“I am the DA’s warrior. It’s who I am, I will fight to the death for a just cause. I go into battle and I don’t retreat. The warrior has had to sit down calmly and the empath side of my personality has been working hard and I can never be anyone else than who I am, half-blade, half-silk.” — Phumzile van Damme
There is a perception that Twitter is inherently limiting. It’s not true; it is, in fact, deeply revealing. A character limit might constrain nuance and evidence but, when it comes to the platform’s true power — the ability to lay bare one’s base instincts — it is a peerless force for transparency. Spend long enough on it and your disposition will inevitably be set out in great detail, whether you recognise it or not.
The DA has a number of high-profile online personalities now, who, unable to resist the Siren-like call of Twitter or the temporary high, politically correct judgment induces, have waded headstrong into debates without thinking, but with serious consequence. There are a few pretenders to that particular throne; Phumzile van Damme is undoubtedly one of them.
In the light of an election result that seems to have provoked some introspection about how the party goes about its business, she is worth looking at. Not just because, for many, she is an exemplar for the DA’s online brand but also, a metaphor for a series of broader problems that far exceed her.
‘I stare into a fire and smile’
Van Damme doesn’t wield much influence inside the DA. She has stood for various, rather minor leadership roles in the national caucus, all to no avail — but on Twitter she is able to exercise some sway. With just less than 100,000 followers and an online presence built largely around her time as the DA’s national spokesperson, she has now influenced several important issues, not always in the way the DA would want.
Most recently, she led the post-election charge, suggesting that the DA’s decline was, in truth, “a win”, as it confirmed the party as a home “for all”. In fairness, she was not alone on this front but, after years of spur-of-the-moment online sentiments, Van Damme’s every tweet now carries with it a certain “loose cannon” reputation. And so, she quickly became a metonym for that particular view. It wasn’t well received.
In the aftermath, Van Damme announced she would be taking some time off from Twitter (in reality, a matter of hours), to reflect and recuperate. But several current and former colleagues (including two former DA leaders) took issue with her position publicly. That saw Van Damme emerge from exile to tweet, with reference to a Helen Zille op-ed on the subject, “Instead of smarmy tweets and opinion pieces about ‘where the DA went wrong’, how’s about you consider your own actions in countless tweets AGAINST DA policy preventing the DA’s growth in new markets? Despite being told not to. If the shoe fits, wear it and walk in responsibility.”
You have to stand your ground. But also to pick your fights. She cannot. Almost every critique is instantaneously warped into an assault on her race or gender. She seems incapable of distinguishing the ad hominem from argument
Van Damme does not lack for war talk. When incensed, which is often, she is prone to evoke all kinds of vitriol. She produces endless memes of warriors wielding swords, as if she is about to lead an army into battle. You get the sense she sees herself as the central protagonist in Game of Thrones (“I’m not like the ones who came before me. I stare into a fire and smile. So, come on through. Do your worst”). Combative hyperbole is thus infused into much of her online language.
She says she has an IFNJ (Introverted, iNtuitive, Feeling, Judging) personality. As a result, “I freak myself out by how easily I could verbally destroy someone”. But all that would seem to come at a cost. As Van Damme says, “My personality is one where my go-to emotion is anger. I go from 0 to 100 in two seconds. My anger is so intense and I know I can destroy someone and in turn, myself.”
That is likely a very honest self-assessment. It is not, however, the kind of personality you would think best placed to swim in the poisonous well that is Twitter.
As a result of her latest skirmish, she is now on something of a self-inflicted anger management course — “You can only imagine the restraint I am fighting with. But restraint is what I will choose.
“Peace, love and happiness, y’all.”
‘Fire and brimstone’
Van Damme says her spirit animal is a tiger. But the problem is that, for all the memes of a vicious beast about to savage some unsuspecting prey (“I will go for the jugular”), she hasn’t yet mauled anyone. And while she constantly scratches at all-comers, her timeline leaves you more with the impression that her spirit animal is a kitten, together with which she is constantly wrestling an endlessly unraveling ball of string.
At any given moment, Van Damme seems to be at the heart of a thousand different virtual feuds. Only, her enemies, rather than cowering away into the corner, seem ever-more emboldened by her attacks. They relentlessly pursue her. There is a lot of Zille about Van Damme. She lacks that core leadership trait — restraint and the ability to rise above all the pettiness and inanity out there, and to be magnanimous and authoritative. Instead, as sure as night follows day, any view she expresses soon devolves into a myriad trivial, personal and entirely hostile online exchanges, each one waged to the bitter end (“I rush into battle and I don’t come home without a scalp”).
The difference between Zille and Van Damme, is that while Zille can back up 280 characters with 280,000 more, comprising a cogent argument, whatever you make of its veracity, Van Damme cannot. Or, at least, she never does. The views she expresses on Twitter, that is all they ever are. Slogans, accompanied by a meme or some Song of Fire and Ice.
“And so it is clear, come for me again, and in fact and person in the DA on that tip and disinformation tactics trust me when I say you will be met with my fury. Fire and brimstone. I took down one of the biggest PR firms in the world, you are small thing [sic].”
And the conspiracies. So many secret plots and agendas, all set in motion by her enemies, all designed to undermine and ruin her. The SA Institute of Race Relations (IRR) has infiltrated the DA (“driven by bitter, malicious people bent sowing seeds of disinformation based on personal gripes and settling scores”); there are bots out there, particularly to target and destroy her (“You haven’t been under attack from bots for months spreading the narrative that my opinions and tweets (all DA policy) lose the DA votes”); the Purple Cows are in cahoots with who knows what (“I know what you and your buddies are doing, I’ve known for a long time and in your desperation you’ve just revealed a hand”).
It is all part of a carefully co-ordinated scheme to bring her down from her throne. She claims all use racism and sexism and abuse and bigotry to this end. It is not a fair fight. It’s Van Damme against the world.
Conspiracies have taken a powerful grip on many in the DA. They provide the lexicon in which the party faithful understands the world.
‘I can read evil’
Twitter being Twitter, there is no doubt some truth to some of this. She, like so many in the DA, and black DA public representatives in particular, endures some God-awful, horribly vicious and personal insults. It doesn’t help being on the front line either. Then again, every one suffers online abuse, to one degree or another. It’s the nature of the game. That is not to say it should all be silently tolerated. You have to stand your ground. But also to pick your fights. She cannot. Almost every critique is instantaneously warped into an assault on her race or gender. She seems incapable of distinguishing the ad hominem from argument.
Constantly proclaim your bravery too loudly, declare your enemies too frequently and the impression one is left with is not of fearlessness but great vulnerability. Her timeline reads more like a cry for help, than a call to arms
There can be real world consequences for all this. In 2016, Van Damme would declare a Durban restaurant racist, after it had declined to book her table. The revelation produced a flurry of news stories, all along those lines (“‘Racist’ restaurant tells DA’s Van Damme it’s fully booked — but gives white friend table”). An hour later, her battle horse already mounted, she would tweet, “Called them again on my way there. They gave me a table.”
Then, typically, as if with a snap of the fingers, it’s all the Age of Aquarius. Peace, love and happiness. (“I am an empath, which has its benefits but also means I can read evil, which, because of who I am I go to war and it leaves me depleted. I’m learning balance.”)
This cycle, of anger and meditation, external vilification and internal peace, has played itself out a hundred times with Van Damme. The provocation, the retaliation, the retreat then the rebirth; each time, we are told, from the fire itself, like a Phoenix rising. There have been some bonkers positions along the way, and while it is true Twitter has next to no real effect on voters per se, to say it is has no effect on anything at all would be a mistake. Certainly it seems to be taking its toll on Van Damme herself.
You get the sense all that bravado masks something more fragile. It has an air of desperation to it. Constantly proclaim your bravery too loudly, declare your enemies too frequently and the impression one is left with is not of fearlessness but great vulnerability. Her timeline reads more like a cry for help, than a call to arms.
The troops, in the form of senior MPs and authority figures, do not for the most part rally around her when she plunges into battle. Too much of a volatile risk. Many of them do take issue with her views, however, in polite and measured terms. If her online personality is in anyway mirrored inside the DA, she will have her fair share of enemies there too. Either way, she is forced to rely on retweeting scraps, in the form of endorsements from those in the mob who agree with her conspiratorial views of the world. Hers is a lonely battle. As it always is for the misunderstood and unfairly maligned.
Otherwise, she is egged on by those who would wish to see race cemented as the cornerstone on which the DA’s moral philosophy is based, as a great truth teller. And that is a line of thinking the DA is particularly susceptible to at the moment. It is a recipe for poor judgment, when online affirmation comes primarily from those who see you as a convenient weapon in their own existential fight for social justice, or to exact their own revenge on those DA personalities they have fallen out with.
Targeted and focused, on the things that matter, Van Damme can be effective enough. She did good work as the DA’s communications spokesperson, on the SABC commission of inquiry, and on helping to remove the cancer that was Hlaudi Motsoeneng. But, trapped in the Twitterverse, she seems to embody the very opposite: a stream of consciousness, mostly centred on herself and designed, ironically, in Motsoeneng-like fashion, to advertise and justify her own heroic disposition as she imagines smiting her enemies. (“I lash out at evil with unbridled fury. I use it to vanquish and destroy.”)
‘I dared shine too bright’
It’s a tough one for the DA. The party has allowed this situation to spiral. At first, it was thought helpful, to have a somewhat populist, brash and provocative personality, talking about things like race head-on and unapologetically. But, give someone enough rope, and they will eventually hang themselves. Unchecked, self-confidence has morphed into egomania, political correctness has transformed into race-based thinking, and provocation has devolved into perpetual conflict.
You get the sense Van Damme knows this on some level (“I dared shine too bright”). On another level, she does not (“I fight to the death and I don’t lose”).
And no one, really, can say anything. Because Van Damme is only fulfilling the unofficial mandate she was given. So it’s hard to blame her. In turn, she is just one of several such rogue online “warriors”. Many others in the DA show scant regard for the kind of reasonable care and self-discipline it takes to represent a brand, as opposed to hijack it. After all, why take issue with Van Damme when Herman Mashaba can openly suggest illegal immigrants are carrying Ebola?
It is a bigger problem than Van Damme alone. It is indicative of a series of more fundamental communications problems and policies. Party discipline has collapsed. There seems to be a misunderstanding among many in the DA: that the healthy and open exchange of ideas, in agreement or disagreement, necessitates the elevation of personality above the idea itself. So that each position becomes not merely a test of principle but of personal conviction and morality. And, when the two don’t align, as is so often the case, the former is scarified in the name of the latter. Each personality feigns to be the embodiment of the DA. But the DA itself has no body.
None of this will matter to Van Damme. As with all conspiracy theorists, criticism is no more than a confirmation of their world view, as correct. To exist on Twitter in this way, is to live and relive a closed loop. Round and round. Faster and faster. Angrier and angrier. It isn’t going to end well, unless someone puts their foot down. And that is necessary because, as Van Damme herself says, in the end, she is going to destroy herself.
• Van Onselen is the head of politics and governance at the SA Institute of Race Relations.
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