On May 10 2015, Mmusi Maimane was elected DA federal leader with a staggering 90% of the vote, at the last DA federal congress. This month, the party’s highest decision-making body will again meet, in Tshwane, for the first time since his election some three years ago.
Maimane will not be opposed as DA leader this time around, but things have changed somewhat in the intervening period, as the euphoria has been replaced with much uncertainty and internal confusion. It is worth, then, looking back at the campaign that saw him elected and to see if there are any lessons in it for the DA today.
On April 24, with just more than two weeks to go until the congress, Wilmot James announced he would be standing for the position of federal leader. It was a brave decision. Maimane had long been unofficially anointed as the next leader in both the media and internal party circles — James had no real belief he could win — but he thought it important to have a contest for two, principled reasons.
First, because a choice is better than no choice and, in turn, competition engenders transparency. By testing Maimane, the party would be better able to understand him and, by challenging him, to better grasp his weaknesses.
Second, and following on from the former, because James had some fundamental issues with what Maimane stood for. This sentiment from James on the campaign trail perhaps best encapsulates his concern: "I strongly believe that the DA needs a new direction and must be an alternative to the ANC, focusing on the DA’s Growth and Jobs Plan, rather than an alternate ANC, flirting with the ANC’s National Development Plan."
Before getting into the campaign itself, it is worth saying something about the decision to run against Maimane. Those outside of the DA will not fully appreciate the size of the challenge. This was to take on far more than Maimane alone. Backed not just by enormous party support, a largely enamoured media, much money and party expertise, the prospect of his election was coupled with an almost millenarian narrative the DA had internalised: the essential birth of its first, black leader. It was to take on a teleological, hegemonic belief that Maimane was the chosen one – best illustrated by the democratically obscene percentage he won by.
To stand against him on was to guarantee losing, and badly, possibly terminate your political prospects in the party but, particularly, to be regarded as a self-serving trouble-maker who dared to defy history itself.
Wilmot James and David Maynier (who ran his campaign) chose to run regardless. They did not lack for courage or conviction.
Death penalty
There is an argument to be made that they won the contest hands down. That might seem counter-intuitive, given how badly James lost, but he largely dictated the terms of the two-week exchange and, given just how under-resourced his campaign was, at the very least he matched Maimane blow-for-blow. The mainstay of the competition was a debate between the two on KykNET, and Maimane did himself no favours.
The primary problem was his response to a question about a possible referendum on the death penalty, which Maimane suggested would not be a bad idea at all
The primary problem was his response to a question about a possible referendum on the death penalty, which Maimane suggested would not be a bad idea at all: "If the people want to vote on it, the people must vote on it," he said. To which James responded, "I don’t think Mr Maimane understands the Constitution at all." He was right, of course; the right to life cannot be subjected to a referendum. Maimane said, "I disagree with Dr James," before devolving into a rhetorical mess of constitutional confusion.
There was a kind of populist sentiment infused into his logic. "The ultimate right," Maimane said, "that at least is given to the people of this country, is that it must always be their voice that must be given expression, it’s the view of the people."
The next day he would be forced to do a sharp about-turn, telling News24, "I would stand up straight and say I don’t support a referendum on the death penalty. We shouldn’t have a referendum."
It was an interesting moment in the campaign. Such a profound misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights would sink — if not, severely damage — many a campaign in other modern democracies, but it made hardly a dent in Maimane’s prospects, such was the hegemonic force behind him. Nevertheless, it did have the unfortunate effect of focusing all subsequent attention on this particular issue, detracting from much else of import that was said between the two.
‘Clear, blue water’
For example, earlier, in elaborating on his concern, James had said that a certain "strategic drift" had infected the party — that "presently, the DA is drifting strategically, it doesn’t know where it is, it doesn’t know where it is heading". He warned, "We are not becoming an alternative to the ANC, but we are becoming an alternate ANC … and I intend to set that right." The consequence, he said, is that "voters don’t know what we stand for".
Maimane denied it all. He said, "there is clear blue water between us and the ANC".
To date, Maimane, despite many, many promises otherwise, has yet to produce a policy platform he can call his own
That too is worth dwelling on. To date, Maimane, despite many, many promises otherwise, has yet to produce a policy platform he can call his own. In its place, a raft of ad hoc superficial suggestions. Without this firm footing, supplemented by a years-long hyper-focus on Jacob Zuma as the root of all evil, the DA and the ANC, at least to the public mind, have become more similar on issues of policy: their respective attitudes to good and clean governance would seem to be primarily what separates them.
To the degree that Maimane himself, in October last year, had to warn the DA Western Cape congress: "Everything — from the way we behave in government to the way we interact with communities to the way in which we implement pro-poor policy — must set us miles apart from the ANC. There must be vast, clear blue water between our respective policy offers and between our respective conducts."
That is simply not the kind of instruction you give to party that knows exactly who it is, and where it stands.
Visionless
There are other undertakings Maimane put forward that have not held up well over time. He said, for example, "We have to be the party that communicates the vision for SA. Historically, we have been a party that communicates what we stand against, how we oppose the ANC. Now the function is to articulate a vision for tomorrow."
But the DA has been, essentially, visionless since 2015. Not just with regards to policy, but with regards to the degree to which it has, under Maimane, done the exact opposite of what he pledged — through that relentless hyper-focus on Zuma, Zuma became how the DA was known, via its opposition to him.
Again, Maimane has himself recently lamented this state of affairs. In February this year, he would tell the DA KwaZulu-Natal congress, "No longer can we satisfy ourselves by merely taking on the man from Nkandla, who has so harmed our country this past decade, and who gave us an easy target to aim at."
Elsewhere, asked about the rate at which the DA was growing and whether it represented a threat, James was cautious and careful. He acknowledged that the DA must grow and, in particular, break through among black voters. But, he said such growth "needed to be carefully managed". He said, "The risk with any organisation growing quickly is that you can lose coherence," before warning that the DA needed to "keep coherence, keep discipline and we keep the basic values of the DA … intact".
Maimane was far more bolshy. He expressed not a single reservation about growth, and made a case, instead, for as much growth as quickly as possible. "I believe, as an opposition party, I welcome the growth and want to prepare for more."
But, again, Maimane has learnt some tough lessons in the interim. Again, to the recent DA KwaZulu-Natal congress, he reflected on some of the problems he had experienced. "Our party is learning the painful lessons of all fast-growing organisations," he said. "Our focus has been easily diverted from our core goal by navel-gazing, division, and jockeying for position." He went on: "The pursuit of power can easily overtake the pursuit of our ideals. Let us not kid ourselves, friends."
He might as well have been talking to himself. The debacle that is the current state of affairs in Cape Town is a lesson the DA is still learning, for it has yet to even conclude.
‘Ramaphoria’
As the latest DA congress rolls around, you wonder whether any in the party will reflect on how it was, exactly, that Maimane became DA leader with such an unhealthy super-majority. On how well they listened to him, what he said and tried to understand his actual nature and character. By contrast, how many of them blindly and without any reservation, swept up in the DA’s own version of "Ramaphoria", suspended their critical faculties because they so needed to believe. Given the 90% victory, there must have been a fair number of them who fell into the latter category.
The election of Cyril Ramaphosa and Maimane have much more in common than the DA would like to admit. Everything the party is so quick to accuse the media of today, it fell victim to in 2015.
Wilmot James quietly slipped first to the DA back benches after his loss, then quietly out of the country and to a new position in the US. He asked the right questions and revealed much about Maimane that, had more people listened and thought about, might have proved very helpful in making their decision. None of this is to suggest, all things considered, that James is the better leader — he had his own shortcomings — only that all things were never considered in the first place and so the point is, by and large, redundant.
You can be sure Maimane would not get 90% today, if he were challenged by a credible alternative candidate, and largely on the back of those problems highlighted above, and by Wilmot James. Inside and outside the party there is much whispering about the dilution of the party’s liberal principles, the lack of strategy and the lack of a credible alternative to the ANC.
It’s a pity no one is challenging Maimane. The contest, you feel, would have done much to make explicit so many of the implicit problems the DA currently faces, and that would ultimately be good and healthy, if done in the exemplary fashion Maimane and James went about their contest. But alas, he will, in effect, exceed his 90% because, without any competition, his re-election will be unanimous. Irony does not come thicker than that.
James did the DA a great service; all those delegates should take a moment to reflect on it, and the potential value inherent to taking a brave, principled stand even when loss is a certainty.
• Van Onselen is the Head of Politics and Governance at the South African Institute of Race Relations
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