Think Piece: DA crisis must be deracialised

The political pandemonium that has befallen the Democratic Alliance (DA) over the past week gave rise to an interesting intellectual wave in the country. It gave rise to a strong racialist perspective that seeks to racialise the current crisis facing the DA.

The proponents of this school of thought contend that the outcome of the recent federal congress council is a reflection of entrenched racism within the DA. The high-level resignations, especially that of the Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba followed by that of DA leader Mmusi Maimane, give credence to this intellectual contention.

As a result, racial reductionism is a dominant narrative in the media and unfortunately, an alternative view or antithesis is not permeating.

The purpose of this article is to deconstruct the dominant racial construct that seeks to explain the unfolding leadership crisis facing the DA.

My point of departure is that the crisis facing the DA is a reflection of an ideological implosion and sharpening of class contradictions from within. Therefore, there is a need to de-racialise the debate and unearth the deeper and underlying challenges that are propelling the DA crisis.

This implosion was bound to happen given the fact that the DA fundamentally subscribes to neo-liberalism. In its quest to be representative of all South Africans it took a conscious ideological detour and attracted a sizeable number of black people into its ranks. This is the DA’s political and electoral strategy that was unveiled in 2007.

Helen Zille as the then leader of the party implemented this strategy with great success. It was premised upon three cardinal pillars: attracting blacks into the DA, reducing the ANC majority in parliament and retaining the Western Cape.

To the DA’s credit, the strategy was implemented with precision and the party saw exponential growth patterns. In 2009, it moved from 16.66% to 22.23% in 2014. During the 2019 general election, the DA slid back to 20.7% losing a mere 1.53 percentage points’ electoral support.

This is what broke the camel’s back and unfortunately Maimane as a tall tree caught the strong wind.

The hardcore neo-liberals for too long were resisting the possible modernisation of the DA fearing that it would metamorphosise into something like “diluted neo-liberalism”. That was an outcome that they were not willing to accommodate as it would signal the DA’s ideological diversion from its core neo-liberal ideological outlook.

Evidently, the hardcore neo-liberals were gradually pushing back Maimane’s modernisation attempts. Central to Maimane’s modernisation plan was to do away with political corporatism that is entrenched in the DA and often is in direct conflict with representative democracy.

To Maimane’s disadvantage, a new phenomenon of “Judasicariotisim” started rearing its ugly head, with some leaders denouncing his electoral strategy. Instead of taking a principled stance of collective ownership of the electoral decline, they used the organisational review report to knock him down.

The time has arrived for a black liberal party to emerge from the ashes of the DA crisis if liberalism in its classical sense will have a place in the South African political landscape.

• Zamikhaya Maseti is a political economy analyst and MD of Ngubengcuka Consulting

Zamikhaya Maseti.

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