The DA’s policy chief Gwen Ngwenya has announced her resignation with a week to go before the official opposition party’s federal congress kicks off.
The DA will use its national congress to discuss and reaffirm policies aimed at taking the country forward, the party said. Scheduled to take place at Gallagher Convention Centre in Midrand from April 1 to April 2, and with more than 2,000 delegates expected to attend, the party will also elect its federal leader, federal chair and three deputy federal chairs.
Ngwenya took to social media on Sunday, saying she has accepted a role to lead Airbnb’s policy and legislative activities in the Middle East and Africa.
DA federal council chair Helen Zille thanked Ngwenya for her “many contributions and deep insights” she brought to the DA’s policy portfolio.
DA MP Mathew Cuthbert, the party’s spokesperson on trade & industry, said he has been asked by Zille to hold the fort temporarily on policy discussions.
Political parties including the governing ANC and EFF have often lashed out at DA policies, dismissing them as countertransformative, which Cuthbert does not take kindly to.
“I am of the view that other political parties should concern themselves with their own policy development process rather than that of the DA. The question is rather whether our policies resonate with ordinary South Africans and I believe that they do,” Cuthbert said.
The contentious issue of race has been a thorn in the DA’s side for years and resulted in the exodus of several black leaders who cited racism as their main reason for leaving. The DA, however, argues the assumption that one’s race represents people who think, feel, or have the same experience of shared events, based on their physical appearance, is false.
Incumbent DA leader John Steenhuisen, who will go up against former Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse for the federal leader position at the congress, has said race-based legislation has deepened the divide between rich and poor and led to “every single metric in the country moving in the wrong direction”.
Nelson Mandela University political analyst Ntsikelelo Breakfast said race has always been a “central way of examining things within the body politic of this country and within the DA”. While the DA espouses a policy of nonracialism it looks like the race issue is still embedded in the party, Breakfast said.
The DA, he said, has always been characterised by two factions: “A faction of black leaders advocating for race-inspired policies, and those espousing nonracialism”.
“The issue of race has not been resolved. My view is that they [DA] have been co-opting black leaders into senior positions to make them conform and entrench dominance over them. But some feel undermined when they are told to toe the line and [elect to] jump ship.”
The party held its first national policy conference during the height of Covid-19 in 2020, where it rejected race as a way to categorise people.
Cuthbert said while the congress will afford delegates an opportunity to put forward new policy proposals, “these will have to be fleshed out by the federal council and the federal policy unit thereafter and either incorporated into the existing macro policies or as stand-alone policies of their own”.
“As per the resolutions received by the party for the purposes of this congress there are no resolutions which aim to ‘review’ previously adopted party policy but rather aim to either reaffirm or add to existing party policies,” Cuthbert said.
A few of the “interesting resolutions” put forward by delegates include a commitment to implement the UN Sustainable Development Goals Framework for Redress “where we govern”; protecting the independence of the Reserve Bank; and divestment of government pensions from fossil fuels.
“Ultimately it is the prerogative of the congress to decide which of these proposals are to be adopted,” Cuthbert said.
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