The leadership contest in the Democratic Alliance (DA) is shaping up as a three-horse race between Cape Town mayor Helen Zille, party strategist Ryan Coetzee and Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip.
None has yet made a definitive announcement about running, but each has significant backing among party heavyweights.
Other potential candidates, such as Joe Seremane — the party’s chairperson and its most senior black member — and Western Cape leader Theuns Botha may come under pressure to contest the leadership election in May. Neither has much chance of success, according to senior DA figures who otherwise hold starkly diverging views on the future of the party.
Zille has long been touted by her supporters as the person to take the party beyond what they see as Leon’s abrasive style, and his willingness to ditch liberal principles in pursuit of more conservative white voters. She is probably the front-runner at present, but does not have universal support, even among the party’s liberal and English-speaking MPs.
Some of these MPs deeply resent the way she has been represented as the only alternative to Leon and dislike the vicious battles she has conducted with Botha. “We don’t need to see that replicated at a national level,” said one.
On the other hand, her support is not confined to English-speaking liberals. Tertius Delport, the former Nationalist minister who lost out to Trollip for leadership of the Eastern Cape in 2002, is seen as one of her key backers.
Zille’s success as mayor of Cape Town has dramatically raised her profile, but it is a major complicating factor for her campaign. Supporters of Coetzee and Trollip are already suggesting that she cannot do both jobs.
“[Helen’s] big difficulty is how to juggle the mayoralty and the leadership, which are both more than full-time jobs,” said a senior official. “The voters of Cape Town have been let down by the DA once. It would be a serious setback if things fell apart once again.”
The DA strategic report (PDF)
Read the full text of the strategy document written by Ryan Coetzee.
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Her supporters, however, appear to believe that their famously hard-working candidate can do both, perhaps by handing the parliamentary leadership to someone else while she concentrates on the party and the city. “That is never going to be allowed to happen,” say others.
Alternative
For those in the party who identify with Zille’s politics, but can’t stomach voting for her, Trollip is beginning to look like the preferred alternative. His fluency in isiXhosa is regularly cited, as is his success in welding together the party in the Eastern Cape.
“Athol is very enthusiastic as our provincial leader,” said MP Stuart Farrow. “He has pulled together the factions that were left over from the merger of the Democratic Party and New National Party [NNP]. He can be a hard taskmaster at getting people to do their jobs … and he has a good rapport with the majority party in Bisho.”
For now Trollip is the only one of the three potential candidates to openly say he wants the job: “In all likelihood, I will make myself available,” he said, adding that he wants to consult a few more people before he makes his position unambiguous. “I relish the challenge of leadership,” he said, punting his record in building the party’s support in the African National Congress heartland from miniscule levels to the point where it has five members in the provincial legislature, 100 councillors and five MPs at national level.
He is comfortable with the party’s strategic shift to concentrate on winning black support; he campaigned for the Eastern Cape leadership on a similar platform. “It is folly for the DA, or any other party that wants to grow, to think it can achieve its aspirations by representing minorities. The minority pool is a diminishing pool that will end up being a dry pan,” he told the Mail & Guardian.
Coetzee
Had this election taken place six months ago, Coetzee would have been seen as the “conservative” candidate. He has been Leon’s right-hand man for nearly 10 years and his role in the decision to embrace the NNP, and to campaign for minority support on the “fight back” platform, firmly identified him with the party’s right wing.
But his authorship last month of an impassioned strategy document calling on the DA to fundamentally reorient itself around attracting black support has turned that picture on its head. Coetzee won’t say whether he has decided to run yet. “Quite clearly the DA needs to broaden its appeal to black voters without alienating the majority of voters we already have. That is the mission the next leader of the DA has to lead,” is as far as he will go.
Coetzee, who is just 33 years old, has made numerous enemies in his rapid ascent through the DA hierarchy, but he seems to have won support rapidly from a number of the party’s rainmakers.
“Ryan is synonymous with the new direction of the party; he has revolutionised the way we collect money, the way we organise ourselves,” said one key official. “Of course he has problems: he’s young, he’s brash, he’s arrogant and so on.”
Others, such as KwaZulu-Natal leader Mike Ellis, who openly describes himself as a Leon loyalist, firmly back the new strategy, but want to keep their powder dry. “People are already jockeying for position. It is a bit soon. We need to sit back and lick our wounds a bit. The person has to be intellectually capable, they have to be a person of absolute integrity and they have to have a gift for dealing with people. What we don’t need is a Tony clone. He’s done a great job in his own style and his own character, but now something different is needed.”
DA document reveals the party’s internal call for change
The DA must risk some short-term electoral setbacks if it is to transform itself into a party that can attract meaningful black support, says the strategy document distributed last month by Coetzee.
But the crux of the document is that the party should be able to bring most of its traditional supporters along with it, because they also want a DA that can appeal beyond minority politics. “It will be very difficult to succeed, because we are taking on all of South Africa’s history and the way in which that history has divided people,” writes Coetzee.
“I am convinced that the overwhelming majority of white, coloured and Indian South Africans are ready for this move, while there are millions of black South Africans who are looking for a political party that will connect with them in the way that the ANC is increasingly unable to do.
“Nevertheless, some of our current voters might desert us. But the alternative to building a party for all the people is to slowly disintegrate, as we continue to attract an ever-shrinking pool of minority voters.”
The document, which was leaked to Independent Newspapers following the announcement that Leon would relinquish the party leadership in May, calls for deep changes in the way the DA sees itself and South Africa.
In order to bridge the identity divide, it says, the party must better understand the legacy of apartheid: “There is a legacy, and it is not just material – it is also emotional. It is a legacy of deprivation, humiliation and anger. To ignore this legacy is to ignore the people who suffer from it. If we ignore those people, they would be right to deny us their votes.”
Too often, he suggests, the DA has been angry about issues such as crime, corruption and affirmative action, which fire up its largely white, coloured and Indian base, rather than about “racism against blacks, the state of education, unemployment or poverty. If that division provides some insight into what we care about, then what does it say about who we care about?”
The document has been widely construed as a call for a change in leadership style — and a precipitating factor in Leon’s decision to resign.
But senior party officials who are familiar with its genesis are anxious to stress that Leon fully endorsed it, and told the party’s federal council: “If you carry on doing the same thing, you will carry on getting the same results.”
Mike Ellis, the KwaZulu-Natal provincial leader, said: “There is nothing fundamentally new in this. Ryan has enunciated principles that have been under discussion for some time.”
Others point out that Leon began discussing his plans to step down with his closest associates about two months before the document was circulated.
That doesn’t mean it has been universally accepted, as one senior official explains: “A number of people are worried we will go down the Roelf Meyer route, where you go in search of a new constituency, lose your current constituency and end up with nothing. That is explicitly what the document says we will not do. Some people are skittish, but by and large there is support for this position.”