The concentration of power in South Africa is the biggest threat to its democracy, the front-runner to assume the leadership of the country’s main opposition party said on Monday.
The challenge for the Democratic Alliance (DA), which draws its core support from the country’s estimated five million whites, is to lure more black voters and help break traditional racial voting patterns, Cape Town mayor Helen Zille said.
”The single biggest threat to South Africa’s democracy is too much power in too few hands, that always is a threat to democracy,” Zille said in an interview. ”But that happens when people don’t have opportunities, when people don’t have chances, when people are open to demagogues making false promises.”
Zille, who has successfully battled efforts by the ruling African National Congress (ANC) to trim her powers in the only major city not governed by it, is seen as likely to succeed Tony Leon in this weekend’s vote at the DA’s national conference.
The DA is South Africa’s biggest opposition group but, with just 12% of the ballot at the previous general election in the 2004, it trails far behind the 70% support of President Thabo Mbeki’s ANC.
Zille said a major challenge ahead of her, should she win, would be to increase the support base of the DA among South Africa’s black majority.
”The challenge is to convince the majority of people … [and] to get to a point in South Africa where we transcend race, transcend identity and vote on issues,” she said. ”We, like many other emerging democracies are far from that point and it is the DA’s biggest challenges to show people of all races, of all creeds … that we really care about them.”
But Zille said winning converts would not happen easily, and predicted a ”tipping point” could only be reached within the next five to seven years.
”Things move very slowly and suddenly something catalytic happens and things change very quickly. And I think we are in for that kind of major realignment in the near future … things could change dramatically,” Zille said.
This could include a possible split in the ANC’s alliance with its leftist allies, as well as differences emerging within the ANC over a presidential succession that has pitted camps aligned to Mbeki against those who back former deputy president Jacob Zuma. — Reuters