The party for which people in the suburbs vote is on course to ensure that they have no say in government in most of the country for a very long time.
The most important news about the DA is former Gauteng leader John Moodey’s claim that its federal council chair, Helen Zille, told DA representatives to get used to being at most a 20% party. No-one seems to have denied this, so it is safe to assume it is true. And even if Zille did not say this, she may as well have since the DA has made it clear for a while that it is only interested in speaking for a small minority.
This is so not because it decided at a policy conference to ignore the importance of race in a society in which race remains the chief fault line. Most voters, sensibly, don’t take much notice of the resolutions parties pass. It is because its leadership, in the messages it sends out to society, is so determined to antagonise politically active black people that it can land up to the right of the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), which distanced itself from a claim by Zille that there are more racial laws now than under apartheid.
Nor is it helped by repeated incidents in which black DA leaders who express opinions are pushed to the margins. All this is mentioned repeatedly in political discussion. What is not discussed is why it matters. The DA leadership’s wish to return the party to its roots — one run by white people that black people may join if they behave themselves — will not cost it the black votes it needs to contend for power. These were never available to it; even when it sought black support, it never achieved the 30% target it set itself.
The cost is its only realistic route to power in all but a few enclaves: governing arrangements with other parties. It won control of some metropolitan governments outside the Western Cape in 2016 not because it won the most votes but because it made deals with black-led parties.
The DA’s current path makes that all but impossible. While DA-EFF arrangements reminded us that principle plays no role when parties sniff a prospect of controlling government, the EFF could consider this option again without making itself look ridiculous. The issue is probably academic anyway because, having used these deals as a stick to beat former leader Mmusi Maimane, the DA could hardly entertain pacts with the EFF.
Other parties that enjoy significant black support would probably also feel that governing with the DA would cost too much. It can govern with the support of very small parties that don’t much care about credibility only if it wins a share of the vote, which it now admits it won’t get, so that option as well is no longer alive.
This comes as the ANC faces its own credibility problems. We don’t know how ANC voters will react to events since March because there has been no way for them to express themselves at the polls, but the ANC may be blamed by its voters for the worst recession in generations. If that happens, it will create openings for coalitions. The DA has turned its back on that opportunity.
The days when suburban voters were represented, through coalitions or arrangements among parties, in the government of major cities outside the Western Cape are not the future. If the ANC vote does drop, an arrangement between it and the EFF may be the only route to a majority.
By turning its back on most voters, the DA may, therefore, have doomed its own voters to permanent opposition and opened the door to the arrangement among parties those voters most dread.
• Friedman is research professor with the humanities faculty of the University of Johannesburg.
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