The Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) poll predicts a 10,5% DA vote in the election — 1% more than the Democratic Party polled in 1999. Doesn’t this suggest the party has stagnated under your leadership?
We’ve grown tremendously since 1999 — voters have told us this in a series of by-elections. In Malmesbury, for example, we got 60% while the DP got 4%; in Randfontein, where the DP could not hope to be competitive, we won an overwhelming majority. We disagree with the HSRC’s methodology, but even that survey shows we’re the only opposition party with double-figure support.
The HSRC also finds support for the New National Party will rise from 6,8% to 8,7%. Yet you regularly predict its demise in this election.
The moon is made of blue cheese if the NNP improves on its 1999 result. It’s not just me — everyone in South Africa will be amazed. As an assistant prop to the African National Congress, its whole raison d’être has disappeared. The Mail & Guardian may talk them up in the Western Cape, but in Swellendam, Malmesbury and the like they were either stone last or didn’t put up a candidate.
You’ve just hauled one of your few African MPs, Bernice Sono, before a disciplinary committee. Deputy leader Joe Seremane is invisible. Doesn’t this indicate the poor standard of African leaders recruited by the DA?
Don’t make racial assumptions — the complaint against the MP in question came from black activists in Soweto. The last of our MPs to be disciplined was white. Besides, if we demand accountability from the ANC, we must apply accountability in our own ranks. If you’re saying we can’t apply discipline because of a colour code, I can’t agree. As for Joe, he wouldn’t be as invisible if the M&G gave him more space. He’s got things to say.
How does the liberal DA justify its relationship with former homeland tyrant Lucas Mangope and Mangosuthu Buthelezi, branded a human rights violator by the truth commission?
We have some local cooperation with Mangope, but there’s no formal relationship. On the other issue, there’s a tremendous amount of moral relativism and double standards — it’s fine if Buthelezi is part of a nation-building exercise with Mandela and Mbeki, but the moment Buthelezi and Leon get on a platform together, it’s a matter for scorn and derision. After our pact with the NNP, Essop Pahad wrote to the Spectator to deplore the liberal DP’s merger with ”PW Botha’s old crowd”. Now suddenly it’s kosher for the ANC to do it.
Also, you’re historically wrong — the Inkatha Freedom Party and the Progressive Federal Party collaborated in the 1970s and 1980s. For example, Buthelezi spoke in favour of our stand on the tricameral referendum.
Does the IFP have any real interest in the DA other than as a means of holding power in KwaZulu-Natal?
Well, you should ask the IFP. In fact, as the DP leader in 1994 I held meetings with Buthelezi — as strong federalists, we were both deeply concerned about the absence of a double ballot in that election. My experience is that he’s a person of his word. When he puts his signature to agreements that go beyond winning an election in KwaZulu-Natal I must believe him.
The DA expelled Peter Marais in 2002, yet now says it would accept his New Labour Party as a coalition partner in the Western Cape…
The Marais saga was about life under Marthinus van Schalkwyk, whose only interest was in using Marais as a decoy for his own ambitions — he always wanted to be premier. As Cape Town mayor Marais was not appropriate in terms of DA standards, but I never wanted to throw him out. I said he had a political contribution to make, but not as city leader. I think he’s probably a changed person now.
With its lukewarm stance on black empowerment and affirmative action, including sunset clauses, how will the DA ever attract the black middle class and youth?
Black youth is suffering tremendously because of the ANC government’s so-called policy of black economic empowerment, which — like the Holy Roman Empire, which was neither an empire, holy nor Roman — does not empower blacks. A prisons official told the Jali commission he would pay R100 for a R6 light-bulb from a disadvantaged contractor. Every extra rand spent on affirmative procurement means fewer textbooks, pens or pencils for the majority of the disempowered. To quote your new editor, Ferial Haffajee, we have a parallel bureaucracy. The Eastern Cape spent R377-million on consultants last year because people are put in positions but can’t do the job.
By sunset clauses, we mean ”consider afresh”. Stop it by 2010 and do a review; keep the good parts and throw away the bad. With racial affirmative action in its extreme form, there can be no renaissance of any kind, African or South African.
That’s increasingly the view of real black businessmen — I’m not talking about the empowerment brigade — and the rest of the world. [German Chancellor] Gerhard Schröder warned last week that empowerment is putting a question mark against investment in South Africa.
You’ve introduced quotas for blacks on your election lists. How have you managed the fears of long-serving whites?
They’re not racial quotas. They can be used to do a range of things — to advance representivity, deal with skills shortages in Parliament … Sometimes the leadership needs to intervene to undo the effects of local democracy, as when people get into voting blocs. But the leader’s intervention is very slight; at the end of the day the local party will make most decisions.
The lists should reflect South Africa. We don’t want to go with an all-white team, but if some white person has been incredibly active in building the party or raising money, they should not be discriminated against.
Given the DA’s strong free-market principles, your support for a basic income grant (BIG) looks suspiciously like populist opportunism.
I’m not aware of any liberal democracy that does not, in some rudimentary way, provide a safety net for the poorest of the poor. Even the United States has Medicare and food stamps. I regard myself as a modern liberal; I’ve never been a Gladstonian.
Besides, we’ve proved that within the existing fiscal framework you can do this in a responsible way, provided you re-orientate expenditure items. The government is forever finding reasons not to introduce a BIG, but has found endless outlets for expenditure on non-essential items like the arms deal.
I don’t think you can live in a country like South Africa, with its levels of deprivation, without providing a minimum social security net. Also, it would be our policy to reduce the minimum wage in high-unemployment rural areas, which would have a radical effect on job creation. Grants would become less of an issue.
When will Tony Leon make way for a black DA leader?
I will make way for another leader, black, white or another colour, when the party and I think it’s the right time. I’m not planning to retire any time soon. I’m not a guilty white; I’m a non-racial person and my black friends tell me there’s no reason why you can’t have black and white leaders. Mauritius has just got itself a white prime minister for the first time, after 28 years of independence. In non-racial societies like Brazil, being white is not a bar to leadership.
After this election we might not have more black votes than the ANC, but we’ll have more black votes, nationwide, than any other party. You should look beyond your racial carapace to where the country is going.