Howard Barrell
OVER A BARREL
What a relief to discover that the Democratic Party may also be led by a bunch of venal, ambitious, self-serving bastards; that, in the very best traditions of politicians the world over, some of its leaders may also now know how to waken the dead when they need a few extra votes; that the DP may not, after all, be a cocktail or a virtual party but the real political thing.
I refer, of course, to the row in the Gauteng DP that broke surface last weekend. One or other hopeful for the provincial leadership, we were told in shocked tones when we opened the Sunday papers, may have used the cemetery vote to bolster party membership lists in the service of his own ambitions.
Hoo-bloody-ray. In politics, innocence has, to my mind, never been an indication of virtue. Instead, it has merely testified to ignorance or inexperience. Virtue, in politics, comes through winning and, thereby, in being able to enact your programme.
So I was relieved at the evidence that the lily-white DP (this is irony, Claudia) may have a dark side, after all.
Why?
Because, though I can profess my love of the African National Congress as earnestly as any journalist in Independent Newspapers, I remain convinced that we all, and democracy in South Africa, will be best served by having in place the strongest possible parliamentary opposition – no matter whether to the left or right. Also because the DP has been a profound disappointment as the official opposition since it made such dramatic advances in the election on June 2.
Even senior DP leaders take the point. One of the more candid conceded this week that his party’s performance over the past six months had been “underwhelming”.
The reasons – or excuses – are not hard to find. When the DP had only seven MPs in the National Assembly, the party could, in the words of Corne Mulder of the rival Freedom Front, hold its caucus meeting in one of the lifts travelling between the fifth and the ground floors of the Marks Building in the parliamentary compound in Cape Town. It was that easy for the DP to decide policy, strategy and tactics. Moreover, those seven DP members of the assembly were all experienced public representatives, were intellectually fit and seized with liberal democratic purpose. They carried no passengers. This meant, in the words of Tony Leon, that the DP could conduct a highly mobile “guerrilla war” in Parliament against the ANC-led government.
This is no longer so. The DP now has 38 MPs in the National Assembly. A number have no previous experience of public life. Some are less intellectually advantaged (irony again, Claudia) than others. Policy, strategy and tactics can no longer be decided on the hoof. Proper agendas have to be drawn up for caucus meetings; the niceties of procedure must be observed; and the new boys and girls must be coached on what it means to be party spokesperson on a government portfolio.
Then, too, the ANC has sought to make matters difficult for the DP in Parliament. It has sought to treat the DP as merely the largest single minority party, withholding from it some of the privileges the official opposition might be expected to enjoy. For example, the ANC conspired to ensure the no chairs of parliamentary committees were given to the DP.
Add to this the government’s backwardness in introducing new legislation and in leading parliamentary business since June. This has meant there has not been much controversial legislation into which the DP has been able sink its teeth.
These excuses are all very well – as far as they go. But that is not far. A party aspiring to be the official opposition and, so, alternative government is a party claiming, implicitly, that it can anticipate obstacles and doldrums of this kind – and quickly fashion the tactics to overcome or pass through them. But this the DP has signally failed to do over the past six months.
A more serious failing remains the DP’s difficulties in developing its other darker side. Its profile remains overwhelmingly white. And, depressing though it may be to those of us who believe non-racism should mean non-racism, rather than a new stress on race as an indicator of an organisation’s character or as a determinant of an individual’s qualities or life chances, racial image matters.
There is no prize for the observation that DP is highly unlikely to become a serious alternative to the ANC until it can shake off its image of being a mainly white, or white-led, party. Changing that perception is likely to take time. In the view of Tom Lodge, professor of politics at the University of the Witwatersrand, several socio-economic changes may be necessary before another party can develop to the point where it can seriously challenge the ANC. He suggests a period of about 10 years.
“Party politics,” Lodge told a conference on African Risks organised by Global Pacific & Partners in Johannesburg this week, “will alter only when opposition parties manage to attract substantial numbers of black professionals into their leadership and when rural poor people begin to have rather more ambitious expectations.”
The forays by DP MPs that Tony Leon has been leading into the townships and rural slums, to get to know the conditions under which most South Africans live, are encouraging. So, too, is his party’s link- up with the Unemployed Masses of South Africa, an association of the jobless claiming about 30 000 members. The DP’s performance in the Western Cape’s provincial government – particularly of education minister Helen Zille – has indicated real and serious attention to delivery. What we need Leon and his party to begin to do is to frame their policies explicitly to address the needs of the poorer among us.
Contrary to the claims of the political left, liberal free-marketeers can put forward plausible policies to redistribute opportunity and alleviate poverty. They have done so successfully in other countries whose circumstances are not different from our own. The DP has an opportunity now to do the same. A party policy review commission is due to report in about March next year. A big dose of liberal populism may be just the thing to shift the tectonic plates of our politics.
Waken the dead. Mobilise the living. Do whatever you need to, Tony. Those who supported the DP at the June election – like those of us who didn’t but believe that we and our democracy will be best served by having the strongest possible opposition – want better.