The Human Sciences Research Council and Markinor polls put your voting support at about 2% — half what it was in 1999. Hasn’t the United Democratic Movement suffered a steady decline over the past five years?
Don’t pay too much attention to surveys — it’s the same Markinor that wrote off Inkatha and gave us 2% in ’99. In that election we were only 20 months old and our support was mainly in the Eastern Cape, especially round Umtata. Since then, we’ve spread across the country. We used to be only in Richmond; now we’re all over KwaZulu-Natal. In the 2000 municipal elections, with a R500 000 election budget, we got around 300 councillors and took Mandela’s birthplace, Umtata. The Democratic Alliance spent R11-million for just 1 400 councillors. I’m not ready to give figures, but we’ll double the seats we got in ’99.
During the floor-crossing, you went from 14 to six MPs, losing your deputy president, caucus chairperson, national treasurer and chief whip. Doesn’t that suggest a lack of confidence in the UDM’s prospects?
Most of the defectors were ex-New National Party people. I believe the Broederbond instructed them to regroup under the arm of the African National Congress; that’s why [Marthinus] van Schalkwyk and FW de Klerk are praising the ANC. None of the defectors attacked us, and I’m confident we’ll recover their seats with ease. The floor-crossing was straight political thuggery by the ANC, who wanted KwaZulu-Natal and the Western Cape, and the NNP and DA, who wanted to settle scores. Who were they accountable to? It had nothing to do with the will of the electorate.
How can you continue claiming to be the ”rainbow alternative” when most senior whites — Roelf Meyer, Annelize van Wyk, Gerhard Koornhof — have abandoned you?
I’ve never agreed with Desmond Tutu’s ”rainbow nation” idea, because there’s no black in the rainbow. Obviously it was a setback when Gerhard and Annelize left; our foundation in the white community is a little bit shaky now that whites are regrouping in the ANC. But we are still a party for all South Africans; there’s every colour on our election lists.
At least, if you break down the demographics, we’re on the playing field. The DA will never be players and, I think, have reached their ceiling. Every party has to answer the question: Who has the power to change the government? Sometimes I feel sorry for Tony Leon — he says something sensible in Parliament and the ANC shout him down. They’ll only listen to an official opposition that understands the anti-apartheid struggle. Most of our members were active participants during the dark days.
Your national chair and Limpopo leader, Kingsley Masemola, recently crossed to the ANC. Will the UDM still be the official opposition in Limpopo after the election?
Masemola panicked when he found out we were on to him. We discovered he lied to us in 2000 when he claimed the UDM offices were broken into — it turns out lawyers attached the contents of the office. Why? Because he was using the office to run his own company, which ran up debts of R37 000. Secondly, the national executive committee decided last November that public representatives who haven’t paid the 5% subscription to the party won’t be considered for our election lists. He hasn’t paid since 1999. He’s part of the NEC [national executive committee] — how can he say the decision was undemocratic? Then there’s R60 000 in constituency allowances he hasn’t accounted for.
Masemola was even received by the president, but the whole thing has backfired on the ANC. The UDM will not compromise in such matters.
Yet your former spokesperson, Van Pletzen, accused you of failing to deal with ”a crisis of corruption” in the UDM, including abuse of funds, mismanagement of constituency allowances and corrupt branch audits by national leaders to promote their cronies.
Van Pletzen painted a gloomy picture of the party to justify his defection. He was one of our Western Cape leaders — if all this was happening in his province, why didn’t he address it? Why didn’t he bring it up before quitting?
Your economic policies closely resemble the ANC’s — public works, skills development, affirmative procurement and so on. Why should poor people vote for you rather than the ANC?
The difference is that we favour more state intervention in the economy; we say South Africa deserves a state that does more. The ANC’s policy over the past 10 years has been characterised by downsizing, redundancies, supernumeraries and packages. Look at China, which has just approved $1,5-billion in subsidies for farmers. The United States, Europe, Brazil — they all intervene heavily.
Our 400-odd large companies can’t absorb the millions of black South Africans outside the economic mainstream. You can say we now have black billionaires like Tokyo Sexwale, but they’re not creating jobs. We need a South African Marshall Plan that recognises our peculiar history and imbalances, and we could start with public works to clear the R100-billion infrastructure maintenance backlog.
Your manifesto proposes short-term wage subsidies for farmworkers and subsidies and grants for emerging farmers. Have you calculated what these would cost the state?
We wouldn’t support these farmers perpetually — we need to subsidise them to get them going. There’s misery in rural Limpopo, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, and somebody has to do something about it. There are no jobs —farms that produced crops are being converted into game farms; farmers are running away because of lack of rural safety. The ANC’s neo-liberal economic policies have hit unskilled and rural people the hardest.
When he quit, Koornhof claimed factions were paralysing the party and controlled its electoral lists. Your Gauteng and Western Cape congresses were described as chaotic. How united is the United Democratic Front?
Ironically, Koornhof was accusing the very reverend who has now joined him in the ANC. Masemola had threatened that he [Koornhof] might not get on to the election list. However, the UDM’s leaders do not manipulate the lists like Luthuli House does [ANC lists]. The branches nominate, then on February 27 we’ll hold a list conference under the auspices of the national council where we’ll debate things in the open.
Isn’t the UDM basically an ethnic movement like Inkatha, except for Xhosa-speakers?
I reject that. The UDM is represented in six provincial legislatures; it has performed much better than the Pan Africanist Congress and African Christian Democratic Party in other provinces. When we launched our manifesto in Durban, we hired 95 buses to bring people in from every corner of KwaZulu-Natal. There’s no doubt that the Eastern Cape is my stronghold — but every party has one.
Nelson Mandela is known to favour reconciliation between you and the ANC. If you were offered such an opportunity, would you take it?
When Mandela said in 2002 that I should come back to the ANC, I took that as an apology for what they did to me, an admission of guilt. But I told him: a lot of water has passed under the bridge, I’ve now joined other South Africans in establishing the UDM. If I were to suddenly leave them, I don’t think I would earn respect anywhere — even ANC members would say I was a prostitute. I’m happy with the UDM, and dedicated to building it.