Luyolo Mphithi
A report on the Democratic Alliance‘s disastrous handling of the Schweizer-Reneke school racism incident has emerged, clearing former youth leader Luyolo Mphithi, who was left to carry the can in 2019 when an election postmortem found it had cost the party votes and members.
The document provides a fascinating insight into the DA’s desperate attempts to find resonance with black voters for nearly two decades.
Although high-ranking leaders were part of the federal head office (FHO) war room which oversaw the DA’s response to the school racism saga, it was Mphithi who was singled out for blame over the incident, with most of the others involved having left the party after the 2019 election.
Mphithi found himself in the heat of fire between his party — which had been attempting to present itself as an alternative to the ANC under the tenure of Mmusi Maimane — and its core constituents.
The former youth leader was thrust into the spotlight and forced to account for his actions after he commented on the race scandal on social media. He reacted to a picture that purportedly showed black and white children being seated separately according to race at the school, before the facts of the incident were established.
Mphithi was, however, cleared of any wrongdoing by two internal investigations. The initial investigation report was compiled by the party’s deputy federal chair, Refiloe Nt’sekhe, and the speaker of the Cape Town city metro, Dirk Smit.
The DA publicly remained mum on the circumstances which led to the investigation and its reaction to the primary school incident. But in a report, the DA’s federal legal committee went into detail about how party leaders were central to the party’s reaction on the school matter.
These included Maimane, parliamentary chief whip Siviwe Gwarube, former party chief executive Paul Boughey, former campaign manager Jonathan Moakes and then-federal chair Athol Trollip.
In the report dated 14 April 2021, Hardie Viviers, a federal legal commission member who chaired the investigation, said it had heard several testimonies from DA leaders on the events that transpired following the leaked photo.
The investigating team found prima facie evidence existed which “pointed to those who had the duty and functions to oversee and politically guide the activities undertaken in the head office war room, having failed to perform these duties and functions in a manner that is consistent with the duty or care the party entrusted to them”.
According to the document, Maimane, Boughey and Moakes ran the head office war room in the lead up to the election with an “iron fist”, with some party leaders left out of the decision making processes.
At least 10 DA leaders gave evidence on the Schweizer-Reneke-related events which shouldered the blame for the DA’s losses in the 2019 election.
Among them were current DA leader John Steenhuisen, former federal council chair James Selfe, Nt’sekhe and Joe McGluwa, the former North West leader of the party who is now an MP.
According to the report, Mphithi testified that he had consulted Gwarube, as head of communications, before tweeting. While they did not discuss the wording of the post, Mphithi said he had been instructed to “drive the issue”.
Mphithi said he had also consulted Maimane before issuing an open letter on the matter as part of a strategy which had been put in place by Trollip. In the letter, Mphithi apologised for his role in the matter.
According to the report, Mphithi told the investigators that he believed the people who were driving the strategy should take “accountability” and that it was “clear to him that he was taking the fall on behalf of the party”.
Mphithi said he had informed the war room that he was “uncomfortable in always driving racial issues” but that they had ignored this, arguing that he brought a fresh perspective and would have “credibility”.
Mphithi who was part of Team One SA, a DA structure in which he led youth programmes, said the team was “following instruction” from Gwarube and that he had driven many race-related issues — including on Driehoek Hoërskool and Adam Kavalos — at the instruction of the war room.
He had gone to Schweizer-Reneke on Gwarube’s instruction and believed he had not acted negligently as he was following instructions from the war room.
According to the report, Selfe told the federal legal committee that Mphithi did not consult him prior to the social media posts but added that a lot of DA leaders, including Trollip. climbed onto the “bandwagon”. Selfe said the DA had not lost votes as a result of its response to the Schweizer-Reneke incident, which he said was part of a “pattern”.
He said Maimane’s public backing of former Springbok Ashwin Willemse over his walkout at Supersport over another racial issue — and the disunity among the DA’s leaders — were the core contributors to the party’s poor 2019 showing.
Selfe confirmed that the decision to appoint Mphithi to communicate in the media on the Schweizer-Reneke issue was a directive of the war room.
In another report compiled by Nt’sekhe and Smit to determine whether possible disciplinary charges should be pursued against any member of the DA involved in the Schweizer-Reneke debacle, the two detailed how the DA’s campaign strategy for the 2019 election was developed by American political consultant Stan Greenberg.
Greenberg’s recommendations were adopted and institutionalised by the federal head office war room spearheaded by Maimane, Moakes and Boughey.
Greenberg is a pollster and political strategist with links to the US Democratic Party who worked with the DA for around a year ahead of the 2019 election. According to Nt’sheke and Smit, he recommended that its approach to the election should be that any incident of racial conflict or racism should be condemned and driven as an issue without the need for any prior investigation or following due process to verify the facts or context.
The two leaders charged with the initial investigation into the scandal testified that the ultimate goal of this strategy was to emancipate the DA from the perception that it was a white party, and in so doing attract the support of black voters.
Nt’sekhe and Smit testified that no real consultation was undertaken with provincial structures or even the DA councillors in Schweizer-Reneke, as the war room responded to perceived racism mechanically on the basis of social media perception. They found that Gwarube seemed not to be truthful during their own initial probe into the matter.
The initial report found that Mphithi acted on the spur of the moment and could have been negligent, but Nt’sekhe and Smit said he could not be blamed alone, and if correctly nurtured he could become a great leader in the party.
The report said in his evidence, McGluwa said the war room had excluded the provincial structure in its decision making and had produced a controversial statement welcoming the suspension of a teacher at the Schweizer-Reneke school against the province’s wishes.
McGluwa had, however, released a statement welcoming the suspension of the teacher and the subsequent investigation into the incident by the department of education.
The federal legal committee found that it might be “unlawful and ultra vires” to take action against Gwarube as a member of the party, as she had played a role in the war room as a staff member.
“The same considerations of possible negligence would apply to Luyolo Mphithi, who was asked to perform the duty of being the primary spokesperson of the party in respect of the Schweizer-Reneke matter and who must answer to the accusation that he did not exercise the duties and functions delegate to him,” it found.
The committee found it was possible that the individuals involved in the fiasco were “manipulated by the inner circle” and were “foot soldiers of the party who just implemented the orders given by those in charge”.
It added: “It is clear that the FHO war room and the senior politicians who were supposed to perform proper oversight failed to perform this duty and must be deemed as acting negligently in respect of the way in which they performed this function.”
This is part 2 of a 3-part story
Read part 1 – The USA, Maimane and the DA: How Mmusi Maimane’s plan to change the DA fell apart
Read part 3 – Burned by its 2019 ‘woke’ experiment, the DA is unlikely to follow the same path leading up to 2024
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