Race is not the only issue hobbling the DA — it is clear that the party is strategically adrift. Differences over the party’s stance towards broad-based black economic empowerment are said to be at the heart of the resignation of its policy chief, Gwen Ngwenya, less than a month before the party is set to unveil its manifesto for elections that promise to be its toughest in a decade.
The strategic drift can be traced to the weakening of the capacity of its senior management, a factor that became apparent at its national conference in 2018 when there were moves to challenge federal council chair James Selfe, who in effect runs the operational arm of the party.
The first glaring sign of this loss of capacity at the top is the DA’s failure to grasp the reality that with a shift in the size and complexion of its support base, a shift in strategy is required. This has not happened. The party’s list process is said to be a nightmare, with white people at the top. While it is trying hard to be nonracial, Business Day understands that the lists tell a different story, and the party is struggling to deal with the image this will project.
Factional dynamics are also understood to be a growing problem in the candidate selection process. The DA may wait until the last minute to release its lists publicly, but that in itself could be a strategic blunder as the fallout would be echoed well into crunch time ahead of the polls.
Another sign is the DA’s response to the election of President Cyril Ramaphosa at the helm of the ANC in December 2017. The party appeared not to have factored in the possibility of a Ramaphosa win, and its response was found wanting. This happened more than a year ago, but further strategic blunders since are set to hobble the opposition party’s growth prospects.
Its handling of the fallout from its dispute with former Cape Town mayor Patricia De Lille, who has now formed her “Good” party to take on the DA, was characterised by a string of missteps.
And this week, after the ANC released its election manifesto in January, the DA was focused on defending its “The ANC is killing us” billboard. As the governing party’s manifesto was drummed home to the electorate, the official opposition was nowhere in sight.
Confirmation of Tshwane mayor Solly Msimanga as the party’s Gauteng premier candidate has been problematic from the get-go. The DA presents itself as a politically savvy organisation, but it did not appear to foresee that his candidacy would conflict with his other crucial role as the executive mayor of the administrative capital of the country.
Now the DA risks losing Tshwane, with Msimanga leaving many unanswered questions after the controversy over city manager Moeketsi Mosola and the allegedly tainted Glad Africa contract. The EFF, which voted to put the DA in the mayoral seat, is set to extract its pound of flesh in exchange for its support for another DA mayor.
The DA has already lost control of the Nelson Mandela Bay metro, for which it fought hardest and campaigned smartest, due to the EFF flexing its political muscle but also because of a degree of political naivety and arrogance on the part of the DA.
In the Western Cape, DA posters call on voters to stop the ANC and the EFF, yet in Gauteng it may look to the EFF to take control of the province should no outright winner emerge, as it did after the 2016 municipal election.
Ngwenya’s resignation letter speaks volumes about the party’s dwindling capacity to respond to the changes it faces, along with SA as a whole. On the operational side, Ngwenya complains that the terms of her employment were never met, that almost a year after her appointment she has no job description, that her research staff are inexperienced and that her unit lacks a long-term strategy.
She wrote about shifting reporting lines on the political front, no clear role for her unit in the federal council, and no political support from the party’s top brass. She complains that she was “hung out to dry” after penning an opinion piece that echoed comments by party leader Mmusi Maimane, who had said the DA wanted to move away from “race-based policies that enabled elite enrichment”.
“Reformists” in the DA consistently blame “hardliners” — the party’s liberal core — and vice versa. But even this contradiction can be managed with a coherent political strategy that factors in the growth needs of the party. While Maimane is not a one-man show calling the shots in the DA, he has to shoulder some responsibility for its policy drift.
The DA remains the largest opposition party in SA and continues to attract a large anti-ANC vote. Its election machinery has grown considerably. If it is to hold on to its spot in the hierarchy of the ever-growing list of political parties in SA, it will have to start from scratch and recoup its strategic focus. If it does not do so it will have only itself to blame for the failure that is knocking at its door.
Marrian is political editor.
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