Here is the lay of the land: the DA is under immense pressure and the situation inside the party is febrile. The reasons for this are many and various but, to the party’s credit, it has acknowledged there is a problem and has commissioned a review of the organisation. It will be presented to the party’s federal executive on Friday.
The prospect of that review, together with a range of other controversies, has seen something snap inside the party, and its members are at each other’s throats. There are leaks, fights, slurs, vicious gossip and internal poison, much of which is playing out publicly.
Of all these toxins, the most dangerous — and the one that is starting to take on a life of its own — is race. There are now so many factions and sub-factions in the DA, it is hard to keep track of them all. But, in general terms, one side accuses the other of being racist — by trying to take the party back to being a white’s only enclave (a stupid line from first principles); and, on the other side — of becoming a home to racial nationalists. But everyone in the DA seems agreed: everyone else in the party is a racist of some or other variety.
The stuff that has been said the last two weeks is disgraceful, not least by the DA leader himself, who has played an entirely irresponsible role in setting the scene for a potential race war. The DA is fuelling a conflict which, if it does ever fully coalesce around race, will burn the entire organisation to the ground. If there is one fire no-one can control in SA, it is racial conflict.
This conflict has been ably exacerbated by the media, as is its wont. It has produced a series of pieces and online comment in the last two weeks no less disgraceful in the utter contempt for perspective, evidence and reason. It seems set to make race the fundamental and only issue, at the expense of any considered analysis.
But the racial hysteria that has the DA in its grip seems to risk pulling the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) into its orbit. This week, the IRR launched an entirely political campaign called #savetheopposition. It was entirely political because, on reading the relevant statement, it is devoid of substantive argument or evidence.
The majority of it is dedicated to documenting how wounded the IRR seems to be at all the names some in the DA have called it; but, it does have a list of demands/recommendations at the end — none of which are supported with evidence or argument.
One those is that “racist leaders” in the DA be expelled.
When asked who these racist leaders were, and what evidence there was in evidence of their racism, a spokesperson for the IRR said: “We are not going to provide a list of names for various reasons.” But intimated that its call revolved around, “events around the Schweizer-Reneke school — and how that was handled within the party; comments made about white leaders in meetings and factions; letters and notes circulating on internal groups, and those leaders who promote explicitly race-based policies”.
There are a few points worth making about this. First, to claim people are categorically racist, without being willing to say who exactly or why, is a problem. The phantom “you are a racist” game, is well-established in SA. It is so destructive precisely because such claims often involve little or no regard for evidence or reason. The IRR decries it all the time.
Perhaps certain leaders in the DA are racist. If so, the IRR should have the courage of its convictions. If it cannot support its claims, however, it should not make them. It is irresponsible and, frankly, exactly how the ANC and EFF operate.
It is likely that what the IRR means, is that race-based thinking is rife in the DA. Fair enough. That is an important claim one can make with much evidence in support (not that it does this in its statement). But one must say what you mean in a volatile environment like this, and be able to back it up, or risk being dismissed as superficial and divisive. Least of all if you are a serious think-tank.
Second, on the IRR’s attempts to influence the DA, there is a nonsense argument, among many in the DA, that this is untoward somehow. That is a remarkable bit of convenient rubbish, least of all because the DA spends so much of its time trying directly to influence ANC internal politics. The IRR too spent enormous capital and resources trying to influence the ANC to get rid of Jacob Zuma — much more than it has ever invested in the DA. But, strangely, no-one in the DA or media seemed to have a problem with that.
On this front, it often doesn’t matter what the IRR says: there will be those in the DA who, because they bear the brunt of the IRR’s criticism, attempt to dismiss it all as born of some conspiracy. They, too, are playing the ANC and EFF’s game.
But there is something to be said about the IRR’s attempts to influence the DA: it isn’t working. There are many in the DA, of all persuasions, who have contempt for the IRR’s approach, whatever its merits.
The institute risks alienating people it should have the ear of. And its deep interest in the DA runs the risk of it being drawn into DA factionalism, and losing its objective view. It is clear from things the IRR says and does online, it is being leaked information by factions in the DA, all of which it reveals with great gusto. Only rarely with an accompanying analysis or thoughtful perspective; rather in wild, absolutist terms.
It is difficult to understand what the IRR expects of the DA. The party has acknowledged there is a problem, and instituted a review. But, at the 11th hour, the IRR has launched a rhetorical and divisive campaign it failed to substantiate. To what end? Was it expecting the review panel to change its findings at the last moment because the IRR listed some bullet points? By all means, if the review is a whitewash, say so once you have read it. But all the IRR’s campaign seems to have achieved is to be entirely counterproductive in the big picture.
Perhaps the IRR thinks Helen Zille is the manifestation of the internal DA zeitgeist? She is not. Any party is a complex, multifaceted thing, with many moving parts and influences. If you reduce everything simply to binaries, you will lose your ability to influence for the simple reason that you lose credibility on both sides. Because no “side” is one thing — the IRR and DA relationship is an important one, worth preserving and valuing. That requires some maturity.
For the IRR, that extends beyond the DA. The IRR is currently running the online hashtag #allpoliticiansaretrash. All politicians? It is puerile, binary thinking. That is not how you influence people, it is how you alienate them. The same can be said of much of the IRR’s communication on the DA. Increasingly, when it comes to politics, the IRR is behaving politically —at least online— rather than using its primary weapons: objective reason and evidence.
For the DA, it requires listening to the arguments the IRR makes, when it makes them, and the evidence in support of them, and accepting that the IRR will always have a vested interest influencing the DA, just as it does the liberal cause generally. If it were not so hypersensitive, the DA could have learnt a lot from the IRR, which outside of its recent behaviour, remains the premium liberal think-tank in SA, and has made much sense.
Ask yourself this: how has the liberal cause in SA been aided by the DA and IRR’s behaviour in the past two weeks? You need look no further than the ANC and EFF, both of whom are laughing, as both the DA (internally) and the IRR (externally) have been reduced to rolling out their playbook: driving a binary, absolutist and abstract racial narrative, without evidence, that has a profoundly damaging effect, and which is potentially all-consuming.
It’s been a terrible two weeks for the liberal cause in SA, as the two main keepers of the flame fight among themselves and each other. The exchanges you see online — all bitter, petty racial sniping and mocking — make you wonder if rationality is even a liberal value anymore.
Just look at any online exchange between the IRR and the DA. The modus operandi seems to be that both sides choose an ideological opponent whom they then goad and provoke, with no interest in persuading, it seems — only humiliating or defaming. They then bask in the retweeted glory of their clever put-down. And so, every exchange boils down to little more than hate.
IRR CEO Frans Cronje is not on Twitter. He needs to get online. Some of his junior staff members are behaving like children. As for the DA, hopefully, the review will have some firm words about managing its brand, because what party discipline there was has long since evaporated.
As immaturely as everyone behaved, it now seems unlikely this review is ever going to be seriously read for what it says. The environment has been so successfully polarised by everyone concerned, you feel each faction is simply going to go straight for whatever paragraph best suits its agenda and tweet that with an “I told you so” and appropriate emoticon. Or just denounce the whole thing as not having identified enough racists for their liking.
It is amazing and depressing to watch how these two liberal institutions have inadvertently adopted the ANC and EFF’s most potent weapon. Who even needs the ANC or EFF to say the DA is racist? The DA and IRR are doing their job for them. All they need to do is sit back and watch, and perhaps occasionally fan the fire from afar.
Unless this behaviour is arrested, both sides will get what they seem to want: a race war, with everyone irrevocably labelled in one camp or another and immovable as a result of the perception. Perhaps that line has already been crossed. If it has, both the IRR and the DA played their part, and both should take ownership of the ruin that will inevitably follow.
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