South Africa’s official opposition Democratic Alliance is “fuelling the fires of racism using the fig leaf of a strong opposition”, the New National Party argued on Wednesday.
In a raging set of pre-election volleys — with South Africa’s national election expected in March or April — the NNP (formerly the National Party) and the DA have been at each other’s throats all week about the way to cope with black majority rule in South Africa. The DA has been raising the situation in Zimbabwe as a recipe of what not to do in South Africa.
The NNP has been arguing that its formal working relationship with the ruling African National Congress provides a platform for an important voice in the government for opposition voters, while the DA has argued that this is co-optive politics of the worst kind that could take the country down the path of neighbouring Zimbabwe where there is a de facto one-party state.
On Wednesday NNP secretary general Daryl Swanepoel said DA chief whip Douglas Gibson talked “nonsense” when he compared the NNP-ANC agreement to establish participatory democracy “with the unification of [Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe’s] Zanu-PF with [late Zimbabwean vice-president] Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu [Zimbabwe African People’s Union]”.
Mugabe’s party — which drew its support largely from Shona speakers — swallowed up the largely Matabele-based Zapu in 1989, some years after Zimbabwe gained independence from Britain in 1980.
Swanepoel said on Wednesday that there is “too much at stake for the people of South Africa than to be led down the garden path through disinformation and false recollection of history”.
“Zimbabwe today would have been a much better country had the different communities there opted to forge a joint future for all who live in it.”
While Gibson argued that the NNP submersion into the ANC — as he saw it — is similar to the Zimbabwe Zapu-Zanu experience, Swanepoel said Mugabe and Nkomo both belonged to the Zapu until October 1960 when Zanu broke away. The two groups had later reunited in 1989.
“In short they were one group, which split up and then reunited,” said Swanepoel.
This is different to the NNP and ANC, he argued.
“The NNP and ANC [which formed a cooperation pact in 2001] on the other hand have always been two separate parties with two separate policy platforms. They have not now merged into one. They contest the elections as separate parties.”
Swanepoel explained that participatory democracy — which he explained means multiparty government — is not about creating a one-party state.
“It is in fact about expanding multiparty democracy,” he charged.
Swanepoel, who lost his seat in Parliament in 1999 largely as a result of the growth spurt of then Democratic Party (now DA), which replaced the NNP as the official opposition, said the South African Parliament comprises “of a number of small parties”.
“Whereas the DA would want only the ANC in the Cabinet, participatory democracy is about bringing other parties into government as well, so that the executive [Cabinet] also has the benefit of multiparty input,” said Swanepoel.
At present the NNP holds two deputy minister posts in the national Cabinet and the premiership and half the cabinet posts in the Western Cape government.
Swanepoel added: “But one can argue about the historical facts of Zimbabwe until the cows come home — one thing remains clear: Zimbabwe has taught us what happens when a small elite minority group and the black majority stop talking to each other. The NNP will not allow that to happen in South Africa.”
“Given the diversity of South Africa, the competing interests and concerns, the need for nation-building and reconciliation and the voting patterns of our country, which are still caught up mainly along demographic lines, it is in the collective interest of all that live in South Africa, the minorities and the majority, to forge a relationship which aims at ensuring as much consensus as possible, and win-win solutions. Neither the minorities nor the majority can go it alone — they need each other.”
Gibson, however, has argued that a strong opposition — and real political competition with the ruling party — ensures a vibrant democracy. — I-Net Bridge