The DA’s top leadership rallied around its embattled leader, Mmusi Maimane, in the wake of the party’s dismal performance in last week’s general election.
This despite Maimane saying in a letter to all party members that "as leader of the DA, I take full responsibility for the outcome of the election".
Maimane said he could "honestly and in good conscience" say that he had done his best and given everything of himself in the run-up to the election.
The official opposition party’s federal executive decided to take collective responsibility for shedding votes, despite running against an ANC whose campaign was dogged by corruption allegations among its leaders and a record of a stagnant economy and an unemployment rate that rose above 27%.
The DA only met one of its four key objectives, raising questions about Maimane’s leadership and its message going into the sixth general election of the democratic era.
The party’s federal executive ordered the first review of its organisational structures and processes in more than a decade. The review would also look into how it selects candidates.
While the DA comfortably retained its Western Cape stronghold, where its campaign was disrupted by an internal dispute that eventually led to Patricia de Lille’s resignation as Cape Town mayor, it failed in its stated objective of pushing the ANC below 50% in Gauteng and the Northern Cape.
Nationally the party got 20.8% of the votes, compared to 57.5% for the ANC.
The DA lost about 470,000 votes nationally and was sharply down on its performance in the 2016 local government elections, which, at the height of the country’s disillusionment with the corruption of Jacob Zuma’s presidency, saw it win enough support to form administrations with the help of smaller parties in key metros such as Johannesburg and Tshwane.
Maimane’s predecessors Tony Leon and Helen Zille had both raised the party’s support in the elections they fought.
Under Maimane, the DA failed to adjust its message
after Cyril Ramaphosa won the ANC presidency in December 2017 and dislodged Zuma two months later, promising to clean up governance and restore state institutions, such as the SA Revenue Service, that had been decimated during Zuma’s administration.
To the right, the DA lost support to the Freedom Front Plus, which more than doubled its share of the vote. "We all take responsibility for the outcomes of elections, whether good or bad," Athol Trollip, the DA’s national chair, said on Monday after a meeting of the federal executive in Johannesburg.
"That burden does not sit on the shoulders of an individual."
Maimane would remain leader until the party’s federal congress in 2021 and "any talk of a change of a leadership" before then "must be dispelled".
While it was widely expected that the federal executive
would rally around Maimane, a federal council meeting in June, in which party structures would be involved, could be another ball game.
Trollip said the targets the party had set for itself were taken against the backdrop of the 2016 outcomes in which it also took control of Nelson Mandela Bay, where he was mayor until the EFF withdrew its support and tabled a motion of no confidence. But the terrain had since rapidly shifted.
He said the party’s "internal challenges" and the rise of nationalism played a role in the party’s electoral fortunes.
James Selfe, federal executive chair, said the party’s 2004 review had led to changes in the way the party selected candidates and evaluated its public representatives, as well as changed the way the DA’s structures were represented in party bodies.
He said the DA would look at whether those systems were still appropriate for a much bigger party which had a different constituency when the changes were decided on. Selfe said analysing the election would form part of the review process, which would include a ward-by-ward analysis.
Selfe said Maimane would be embarking on a tour of the country where he would talk to branches, activists and donors.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.