Natasha Marrian’s latest column completely misreads the DA and misdiagnoses electoral realities in SA and the nature of impactful and effective political campaigns.
Her depiction of the state of the DA is dramatically exaggerated. The party has a proud record of being the only political party in democratic SA that has managed to grow in every election cycle.
This growth continues to spur us to work hard to earn the privilege of the vote of our supporters, and then work even harder to deliver on the mandate they have given us.
Predictably, with every election a number of analysts seem hell-bent to outsprint each other in their misinformed analysis, writing off the DA’s electoral prospects. Yet our electoral successes continue to prove them wrong.
Indeed, it was in this very newspaper that the then DA was written off as a desolate shack. Today we are a party with more than 4-million supporters, 16-million South Africans experience some form of DA government, and we have stood largely alone in defending our constitutional democracy.
The DA single-handedly led the fight to reinstate criminal charges against Jacob Zuma, and without this it is unlikely that he would have been removed as president. We have also, at every turn, fought state capture, and every day taken up the fight of the millions of South Africans who find themselves excluded from access to some form opportunity — educational or economic - needed to reach their full potential.
This growth and record could not have been achieved without visionary, brave and courageous leadership. Therefore, far from drifting, the DA has managed to grow our governance footprint, expand our support base and continues to uphold our values and principles.
We are determined to give life to our commitment to building one SA for all, by building a party that brings together South Africans from all backgrounds and is strengthened by our beautiful diversity. Meanwhile, our competitors have all but given up on making a multiracial offer and are instead resorting to populism, race-baiting and sowing division.
This is the route to a failed state, as is currently being brutally illustrated in Zimbabwe. This makes the DA’s project of fundamental importance to SA, for if we fail, the very future of the country will be imperilled.
Against this backdrop it is quite amazing to have Marrian asserting that our recent billboard, which argues that the “ANC is killing us”, was a strategic error. Far from having to defend ourselves, we were able to highlight the deplorable injustice that the victims of Esidimeni, Marikana, pit-toilet deaths and crime have experienced.
Esidimeni especially remains one of the most conspicuous stains on the ANC record of governance. And they know it is one of their greatest failures — hence their desperate responses to the billboard. Contrary to Marrian’s assertion, they were not talking about their manifesto but having to defend on their weakest ground.
It also seems to have escaped Marrian, rather inexplicably for the country’s foremost business newspaper, that the said ANC manifesto represents a full-on assault on property rights, pension funds and the future economic viability of SA.
Amazingly, Marrian states that it is the DA’s naivety that saw us lose Nelson Mandela Bay. In fact, after turning around a broken and bankrupt government we stood on principle and refused to succumb to political blackmail, when many other parties would have hung on to governing by any means necessary. This required strength and resolve.
Similarly, Marrian appears to have curiously failed to read the copious documentation on the Patricia de Lille matter. Here the DA again acted on firm principle to remove a mayor who was implicated in maladministration and worse. We did so knowing that as politically difficult as it was, it was the right thing to do.
The same is true in Tshwane. Mayor Solly Msimanga has been resolute in rooting out corruption and taking decisive action against a deeply compromised city manager. He has seen at first hand, though, that the best way to serve the people of Tshwane is to govern the whole of Gauteng to root out all corruption and speed up service delivery. This is a necessary move, made at some personal sacrifice to Msimanga himself, and he should be applauded for it.
No political party is perfect — far from it — and there is no doubt that the DA has been tested over the last year. But we will continue to stand firm on our principles, work to grow our support base and provide increasingly desperate South Africans with the only alternative that seeks to create jobs, root out corruption, speed up service delivery and unite all of our people.
• Malatsi is DA national spokesperson.
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