Democratic Alliance deputy leader Joe Seremane claims that he keeps in his car a list of senior blacks who would have formed the future leadership of the DA — all of whom have since left the party. DA leader Tony Leon has also said the party invested a lot in grooming black leadership, with few results.
But why should they stay?
The DA leaders have always said that to grow they need to start winning black support. It is a welcome and realistic statement that recognises that the only role of a mainly white opposition party in democratic South Africa would be to continue snapping on the sidelines without ever being taken seriously.
The typical reaction to such a party was best exemplified by Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula, who said whingers should leave the country. It is a disdainful and dismissive response. In any other country experiencing such widespread and violent crime, such a response would be a costly political mistake, but here Nqakula could make his utterance confident that it would not cost his party a single vote because its opposition lacks credibility.
My suspicion is that the DA has never really wanted to win black votes at the expense of policies they currently stand for. It has rather been a case of ”let’s get the blacks to buy into our policies”, but there has been little by way of actually trying to tap into black aspirations and concerns, or to articulate those.
That is why one of my grannies still believes that if she were to vote for the DA, her pension would be taken away. Her pension has increased substantially since 1994, and the sea of white faces that she sees as the DA represents a reversion to the apartheid that she knew all her life.
The truth is that the only way the DA could distinguish itself from the ANC was to hammer the ruling party on certain policies that cause discomfort among those minorities who have nightmares about South Africa turning into something like Zimbabwe.
The votes of those two million petrified South Africans are safely in the DA’s pocket. But what beyond that? Should they offer up Joe Seremane as the new DA face to reassure my granny? Or Helen Zille, the Xhosa-speaking Cape Town executive mayor?
The DA’s choice of leadership will reflect a lot about the political choices the party will make in the future. But for the party to be more than a minority opposition voice, it needs to do a lot more than pick a new leader. The party will have to drastically overhaul its vision, strategy and communication methods if it is to attract any new voters. This means reviewing its opposition to affirmative action, black economic empowerment, name changes, the Freedom Charter and all the other policies which are dear to the majority of the population, but anathema to the small crowd that is the DA.
Rapule Tabane is associate deputy editor