Ferial Haffajee
A Pretoria branch of the Democratic Party is known as the armed wing of the party – or Umkhonto weDP – because its members have so much firepower.
Among the diverse membership of the Centurion branch are former generals, colonels navy officers of the old South African Defence Force and 12 members of Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), disillusioned with their former political homes on the far right and left of the spectrum.
Observers say branch meetings are run with military precision. The agenda is set by “aim, objective, method, deployment, results”. If you’re late, it’s, “Sak vir tien [10 punishment push-ups].”
The Gauteng north region of the DP is testimony to its changing support base and the successes it has chalked up as an opposition party in the past four years.
The office in Lynnwood – an upmarket suburb of Pretoria – is a bilingual affair where all the party literature and the posters adorning the walls are printed in English and Afrikaans.
The lingua franca is Afrikaans in the bustling office where young clean-cut University of Pretoria students – or “veldskoen yuppies”, as they’re known – walk around with a mission.
Vincent van der Merwe is a 22-year-old former Freedom Front member who recently joined the DP. He dated Tienie Groenewald’s daughter.
When FF leader Constand Viljoen came to the University of Pretoria campus this week, he still greeted Van der Merwe fondly.
The National Party is a spent force at the campus where the DP and the United Democratic Movement seemed set to win this week’s Student Representative Council election.
Van der Merwe defected because of faction fights in the FF and a growing conviction that nothing was being done for minorities.
“My father’s English, my mother’s Afrikaans. I am a minority,” he says. “When I went around collecting signatures [to enable the DP to run in student elections], there was lots of support from Greeks and Italians. I like the way the top DP people are standing up for minority rights.”
This perception of a party that is willing to speak out also won the democrats more senior support among the cream of Afrikaner society.
Former brigadier general Phillip Lloyd is a golf-playing, clean-shaven, measured man who retired recently. He will start a branch of the DP in Valhalla.
“I used to be a strong supporter of the NP. But after 1995, I started having doubts about their political strategy. The person who really triggered me was Tony Leon … the things he was prepared to say!” says Lloyd.
It is more the ability of the DP to stick its chin out at the African National Congress majority which is being embraced than the party’s liberal and free market values.
There have been a number of senior defections to the party in Pretoria, among them former NP health minister Rina Venter, other generals and three Conservative Party councillors.
Other “non-traditional” (read black) support the DP has picked up include a former lawyer colleague of Gauteng Premier Mathole Motshekga, a senior Azanian People’s Organisation organiser and a leader of the National Association of Professional Teachers of South Africa.
The membership lists from the townships of Eersterus, Atteridgeville, Soshanguve and Mamelodi are, however, being filled rather slowly.
The party’s regional leader, Fred Nel, says there is a growing confluence of common issues among their black and white members. Crime and jobs are twin themes emerging everywhere from Acacia to Atteridgeville.
He adds that the DP is stripping away nationalist support from poor areas like Acacia because the NP cannot deliver governmental largesse in the form of community infrastructure, pensions and welfare to its constituents any longer.
Ironically, the DP’s growth is happening because people “didn’t plan for a non-NP future”.