Either Democratic Alliance deputy leader Joe Seremane is a new South African who refuses to acknowledge race, or else he is an archetypical victim of apartheid crying out for sessions on black consciousness.
Seremane projects himself as one completely exhausted by the politics of race and who, therefore, will not debate whether the DA is doing enough to attract blacks to its ranks or should be concerned that it is losing so many.
Seremane says the irrelevance of race confronted him when, while he was imprisoned on Robben Island for Pan Africanist Congress activities, he received information that his sister was getting married to a white Dutchman.
“I reflected on my own rhetoric and said: ‘Joe, you want to cut the neck of every white person; and there is your sister who is going to have coloured children.’ I started thinking why the struggle should be about power and not about race.”
At the moment, it is not easy being Joe Seremane. As the only senior black in a party whose efforts to woo blacks have only resulted in recruits who have dumped it because of both their disillusionment and the attraction of better perks in the African National Congress, Seremane is considered an Uncle Tom by disgruntled former DA members.
Other blacks who have ditched the DA say he is a lame-duck deputy, who is constantly overruled by white juniors. And that mud sticks. You can see the lump in his throat.
“Our people are quick to marginalise and condemn fellow blacks but they do not show similar energies when they attack other races,” he says.
Seremane, who grew up in Randfontein in Gauteng, objects to discussing race numbers in the DA. When it is pointed out to him that the party can hardly hope to ascend into power if it does not actively lobby black support, Seremane says he does not understand why they must shoulder the blame.
“If the DA does not become a non-racial party, it will be because South Africans are refusing to deracialise politics. It will be because South Africans are still chained to their apartheid past. And, mark my works, 20 years down the line, we will have another race war.”
Should the DA look for a black leader to boost its credibility?
“Look, if current leader Tony Leon goes, he must leave because we have found a better leader. What they look like, I don’t care,” he adds.
Seremane says it is foolhardy to argue that the DA culture alienates new black recruits, arguing that every political party fights the same problem because of the previously divided South African society.
“The ANC is predominantly black and the DA perhaps too white, so the predominant culture will prevail.” Seremane then goes on to decry the lack of humanity among blacks towards each other, pointing to tribalism in the ANC, which he says has resulted in marginalisation of non-Xhosas in ANC offices and government positions.
“Don’t tell me about ubuntu when you can’t produce the remains of my brother,” he shouts.
Seremane’s brother, Timothy, a former Umkhonto weSizwe soldier, was killed by ANC commanders in Quatro, Luanda, Angola, after he was accused of being an apartheid spy in 1982.
But Seremane says it is not true that his brother’s death explains his hatred for the ANC. Seremane is himself a former member of the radical ANC Youth League of the 1950s. He then joined the militant PAC because it promised immediate mass action against white rule.
“The PAC answered many young people’s dream. We were tired of the ANC that made fiery speeches over the weekend but returned us to slave conditions on Monday.”
He was sentenced to five years for PAC activities, which he spent on Robben Island from 1963 to 1969. After that, he was banished to Mafikeng in Bophuthatswana because he was Tswana-speaking.
Seremane joined the Democratic Party in 1994 because he wanted strong opposition for the ANC.