The writing’s on the wall for the DA

Jeez, but the DA is in trouble. It was absolutely hammered in municipal by-elections around the country on Wednesday and, whatever you may think of by-election results, if you take them over time you can begin to ink in the pencil marks of what may be a dramatic decline in support. Here’s what happened on Wednesday in five DA-held wards. In Buffalo City metro (East London) its vote slipped 2%. In Potchefstroom it lost 27% and the ward was won by the Freedom Front Plus. In Kuruman its vote fell 25%, in Saldanha by 28% and in Cederberg by 21% and the ANC won the ward. A total disaster.

Which, no doubt, the party will analyse and inspect. It will go to the wards and speak to voters and ask them why they’ve moved. They’re not scared of the truth.

But they are quite capable of ignoring it. Potch is miles from Cederberg and the DA lost to Right and Left. Up the west coast it is vulnerable anyway to the ANC because the migration of Africans from poorer provinces hasn’t impacted it yet and coloured voters in Saldanha don’t have to make the same choices that they might in Hermanus.

Clearly, both white and coloured DA voters are beginning to look elsewhere. Two triggers are involved. In January, a white teacher in Schweizer-Reneke was suspended after a photo was posted of young kids in a class that appeared to have been racially separated. The DA, keen to target black voters, joined in the general denouncing of this unfortunate woman, who was later returned to her class, cleared of all accusations against her.

And the attacks on then Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille by the DA leadership not only led to her departure from the party but to a swathe of coloured support with it. President Cyril Ramaphosa then included her in his current cabinet. Don’t be surprised when she becomes provincial leader of the ANC in the Western Cape.

Behind both these catastrophes is party leader Mmusi Maimane. It is impossible that his future does not come under scrutiny after Wednesday. He is a good guy and ticks all the boxes except one. He is not the leader the DA needs. It needs a street fighter. Or, at least — and we know this about the DA — it needs a fight.

Someone who helps raise a great deal of money for the DA from the diaspora overseas told me on Thursday that the ticket whereby

Maimane remains party leader and Athol Trollip replaces James Selfe as federal council leader will struggle to get a cent out of the people who have paid the DA’s bills for the past decade.

There’s a review panel sifting through the wreckage of the May election campaign. It’s headed by former DA strategy chief Ryan

Coetzee and he has included former leader Tony Leon on the panel. It is, senior DA people tell me, the party’s last chance. If the panel fails to make decisive recommendations to a federal council summit next month, and if the DA fails to implement them, it is heading for oblivion.

You might think that over the top, but look at the trends that poll watcher Dawie Scholtz came up with after Wednesday, bearing in mind that almost 180,000 South Africans have taken part in municipal byelections since May 8. That’s a pretty decent sample, and he uses it to show that in provinces away from the coast in the 2016 local elections, the May 2019 general elections and last Wednesday, the DA vote started at 94%, fell to

77% in May and to 66% last week, while the FF+ started at 6%, did 23% in May and 34% last week.

The only way out of this is leadership. Someone who can grow the party while holding onto its base. Neither Maimane nor Trollip are equipped to do this, and if the party waits until the 2021 local government elections for confirmation of its decline it may be too late. I have no idea who can lead. In Johannesburg, mayor Herman Mashaba is at least a character. But he may have attached himself too closely to the EFF to be a plausible DA leader.

It’s critical for SA that the DA survives. I’ve just moved to the Western Cape. It works better, though I can’t speak for the poor. The DA premier, Alan Winde, has just created an ambitious plan that the province can use without reference to the national government to make it safer. I don’t want to lose him, but if the DA hasn’t sorted out its house by the next general election, in 2023, it may lose the Western Cape too.