The DA needs a better 2024 message

The 2024 general election will be South Africa’s most important since democracy for both the opposition and the ruling parties.

For the ANC, it might be the first time they dip below the 50% mark in the polls and for the Democratic Alliance (DA), it might be the first time they stand a chance of constituting a national government without the ANC.

This should be enough to get either side preparing for the election in a not-business-as-usual kind of way.

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But last weekend’s DA elective federal congress outcomes show it is business as usual for the official opposition. Its core leadership structure has not changed; it has chosen to stick with tried-and-tested Helen Zille in the party’s engine room.

The DA’s biggest outcome was that it chose its election catchphrase – Red for Danger.

Both Zille and re-elected party leader John Steenhuisen chose to use their first media opportunities at the end of what should have been the party’s most decisive congress to declare that Julius Malema’s Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) is the DA’s biggest enemy, or as they chose to put it: Political Enemy No 1.

The EFF is not in power, it is significantly smaller than the DA in electoral support (by almost 50%) and most importantly, there is no chance the DA can snatch even a single voter from the EFF. Ideologically, they are oil and water. So, why would a party that should be declaring the ruling party its No 1 enemy choose a seemingly less significant enemy?

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Zille has gone on record as saying her party has ditched what she calls identity politics, which she says it dabbled with in the Mmusi Maimane era, with “disastrous” consequences. The disastrous consequences were essentially a drop in overall electoral support which led to Maimane’s departure.

What the party that has ditched identity politics has never failed to point out, though, is that in the 2019 election, its support base among black and coloured voters grew, meaning the drop in electoral support was a result of shedding voters, essentially the white vote, to the traditionally right-wing parties like the Freedom Front Plus.

While it makes for really good soundbites to declare that the DA is the “most racially diverse party in South African politics”, the DA leadership still considers it “disastrous” to be shedding votes to the right wing. Hence the need for Political Enemy No 1, the Red for Danger EFF.

The DA has gone as far as adopting a resolution to protect the Reserve Bank’s independence, putting it directly opposite the EFF’s policy. The only logical explanation for its EFF focus is to reassure the voter who would have chosen a right-wing party that “we’ve got your back” against the Red for Danger party, so vote DA.

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The DA has shown itself not to be just after electoral growth across the board but only after reclaiming the votes it lost when Maimane was supposedly playing identity politics.

The downfall with the Red for Danger outlook is that while it might gain the DA that odd percentage it lost, it has the potential of unintentionally galvanising support for their Enemy No 1: the perception it is a “white” party remains because it can’t get black leadership to stay and radical black youth might in turn support the EFF because it is hated by the white party.

The DA needs a better 2024 message.

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