% in the 2014 general election.
A senior DA leader close to the discussions on this matter said the party was hoping to recover lost ground now that action was being taken against Zille.
“South Africans understand. Once we take action they [will] come back.
“We’ll see what the outcome of the DC [disciplinary committee] will be,” said the leader, who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
Maimane said the DA was recovering ground after it took action against Zille.
“People are starting to come back now that they see that we don’t tolerate this thing,” said Maimane.
This was “not a contest among races”, he insisted.
“Both black and white people were offended by the tweets; it’s not about picking one race over another. It’s about saying whether the project of reconciling South Africans was suffering harm.
“It’s black South Africans who are saying to us: ‘Even in your campaigns, we want to see black and white people together.’ So this issue is not a contest among races, it’s in fact an issue of how we build a reconciled South Africa, and if we’re going to do that we must be careful of the language we use, to build that reconciliation.”
The poll results may also be used [as proof] during Zille’s disciplinary hearing