The Democratic Alliance has promised to prove wrong critics who say it is a “white party” by ensuring its 2004 election candidates are selected on basis of their representativeness of South African society, as well as on merit.
However, the party remains coy about the notion that it may be engaging in affirmative action, setting racial quotas or interfering with the democratic process — even for a good end.
The party starts its final round of its nomination process this weekend, when its provinces start determining the order of candidates on the 2004 lists. These lists are to be completed by month-end.
This follows the shortlisting of candidates nominated by branches and regions through each of the nine provincial electoral college executives. Representativeness is featured alongside merit as a criterion for public office at provincial and national level.
The number of black DA candidates could further be increased as DA leader Tony Leon and each provincial leader can fill positions three, seven and then every further seventh spot on the national and provincial lists.
In Parliament this could mean at least four new black faces to replace those — including veterans Colin Eglin and Ken Andrew — who are retiring. If the DA increases its voting-day support, further seats may become available. If it loses seats in the coming election, it may face a struggle to make place for more black public representatives.
As it stands, only a handful of its 54 MPs are black and the party lacks visible senior black public representatives. In the Western Cape, political controversy led to the downfall of its two senior black leaders: Peter Marais, who subsequently resigned, and Gerald Morkel, who slipped from premier to Cape Town mayor, then councillor, amid the Jurgen Harksen donation saga.
The new public representatives would “reflect South Africa”, said DA communications director Nick Clelland-Stokes. “We are going to have people who represent South Africa, quality people who are capable of providing solutions and change.”
The DA maintains that approximately two-thirds of its members are black and by-elections in township wards across the country showed increased support averaging 12%.
A Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) survey in November said that while the overwhelming majority of African National Congress supporters were African, more than three-quarters of DA supporters are white and 10% coloured. It predicted a 10,5% poll for the DA, second after the ANC’s 67,8%, but ahead of the New National Party (8,7%) and Inkatha Freedom Party (7,1%).
HSRC executive director Udesh Pillay said voters would still be “sticking to their political guns” and giving political parties the benefit of the doubt. In these early stages of democratic consolidation, the electorate remains slightly tentative about shifting their political allegiances, and these attitudes may last another eight to 10 years.
But the DA has rejected this, saying its own research showed it would improve on previous polling support across various constituencies. A key factor in the DA’s favour is its ability to ensure its supporters actually cast their ballots on polling day.
“Whether it [the DA] is more black [remains] to be tested in the elections,” said Lorato Banda, governance researcher at the Institute for Democracy in South Africa (Idasa).
At this stage the DA remains a predominately white party, he said, although it drew some support in coloured and Indian communities, brought into the fold during the short-lived alliance with the NNP, and through cooperation with smaller regional parties such as Ximoko in Limpopo.
And the party is set to go head- to-head with the ruling ANC on jobs, crime and HIV/Aids in what is described as a campaign of “solutions, change and hope” — a move to build on the aggressive 1999 “Fight Back” campaign, which saw the DA emerge as the official opposition largely on the strength of minority votes.
The 2004 campaign — driven by Leon and DA chairperson Joe Seremane — will kick off the day after President Thabo Mbeki’s State of the Nation speech on February 6.
The DA would “take on the ANC in its own backyard” because it no longer had “a monopoly on disadvantaged voters”, Clelland-Stokes told the M&G. “We will be providing our solutions. We don’t need to tell the South African public how bad things are — voters know what the reality is.”
It is this message of solutions and change that the DA hopes will “inspire” voters — particularly in KwaZulu-Natal, where it has formed the Coalition for Change with the IFP, and in the Western Cape, where it seeks to oust the ANC-NNP cooperative government, possibly with the support of smaller parties.