The DA ended seven years of torturous debate over its identity at the weekend, adopting a new policy on economic justice and clear, new definitions of nonracialism and redress. The experiment of playing ANC-lite has been left in the trash heap of history; the DA will now be its own party. The relief of leaders who briefed the media was palpable.
It has been a long and unpleasant road from 2013, when the party first began to toy with the ideas of racial quotas, with MPs “mistakenly” supporting a bill on employment equity in the National Assembly, and then fashioning its own version of black economic empowerment (BEE). The debates over whether policies on racial redress are acceptable in a liberal party — in which philosophically it is the individual and not the group that is at the centre of society — have divided it ever since.
Each congress since has seen contortionist defining and redefining of values as DA representatives — who had become a great deal more diverse due to the party’s growth — grappled with their new collective identity. It always ended in an ambiguous compromise.
The new policies, drafted by policy chief Gwen Ngwenya, are stripped of ambiguity. The party endorses the value of nonracialism, which it says means the rejection of race as a social category. Race is a false social construct and it is the DA’s mission to deconstruct it permanently. Groups can socially identify on the basis of a number of factors, but in the DA philosophy race is not one of them.
This flows into the DA model for economic redress and its policy on economic justice. Redress is endorsed to correct an unjust situation, it says, particularly but not exclusively one brought about by the injustice of apartheid, and to promote equality of opportunity. Policies to promote economic justice should be modelled on the UN’s sustainable development goals, which aim to tackle the drivers of inequality, from childhood nutrition to education to more expansive employment.
Where individual redress is applied — for example, to access a particular educational opportunity — a means test should be used to determine those who are eligible.
The package relieves the DA’s liberal dilemma: how to endorse the need for redress of SA’s horrible past without recourse to “the group” and racial quotas.
While the DA delegates appear well pleased with the outcome — there was little disagreement at the conference itself — important questions arise. Will voters like it? Is the DA better positioned now to make a positive impact on SA? What does the repositioning say about the DA’s previously stated ambition to become a governing party? And, is race really a false construct?
The DA’s core voters — racial minorities — will love the new policies. The removal of race as a criterion for anything, especially redress, will be strongly supported. Within these groups there are individuals with a sincere commitment to liberal democracy. But for the rest liberalism will provide the respectable cover for race denialism and the refusal to acknowledge that the privilege most white people enjoy today is the result of the unearned benefits of apartheid and colonialism.
What will black voters think? In the lead-up to the policy conference many black DA leaders made it known that they believed race is a suitable proxy for disadvantage, and racial redress is appropriate and necessary to counter the ills of the past. Both Mmusi Maimane and Herman Mashaba gave it as a reason for their departure a year ago.
While DA federal chair Helen Zille says there were reams of input into the policy proposals before they reached the congress floor, by several accounts debate at the congress was minimal. With the new positions carried so overwhelmingly, those with other views have no alternative but to leave — if they feel strongly enough — or concede defeat.
Black voters, who had been attracted to the DA because it had begun to look like it might evolve into a cleaner, more efficient version of the ANC, have already had that hope dashed by the events of the past year. The removal of Maimane, which coincided with the return of Zille at her most strident against figments — both real and imagined — of “racial nationalism”, have smashed the DA’s standing in this pool of voters.
The removal of race-based redress will affirm suspicions that the DA is a party whose real agenda is to defend white privilege by denying that it exists at all. Should Zille continue in her role as a social media warrior against woke-ism and assertions of black identity, suspicions and antagonisms will sharpen.
Ngwenya’s response to doubts about the electability of DA policies is to assert that there is no evidence to make this claim. On the contrary, she says, in the surveys that have been done most black people say BEE has not assisted them at all. She also asserts that it is not a policy that was formulated because it would be popular, but because it is right. There will be those who get it and those who don’t, and the DA will happily continue without them.
What the DA has done is build itself a comfortable and tasteful new house on a landscape that has been shaped by 300 years of colonial and racial violence and dispossession. This house will not be — as the DA slogan used to say — “a home for all”, but rather a home for some.
In the process, the DA has taken a step back from aspiring to be a governing party. It has taken a step back away from accepting any responsibility for racial reconciliation. Most members will certainly be happier, but SA will not be made any better by a denial that race still matters in SA and that it will matter forever.
• Paton is editor at large.
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