DA keeps missing the point

So much has been said and written about the death of the ruling party in this country that it’s only diehard supporters who keep on denying this self-evident truth.

Sadly, it is not other parties killing it by taking voters away from it, the ANC is busy eating itself from within.

Parties that seemed well-positioned to benefit from the demise of the ruling party have done a spectacular job in ensuring that disenchanted voters remain in the wilderness with no political home to turn to.

The current official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), has systematically and consistently scored so many own goals that it has even alienated those who might have voted for them.

The recent flip-flopping by the DA over the racist Phoenix election posters is a case in point.

It doesn’t take a genius to see that even though no-one has been convicted over the deaths of scores of black people in Phoenix during the recent looting spree and lawlessness, most people who live in KwaZulu-Natal view the killings as racially motivated.

The perception is that even though people felt threatened and had to defend their lives and properties, the killings were motivated by underlying racism directed at black people by the Phoenix Indian population.

The DA labelled those that killed people as heroes through their election posters. DA party leader John Steenhuisen couldn’t help himself – he had to add his supposed voice of reason to explain the posters away.

Over the years, the DA has been at pains to explain that its biggest voter base is no longer white, but black. It has produced proof from past elections to back them up.

What it doesn’t seem to grasp is that for the party to make major inroads and move from being a distant second, it needs to reinvent itself to actively take away disgruntled voters from the ruling party, instead of only relying on new
black voters.

The disgruntled voters that should be easy pickings for the DA are the ones they keep alienating from the party by continuously scoring unnecessary own goals on race-related matters.

The DA can argue until it is blue in face that it is a multiracial party, but its track record on race-related matters will keep haunting them at the polls.

Instead of being a party that wins elections outright, it will continue being one that aims to bring a weak and dying ruling party to under 50% at the polls only by getting into bed with smaller parties like the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Here’s a short history of the DA’s recent race problem: Lindiwe Mazibuko, Mmusi Maimane, Patricia de Lille, Mamphela Ramphele and Herman Mashaba.

And then there were Helen Zille’s “colonialism was good for Africa” tweets, Tony Leon’s “Maimane was an experiment gone wrong” and now Steenhuisen’s “Phoenix racist murderers are heroes” statement.

The ANC has shed well over 12% of its support nationally over the years. Those are the voters that the DA should be targeting to move beyond being a party that wins through coalitions.

Real DA growth lies in winning lost ANC votes, not waiting for the ruling party to self-destruct.