Democratic Alliance spokesperson Lindiwe Mazibuko this week announced that she would be standing against Atholl Trollip for the party’s parliamentary leadership in October. The Mail & Guardian spoke to Mazibuko about her decision.
At only 31 years of age, do you think you have the necessary experience to fulfill arguably the second most powerful position in the DA?
Having worked as the party’s spokesperson for the past two and a half years, I believe I certainly have the necessary experience in terms of communicating the DA’s vision for the future and road towards the 2014 election.
That being said, I have deliberately assembled a team of running mates in Wilmot James and Watty Watson who have extensive parliamentary experience, in order to make it a rounded leadership team. Watty has been a member of Parliament since 1994 and is currently the leader in the National Council of Provinces. Wilmot has headed up all manner of civil society organisations and has extensive experience in managing political organisations.
Between us, I think we have all the requisite skills and experience along with the diversity to make this a very compelling offer.
Do you feel your age might count in your favour, based on the youthful majority that makes up South Africa’s electorate?
Absolutely, I don’t view my age as a disadvantage at all. This is not only because South Africa is such a young country, but also because of the under-representation of South Africa’s young people in politics.
There is this idea you must be a “youth politician”, but in fact in the DA we have a lot of young people who are in extraordinarily senior leadership positions. People like Timothy Nast in Midvaal, Gauteng — he’s running the best local authority in the province according to the ANC at only 29 years old. Then there is also Jonathon Moakes — he’s the party’s chief executive officer and he’s 30 years old.
So I believe it’s an advantage to have young people in leadership positions in a country where they can relate to the vast majority of the electorate, and I think young people would respond well to having somebody they can identify with in a leadership position.
This does not negate the issues surrounding experience because we have a highly specialised and skilled caucus. But from a leadership point of view, as we move towards 2014 I believe my age is nothing but an advantage.
Why have you decided to run for this position now? Would it not have been wiser to wait another four years, gain more experience and then challenge for parliamentary leadership?
This is not about me; it’s about the future of this party and the future of this country. I believe we need to make bold moves now in order to make sure we continue to grow in 2014. We’ve been growing non-stop since 1994 and people have started thinking that growth for the DA is a foregone conclusion — but it’s not. If we don’t make the right move at the right time; if we don’t take the right decisions; if we don’t campaign in a particular way and target a particular electorate, these gains are not going to be a foregone conclusion.
We have an opportunity now that won’t be repeated. We’re not going to be in the position right now where one in four South Africans support us, where the ANC is being pulled apart by infighting and where there is an opportunity for an alternative to come to the fore. If we make the right decisions now, at this point in South African history, we can set the groundwork to become a national governing party.
But this has to happen now, in 2011, where we put together a plan that is going to win us more votes, that is going to communicate our plans for national government — not just government in local authorities — and we have got to start to win the hearts and minds of more South African voters.
That all has to take place now; if we wait until 2014 the moment might have been missed. So it’s got much more to do with timing in South Africa than the timing for me personally.
There is a little bit of a history of you being belittled by the ANC. You’ve been called a “coconut”, a “tea-girl” and are intermittently derided on social networks such as twitter. How does that sit with you?
Politics is a tough business, it’s not easy and you have to withstand a lot of attacks on your personal integrity from people you don’t know. But it’s not as difficult as it would seem from the headlines about “tea-girls” and “coconuts” that have been flashed in the media. In actual fact, it’s not an uphill battle all of the time — there are a lot of people who support us. My personal experience in Parliament is not something I didn’t expect. My colleagues and I knew we would be faced with all kinds of criticism, we’ve stared it down, we’ve continued ahead and the number of people supporting us has grown. So, I’ve had a wonderful time in Parliament and believe I’ve grown in leaps and bounds since I became an MP.
What is your vision for the DA as a parliamentary movement and how will you marry this with the national vision for the party?
When Tony Leon was the leader of this party he was punching with a much smaller caucus and was able to make the kind of impact in Parliament that one would not expect from such a small caucus. As we’ve grown bigger, we haven’t made that kind of proportionate impact. I honestly believe that now that we’re a caucus of 83 members, there is a lot of room for us to make a huge impact on how Parliament is run.
Parliament has just become a legislation factory for the governing party, where decisions are taken outside of Parliament and pushed through. What we want to do is to turn Parliament into the nexus of South African political debate. At the moment this kind of debate is happening in the courts. We have a constant stream of civil society movements taking other groups, individuals or politicians to court and political parties are called on simply to comment on this.
We have this institution that has been democratically elected by millions of South Africans and it should be more vibrant and debate issues faced by our citizens on a daily basis. So we need to begin punching above our weight like our predecessors did — by pushing the envelope; making bold suggestions in meetings; calling for more debates; and calling on the president to come to Parliament more regularly.
There is a school of thought that the DA remains a “white” party and your appointment as parliamentary leader will be nothing more than tokenism. Do you think the party is ready for this kind of transformation by electing you parliamentary leader?
I have enough faith in colleagues and in my own abilities not to believe that they would ever want or need to engage in any form of tokenism. I am also not the only black leader in the DA; we have a number of black leaders in the DA. My own provincial leader in Kwazulu-Natal (Sizwe Mchunu) is black. That being said, there is no question that the DA is the most diverse political party in this country — and we have never shied away from the fact that we want to become more broadly representative of South Africa’s diversity.
It would be wrong to interpret this as a referendum on race in the DA. Of course it will have great significance if we have a leader of the opposition who is black, if we have our national chairperson chairing the caucus, and if we have an Afrikaans speaking, Sesotho speaking, isiZulu speaking chief whip — these are all exciting things. Nevertheless the DA will continue to diversify and grow. There are a number of exciting things happening in the party and this could well be one of them.
Is this move on the parliamentary hot seat a part of a broader plan that you and others have for the party? In other words, broadly changing leadership structures in the immediate future?
If I understand you correctly: No, I am not after Helen Zille’s job. I have no intention of running for national leader and my intention is only to lead the parliamentary caucus in the party. But, I do think the DA has never made any bones about wanting a more diverse leadership. This includes gender, language, race and so on. This does not exclude white South Africans, diversity includes necessarily everyone. It would be very exciting to have an increasingly diverse DA leadership but I don’t believe this election counts as a referendum on how black or white South Africans are positioned within the DA.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
I would like to be in government in 10 years, in Cabinet or at a provincial level. I truly believe that the DA in the very near future, one or two general elections time, will be part of a coalition government at national level — I honestly believe that. I also think we have the capacity to win more provinces in 2014, or the election after that.
Like I said earlier, this is not about me, but the history of this country — and what needs to be done in order for the DA to capture this moment. We have to be bold about this moment because if we do the right things and take the right steps we have the potential to become a governing party at a national level.