Much has been said this week about the DA’s newly adopted policies and the party’s identity. The DA has chosen its path and that choice was to diverge from the vision it set out for itself under the leadership of Helen Zille in her term as party leader — a path she too no longer believes in.
Zille shaped the race debate in the DA through her pursuit of black leaders, to lure the black vote and shrug off the party’s image as one that would bring back apartheid. The question now is what happens to those in the party who do not agree with the new trajectory — after all, the DA under Zille’s leadership grew significantly.
What happens to those she lured to the party back then? Where do they stand now that her vision, her views and her values have changed and reshaped the party? Do they stay and make it work, or do they cut their losses and leave?
The DA held its first policy conference last weekend, after years of battling an identity crisis in terms of what it stood for. It finally dealt with the most controversial issues about race and redress, which had been a divisive matter in the party. In the end the DA adopted the policy that race should not be used as a criterion to categorise South Africans, while adopting redress as one of its principles.
This was in contrast to its previous policy that race was a proxy for disadvantage. It defined its now adopted principle of nonracialism as the “rejection of race as a way to categorise and treat people, particularly in legislation”. Not everyone in the DA agrees with this approach and that is fine. South Africans enjoy freedom of association and political freedom.
It is unlikely, in any large organisation, that you will have wholesale agreement on every aspect, idea or policy, but you also cannot attack those who don’t agree. It cannot be a take-it-or-leave-it situation. There are those in the party who are known to recognise race, such as KwaZulu-Natal MPL Mbali Ntuli, who will be standing against John Steenhuisen for the position of party leader, and Gauteng chair Mike Moriarty, who will go up against Helen Zille for the position of federal chair.
Such members will have to decide whether they would still be able to stand for leadership positions and as public representatives knowing they don’t entirely agree with party policy. They are now bound by the decision of the policy conference. Moriarty says he believes it is possible to address the wrongs of the past through a deracialised economic justice policy, but that you have to be purpose driven. He says you have to monitor the success of your intervention. This still needs to be discussed further in the party in his view.
It will be interesting to see where this discussion goes, and how the DA believe these interventions should be monitored. Will it be through a racial scorecard, especially considering that the majority of the disadvantaged in our country are black?
In the end it will come down to a personal decision for many DA members who find themselves on the other side of the policy debate. They will need to decide based on principle whether they can still go out and campaign for the party ahead of next year’s local government election, and any other election after that.
The DA has been here before. After the party’s disappointing showing in the 2019 elections, where it lost votes, questions were asked over the DA’s representatives and their inability to truly campaign for the party in areas where they faced anger over how the party was governing cities such as Johannesburg, and in communities that believed the DA had not dealt properly with racially divisive issues.
Former leader Mmusi Maimane highlighted the issues that led to the decline at the DA’s first post-election federal council meeting. These included party discipline, unity of purpose, the DA’s messaging and public relations, its inability to hold errant members to account, an anti-DA media bias, and public representatives who needed convincing of the product they are selling.
It is not going to serve the party well next year when the campaign for the local government elections starts if there are once again party representatives who are not completely on board. For some, especially councillors, the decision is going to come down to whether they just push through for the sake of keeping their job or on principle step down and say “I cannot do this”.
Some, like former Gauteng leader John Moodey, have already done so, even before the policy conference, stating that the party had lost its way and accusing it of lacking ambition and commitment to being an inclusive political force capable of unseating the ANC.
But it is not as simple as people making a decision based on needing to keep their jobs. Some members of the DA have given a big part of their lives to building SA’s official opposition party. It has become ingrained in who they are, and stepping away is not an easy decision.
We have seen this in the ANC, with many unable to leave despite the party being wholly compromised by corruption and looting by some of its leaders. In time we will see where those in the DA stand — and how much they can stand.
• Quintal is political editor.
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