‘I disagree with what you say, but would defend to the death your right to say it,” runs the well-worn maxim, wrongly attributed to Voltaire. Would Smuts Ngonyama or Dumisani Makhaye of the African National Congress defend to the death Tony Leon’s right to speak his mind?
Doubtful. Leon, in fact the Democratic Alliance that he leads, seems to excite such extremes of loathing among ANC leaders that they would gladly see them vaporised by a righteous bolt from the blue.
Hence the parliamentary ANC’s recent decision to exclude DA veteran Colin Eglin from a multi-party delegation to the Pan African Parliament. While Boy Geldenhuys of the skid-row New National Party was invited, the official opposition, supported by two million South African voters, was snubbed.
The April election witnessed an effusion of anti-DA venom, which went well beyond robust electioneering to suggest a coordinated campaign to demonise and de-legitimise. The party was described as a “wolf in sheep skin” and savaged for “subtly” portraying Africans as inferior, placing South Africa “in a self-destruction mode” and engaging in lying propaganda that was “a dangerous path South Africa should not be allowed to tread” (Ngonyama), attacking South Africa’s democracy (Bheki Nkosi) being “a virulent and unapologetic opponent of African liberation” (Mavivi Myakayaka-Manzini), “preserving the racial property interests of the rich white minority” (Malusi Gigaba) and so on.
The charge of racism was repeatedly levelled, embellished with attempts to portray Leon as a latter-day Josef Goebbels because he wrote for the South African Defence Force magazine Paratus three dedades ago, and frequent references to his “hanging judge” father, Ramon. Why the son should carry the can for the father is not explained.
One of the ironic effects of such indiscriminate mud-slinging was to reinforce the racial polarities the DA is accused of promoting. Given the intensity of the propaganda onslaught it is remarkable that it was able to draw any black voting support.
One does not have to be a DA sympathiser to recognise the malicious caricature inherent in much of the rhetoric. Are Ngonyama et al seriously suggesting that decent and rational politicians such as Dene Smuts and Eglin — let alone DA deputy leader Joe Seremane — are closet racists, driven by nostalgia for apartheid?
Leon has a bumptious political style and is guilty of some serious leadership blunders, notably the tasteless “Fight Back” campaign. But it is ludicrous to portray him as the local grand master of the Ku Klux Klan.
Gauteng community safety minister Firoz Cachalia comes much nearer the mark by suggesting he is essentially a post-apartheid phenomenon, insufficiently endowed with the historical perspective and high-frequency racial awareness now de rigueur in white politicians.
Apart from the distortions, there are double standards. Though again hampered by the ANC’s racial propaganda, the DA has made some effort to “grey” its ranks and public representation. Why is the Freedom Front Plus, a party of white Afrikaners led by white Afrikaners, spared similar treatment? And if the problem is ethnic mobilisation, why is the ANC in bed with the Minority Front, a party of Indians led by Indians?
There is further double-speak. Leon is accused of dalliance with apartheid — what of Stella Sicgau, former boss of the Transkei Bantustan, yet three times minister in the post-1994 Cabinet? What of Marthinus van Schalkwyk, cunning survivor of the apartheid executive who sold his party for the 30 pieces of government patronage?
And given the ANC Youth League’s extensive dealings with controversial white mining magnate Brett Kebble, how can former league leader Malusi Gigaba accuse the DA of pandering to the white moneyed elite? Given his nimble social climbing and expensive tastes, “elitism” has a hollow ring in Gigaba’s mouth.
Indeed, there is much dishonest posturing in ANC attacks on DA economic and labour market policies. Gigaba refers to the “bizarre” idea that there is little difference between the parties on economic policy. But both have undeniably espoused the free market, trade liberalisation, fiscal stringency, privatisation and public sector downsizing.
The DA is indeed anti-labour — but the ANC’s record in this area is hardly unspotted. Remember its spectacular assault on “ultra-left” union leaders two years ago, and call for them to be “isolated and defeated”? Before the somersault of last August, which party had the more worker-friendly stance on HIV/Aids treatment?
And when the ANC blasts the DA’s opposition to the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Bill for pandering to “the property rights of white farmers and commercial landowners in general”, is it saying the ruling party is hostile to such interests? Many land activists would beg to disagree.
This example is drawn from a litany of transformation laws the DA is accused of opposing in Parliament. What is striking about the list is that where the rationale for opposition is given, it generally hinges on standard liberal concerns about personal and institutional freedoms. One can make a case for misplaced priorities, but this is unconvincing evidence for white supremacist leanings.
At base, the parties are not as starkly separated by either race or economics as the ANC would have us believe. Both subscribe to the values of the Constitution and are, respectively, approximate counterparts of the social democratic and conservative democratic options that dominate European politics.
That said, one could certainly argue that a fundamental difference exists over the style of opposition South Africa needs — epitomised by the ritual complaint that the DA “opposes for the sake of opposition”.
Van Schalkwyk and the FF’s Pieter Mulder are acceptable white opponents in ANC eyes because they have bent the knee, either coming cap in hand for concessions or trading their meagre political capital for the crumbs of power. The model is a cooperative one, with the ANC as the vanguard and the opposition, in a “nation-building” role, under its skirts.
By contrast, the DA has spurned power-sharing arrangements and pursues a hard-line, adversarial style of opposition based on the Westminster system. This has had its downside, particularly in the early post-1994 years when black politicians were feeling their way and read Leon’s smart-Alec strictures as racial condescension. More significantly, they appear to experience adversarial opposition as a refusal to accept the principle of African leadership.
And it has to be conceded that by frequently hurling the “racist” epithet at its opponents, the DA has itself raised the ideological temperature in Parliament.
At the same time, there can be no doubt that the public has been better served by the party’s parliamentary team than by that of any other opposition grouping. Who provided the best oversight during the “big three” controversies of the post-1994 Parliament, over Zimbabwe, the arms deal and HIV/Aids?
None of this implies approval of the DA’s broad policy platform — many of its economic and geopolitical prescriptions appear plain wrong.
But to disagree with it is not to deny it legitimacy or the right to advance its viewpoint. Instead of stigmatising it as an unpatriotic, Afrophobic pariah and enemy of non-racial democracy, it should be accepted as integral to the multiparty system the Constitution enjoins.
At issue is the normalisation of South African politics. After 10 years of stable constitutional democracy, South Africans should be outgrowing the intolerance, hysteria and ideological hype of the past.