GARETH VAN ONSELEN: Helen Zille’s world is gone

"I have no wish to paint the world in colours more somber than those it wears, but as the world gives way to darkness it becomes more and more difficult to dismiss the understanding that the world is in fact oneself. It is a thing which you have created, no more, no less. And when you cease to be, so will the world. There will be other worlds. Of course. But they are the worlds of other men and your understanding of them was never more than an illusion anyway. Your world — the only one that matters — will be gone. And it will never come again." (Cormac McCarthy, The Counselor: A Screenplay)

Let us put to one side colonialism and its legacy, and focus on the politics of Helen Zille’s recent tweet. It has caused the DA great damage and there will be a reckoning.

For consequences people turn to leaders. Perceived or otherwise there is thus one issue that now stands above all others: the position of DA leader Mmusi Maimane and the implications of the party’s response for his credibility and authority as party leader.

Zille has placed Maimane in a catch-22 situation for which there appears no clear get-out clause. And the stakes are incredibly high. From Zille’s tweet to Maimane’s response, this is now a political battle of perceptions. On the table are both her and Maimane’s reputations.

The paradox is this: If whatever disciplinary action is taken against Zille is deemed too weak, it will be argued Maimane is weak in turn — unable to take a stand against Zille and held hostage by her. Likewise and inevitably, that there is a racial dynamic to this relationship and he, a black man, is unable or unwilling — intimidated or too timid — to act against a dominant white figure who wields real and behind-the-scenes power in the party.

Like it or lump it that is the very real, very powerful political reality. It can be neither wished nor argued away.

Writing for the City Press this weekend, Mondli Makhanya gave it expression. In "Maimane’s moment",  he writes: "This week, in the weirdest of ironies, the person who is said to be his mentor and sponsor has given him the opportunity to prove his mettle by chopping off her head. He now has to show he has cojones. And big ones at that."

If, however, the party’s response is deemed too strident, Maimane will face the wrath of those who feel its social media regulations are too restrictive and the attached consequences too severe. They will argue, as with Dianne Kohler Barnard before, the party’s response is disproportional, illiberal and excessively punitive.

For example, DA MP Michael Cardo tweeted last week, "What would it say about our political discourse if you can be tried & judged & thrown to the wolves for a thoughtcrime based on a tweet?"

The fact that the party’s rules on this front are objectively authoritarian, certainly illiberal (few modern democratic parties the world over practice the kind of centralised control the DA does) will not help whatever defence the DA is able to muster on this front.

Ultimately, It will all boil down to Zille’s continued membership of the DA. In practical terms: whether or not she will effectively be "fired".

If the DA does strip her of her membership, that will terminate her premiership in the Western Cape, as she will no longer be a member of the legislature. Whatever other positions she holds, that will be the one that matters, and the test by which Maimane will be measured.

Zille could be recalled, via a motion of no confidence in the Western Cape legislature, after a decision by the DA federal executive

The problem is exacerbated by how this divide plays out within the DA’s electoral market. With regards to the former position, this will be a view held by many outside the party, within the voting public, the commentariat and, admittedly, among the DA’s enemies who, for far more expedient reasons, wish to see Zille gone.

The latter position will be held by a minority, both inside and outside the party, but not an insignificant one, in that they wield some significant influence and are, at least to their own mind, the keepers of the DA’s values and principles. (There is an argument to be made that the DA’s ideal and real self are today two very different things.)

That Zille has at best inadvertently, at worst ignorantly, set herself up against Maimane in this way no doubt escapes her entirely. If her tweet was selfish, you can be sure her response will be equally self-serving. For Zille, as with all battles, this is now all about "the truth"; or her "truth" at any rate, the two things merging into one in her mind. And she will die a thousand deaths before relinquishing any ground. Certainly she will not voluntarily offer up her premiership.

Irony does not come crueller than this. It was Zille who backed Maimane’s rise to the hilt. She has positioned herself as his political mentor and, indeed, even her decision to retire the DA leadership, she has argued, was because the time was right for a black leader, among other things. In her mind, Maimane was the man.

That she has now backed him into a corner, via the very reason her time at the top had expired (out of sync as she is with the DA’s developing brand, vision and purpose), is a contradiction only South African politics is capable of throwing up.

The coming trial of Helen Zille is, in truth, a trial of Mmusi Maimane’s leadership.

It will be one of Zille’s parting gifts to the new DA leader. And they don’t come more complex or potentially compromising than that.

Part of Maimane’s dilemma is driven by the kind of culture Zille has created inside the DA. There are the social media rules, of course, but besides that, it was she who engrained in the DA its contemporary hypersensitivity to political correctness. She can perhaps be forgiven for that. The environment in which the DA operates is unforgiving and merciless on this front. That it has succumbed to it is understandable, even if problematic. Nevertheless, Zille is now reaping her own whirlwind.

But the third element of the culture she has created inside the DA, an overreliance on judicial process at the expense of political leadership, might well work in her favour.

The truth is, there is nothing stopping Maimane, of his own volition, making a political decision that Zille can now no longer effectively represent the DA as the premier of the Western Cape. It might be a hard sell, no such decision is easy, but it is an option.

Zille could be recalled, via a motion of no confidence in the Western Cape legislature, after a decision by the DA federal executive. Maimane could lead that call; a political decision made to deal with a political problem, similar to the way the president might reshuffle his cabinet.

Firing Zille is a possibility it seems no one has even considered. It is the processes and machinations of the party’s Federal Legal Commission that seem set to determine Zille’s fate.

There is the Western Cape government too. Zille’s spokesman, Michael Mpofu, has done radio interviews defending the administration but the government has itself taken no action against Zille, as premier. Mpofu’s interviews are an important concession: by tweeting, Zille was speaking both as premier and a DA representative. The defence that this is a party matter alone cannot now be made.

You can be sure the ANC will drive this issue in the legislature. Expect a motion of no confidence in the near future. Whether the government itself has any measures in place to deal with reputation damage is not yet known.

And so Maimane is in a bind. And it is not a pretty situation for him at all. So, what can he do?

There is a strong political argument to be made that Zille should be axed, that Maimane should do it soon and that he should demonstrate strong and powerful conviction in doing so.

A few things will weigh heavily on his political decision-making. One is how this plays in the DA’s internal polling. The Kohler Barnard affair had such a disastrous impact, Maimane was forced to call an emergency event and deliver an impassioned speech on race in order to stop the bleeding. It was no coincidence that speech was made in Gauteng; it was in that province the cut ran deepest and Gauteng will be the DA’s primary target come 2019.

From a practical perspective, you need to appreciate how much damage Zille has done.

Consider this: Gagasi FM and Ukhozi FM, two primarily Zulu-speaking radio stations with a combined rural and urban listenership in excess of 7-million, have run this story relentlessly over the past few days. Each time the DA is massacred. There is no defence it can offer. If you are a DA canvasser, forced to go door to door across rural SA as the party tries desperately to crack the ANC’s core constituency, Helen Zille is what you will now be met with. And those people who answer the knock do not want to hear about due process. They want Zille gone. She is a barrier to any meaningful conversation.

That is on a micro level, on a macro level her tweet has completely reversed whatever momentum the DA had. The Sassa crisis had the ANC and government on the back foot. Until this issue is resolved and the Federal Legal Commission concludes its business, Zille will now be the only DA news. And, depending on what it finds, there could be much messiness to come. All of this costs votes, the most precious commodity in politics.

There is a strong political argument to be made that Zille should be axed, that Maimane should do it soon and that he should demonstrate strong and powerful conviction in doing so.

There will be consequences for that. But the political benefits, it would seem, outweigh the cost. Ultimately, it would be a concession of sorts to majoritarianism but the DA has long since embraced that particular South African trait. It opened that particular door when it welcomed into its arms AbaThembu King Buyelekhaya Dalindyebo. It has never closed it.

A safer option, but one that comes at a far greater cost, will be to abide by whatever decision the party’s Federal Legal Commission comes up with. There will be repercussions for Zille, but not the kind the public wants and, more problematically for Maimane, not the kind that will do his reputation any good. Indeed, it is unlikely it will do him any good even among those who have Zille’s back; the fact that disciplinary proceedings have been initiated at all against Zille will be their gripe.

Zille will survive, wounded, continue as premier and with that will come her damaged reputation, her 1-million Twitter followers and all that those things entail for the DA.

Zille treats her Twitter account as if she was before the Constitutional Court, not the public. She is in denial about her own brand and how she is perceived; obsessed with speaking hard truths, not winning votes. That might work in a university. Not politics. Politics is the art of the possible. It is about winning hearts and minds, not minds alone. Thus, there is a risk, unaddressed, all of this will simply happen again.

One way or the other, Makhanya is right, this is Maimane’s moment. The question is, will he emerge from it weaker or stronger?

In the Cormac McCarthy film, The Counselor, the protagonist, once outside the world of Mexican drug cartels but an adviser to it, initiates a drug deal of his own. When he does, he enters a new world he no longer controls, subject to the whims and cruelty of the bosses who care nothing for reason and rationality. He is warned as much, but bravado and ignorance mean he is immune to that understanding.

Not by his own hand, the deal goes wrong and the order is brought that he be killed. He cannot reconcile himself with this fact. He pleads to talk, to explain, to rationalise. He cannot grasp that his death, whether justified or not, is now inevitable. The perception that no one crosses the cartel is all that matters. His greatest weapon is rendered powerless: "they are the worlds of other men and your understanding of them was never more than an illusion anyway", he is told.

Every time Zille tweets, she enters this other world. She does not understand that the political consequences of her actions are not bound or controlled by reason and rationality, but by sentiment and perception. And, whether right or wrong, whether she can explain or rationalise each of them, is irrelevant. The other world does not care. The damage is done.

She has, to date, had very understanding handlers, aided by the fact that, for a long time, she ran the show. But she is now on the outside. Action in power is very different to action without it, and her superior’s patience has run dry. The rules of the other world are now dictating the terms. It is a situation she has brought about herself.

The consequences this time around might not be terminal. Next time they will be. Either way, her world is gone and it will never come again.

CORRECTION: In the original version of this column, published on March 20, Gareth van Onselen made the claim that Helen Zille personally pushed for the expulsion of Dianne Kohler Barnard from the DA when she faced disciplinary action. In the light of representations by Helen Zille we no longer believe this claim to be true. We regret this misrepresentation and apologise for the error.