A SECOND LOOK
Mazibuko K Jara
Last week’s interview with Tony Leon, the egoistic political representative of dark forces of reaction and backwardness in our society, exposes the real Democratic Alliance (“Leon and hungry”).
Its agenda seeks to undermine fundamental transformation of society in favour of the impoverished black majority.
For example, early in the interview Leon claims that a minimal state is not part of the discourse in our country. However, later in the article the real DA emerges when he says South Africa has got to be a society where we create bigger individuals and a smaller state.
While accusing the African National Congress of centralising power, the real dictator emerges when he says “and if someone stepped out of line, they would get a phone call from me and I would go ballistic”. Yet the DA demands that the African National Congress in Parliament is supposed to act outside its political interests. In other words, the DA MPs must be united, but ANC MPs are expected to act outside of the party line and thus achieve a disunited ANC.
The DA, having consolidated white reaction behind it through shamelessly stirring racial phobias, now seeks to build itself as a legitimate representative for all people of our country. Its main strategy is to identify perceived weakness in the ANC and to project and exaggerate these in order to question the capacity and legitimacy of the ANC government and pursue a parallel legitimacy and sovereignty.
The hallmark of liberalism in South Africa is a fierce protection of the interests of big capital and a consistent disdain for the interests of the impoverished black people. In recent times this has led the DA to oppose progressive labour market transformation, legislation to make medicines affordable, accelerated land reform and transformation in general. In essence, the DA programme means free enterprise, a euphemism for “anything but our wealth and property”.
Also part of their strategy is to lay claim to the symbols and policies of the ANC, including concepts of change and delivery as well as icons such as Albert Luthuli and Nelson Mandela in order to muddy a noble tradition, weaken its appeal and marginalise its historical representative. And thus Marthinus van Schalkwyk visits the graves of the Cradock four, on June 16 Leon concedes to an audience in Mamelodi the honourable role played by the ANC, and in his interview regrets not grabbing the opportunity presented by the Mandela presidency. For the majority, the Mandela and Mbeki governments represent an opportunity for a better life.
The DA opposition to the Mandela government was not a mistake as Leon now claims. It was part of the DA’s continuing opposition to transformation.
To crown it all is the telling slip of the tongue where Leon tells us of his public holiday visits to black townships, otherwise, by implication for the rest of the year, it is business as usual the consolidation of white reaction and its interests. What a disdain for and insult to the impoverished black majority!
Come to think of it, the South African Communist Party does not recall much DA outrage when Zimbabwean workers from the early 1990s were protesting against the savagery of an International Monetary Fund-imposed structural adjustment programme. But how it woke up when white farms were invaded in Zimbabwe!
The DA’s statements on Zimbabwe do not utter a single racist word but the DA knowingly stirs up race phobias, since in many conservative white suburbs Zimbabwe symbolises that “all blacks are basically savages and when these savages are in charge, well you do not want to make the same mistake as Piet Retief”.
Anyway, their silence on the repressive and oppressive regime in Swaziland speaks loudly about how their right-wing brand of liberalism is inconsistent with thorough-going democracy, reconstruction and development.
The cumulative impact of the DA strategy may create an impression of a powerful movement, while it is in fact a fortuitous coincidence of tactical interventions by a weakened force that is struggling to survive. The DA means the coming together of the former political elite, elements of white business and sections of white middle and working classes who yearn for the past under a veneer of liberalism, whose claim to anti-apartheid credentials is invoked merely to justify and legitimise opposition to change.
Unfortunately our media fails to analyse and expose the DA. Instead our media gives space to it without objectively probing its agenda and the interests it represents. Saddening is the fact that this has now befallen the Mail & Guardian, which prides itself as a progressive newspaper and a critical commentator on our society. So much for media integrity and independence!
With the DA not akin to rational debate and limited to theatrics and sound bites, the defensive and edgy bunch of politicians in the DA will not take kindly to this kind of exposition of its bankruptcy.
Mazibuko K Jara is media officer for the South African Communist Party