The 10th anniversary of democracy is an important symbolic milestone for all South Africans, an opportunity to take stock, evaluate the past decade’s gains and setbacks, and plan for the next.
The Democratic Alliance’s biennial federal congress in Durban this weekend is the culmination of this process for the party, capping months of analysis, evaluation and participative planning in what has become known as our “re-visioning”. The most important congress sessions will deal with the proposals emerging from this process, which has involved literally thousands of ordinary members, and generated 500 pages of comment and suggestions.
After a decade in which the DA emerged as South Africa’s fastest-growing political party, the key question we face is this: How can our current 12,5% of voter support provide a platform for new growth, rather than it being the ceiling our opponents claim it is? How can we consolidate our support base, while boldly moving towards the next horizon?
We begin with a clear understanding of how the African National Congress plans to prevent us from doing so. Its formula is tried, tested and simple. If the ANC can entrench race as the key fault line in South African politics, it can effectively shrug off any opposition challenge. Almost all the ANC’s statements and strategies proceed from the assumption that it “owns” all black South Africans, that criticism of the ruling party is therefore racist, and that minorities who wish to identify themselves with the struggle for non-racialism can only do this by joining the ANC. It is extraordinary how much currency this false logic has acquired over the past decade.Â
We have no illusions about how difficult it will be to counter this, and cross race barriers to make the DA a comfortable political home for all South Africans who share our values. The re-visioning process began by defining our political identity and clarifying the core values on which growth must be built: a commitment to non-racialism in an open society, where rights are constitutionally protected and where every person has meaningful opportunities to improve his or her quality of life.
Inevitably, one of the most important debates in our re-visioning process has revolved around “transformation”. The ANC’s approach is based on “demographic representivity”. This has two components. The first requires all organisations and institutions to reflect the demographic composition of society, based on racial quotas and preferences. The second assumes that individuals can only speak on behalf of the “race” they represent. Thus whites can only represent the views of whites, blacks can only speak for blacks, et cetera. This assumes that individuals automatically represent their “race group” in everything they say and do. Thus a racist act by a white person means that whites are racists; the enrichment of a small black elite is equated with the economic empowerment of black people in general, and so on.
We regard these assumptions as racist. We have a fundamentally different understanding of transformation, which we define as a commitment to “diversity”. The difference is not semantic. “Representivity” is a refinement of apartheid’s defining idea that demography determines destiny. Diversity, on the other hand, seeks to offer real opportunities to all, and recognises the value of a range of contributions, so that the full spectrum of South African society is reflected in the DA’s structures and leadership. The emphasis on diversity acknowledges and seeks to correct the legacy of the past, not by slavish racial headcounting, quotas and labels, but by measuring each individual, in Martin Luther King’s immortal words, by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.
Diversity does not imply a zero sum game, where the interests of whites are inimical to those of coloured or black South Africans and vice versa. Strategies to achieve far greater diversity are central to our re-visioning proposals because we acknowledge that we have not made nearly enough progress in the past.
But we will continue to expose the ANC’s hypocrisy when it uses past racism to justify present racism, and entrench future racism under the pretence of eradicating racism. We will continue to expose the fact that this rhetoric is just a smokescreen to hide the ANC’s drive to centralise its power and suppress its critics. The latest example of this is the suppression of debate in Parliament. In the past two weeks, in what can only be described as “procedural terror tactics,” ANC members prevented the DA from speaking on HIV and rape through accusations of racism and continual “points of order” until the speaker’s time had expired. They also toyi-toyied in protest at the DA’s insistence that MPs vote on crucial and controversial abortion laws. Many in the ANC caucus would clearly prefer to see opposition silenced, and Parliament become a rubber stamp for decisions taken by the national executive committee of the ANC.
And we will continue to do so unapologetically because it is the right thing to do and because strong opposition is our trademark. Strong opposition is the DA’s defining feature that has lifted our support from 1,7% to 12,5%. That does not mean we have abandoned the idea of becoming an alternative government. The two are closely related.
Before we can credibly claim to be an alternative government, the importance and legitimacy of a robust opposition must be accepted by many more South Africans. Owing to its race logic, the ANC seeks to define opposition to its policies as a defence of white privilege. It will be a major task in the years ahead, to demonstrate why a strong opposition protects all South Africans, particularly the poor and the marginalised, from the abuse of power. Our re-visioning has addressed ways of achieving this objective.
And, aside from building our opposition brand, we will seek ways of ensuring that more and more South Africans understand the practical alternatives the DA offers and that our policies are in the interests of all South Africans. Voters must know what they are voting for, not only what they voting against.
The congress will have its normal range of other agenda items that will generate debate, some of it controversial: motions, constitutional amendments, awards and press statements. But we enter this congress in the realisation that the second decade of democracy in developing countries is often more challenging and perilous than the first. Ten years hence, at our congress in 2014, we plan to look back to a decade in which South Africa became firmly established as a stable multiparty democracy, where issues (not race) define the dividing lines of politics, and where there is a genuine prospect of a peaceful transfer of power through the ballot box.
The DA has a crucial role in achieving this vision. Congress 2004 is an important milestone on the way.
Helen Zille is Democratic Alliance deputy chairperson