‘DA must seek out reformers in ANC’
DA LEADER John Steenhuisen says the official opposition party has to seek out reformers in the ANC and other political parties and bring them together around the growth agenda to stop South Africa from falling off a fiscal cliff, and tackle growing unemployment and poverty.
Steenhuisen was speaking about the DA’s stance on coalition politics and the party’s vision of a realignment of South African politics in a discussion with DA Federal chairperson Helen Zille on the DA’s The Inside Track YouTube channel yesterday.
The discussion has emerged in the wake of weekend reports that quoted Steenhuisen as saying that the DA was open to working with reformers in the governing party, including President Cyril Ramaphosa.
Steenhuisen said there was neither a good nor bad ANC, but there was one ANC that had caused “huge damage to South Africa and its economy and to its people” and the country’s economic prosperity and future.
“I do, however, believe there are reformers within the ANC, I think there are reformers within all parties actually, and it’s our job to seek out those reformers and bring them together around the growth agenda.
“Otherwise we are going to continue with this terrible stalemate and we are going to head towards a fiscal cliff, we are going to head towards greater poverty, growing unemployment, so we’ve got to break the logjam, and we can only do that by the reformers finding each other to stand together against the radical left ever getting into power.
“I mean, can you imagine an Ace Magashule presidency, a Julius Malema deputy presidency? The prospect of that should terrify every freedom-loving South African. The only alternative to that is to build that rational centre,” Steenhuisen said.
He added that now was a time for clear choices to be made: it was either radical socialism with all its fast-track, warp-speed policies that would take the country down the route of countries like Venezuela and Zimbabwe, or the reform, prosperity and growth agenda that lay in the rational centre.
“This is the only scenario possible in a proportional representation system; coalitions are going to have to be a thing of the future because of the way our political system is structured and defined.
“When no party gets a majority, you’re going to have to make a values judgement on what is best for this town, municipality, city, province and ultimately the country, and you’re going to have to make sure you have a significant pile of chips on the table so that your values and principles form the core of that new majority,” Steenhuisen said.
Zille said she had been talking about realigning South Africa since 2008 in the build-up to the 2009 elections, and that most people had misunderstood it, thinking it meant getting all of the opposition parties together to form a coalition.
She said that the DA had to get the ANC to crumble by pushing it below 50% in local governments; the glue of patronage, contracts and tenders would then melt leaving the ANC having to choose between alternative positions, principles and values.
“The radical departure for the DA was after 2016 when we tried to do working agreements with the EFF; now they are our polar opposites, and that should never have happened,” Zille said.