Democratic Alliance (DA) national chairperson Joe Seremane on Monday announced he will stand for election as his party’s new leader.
”I state it, unequivocally, right now, that I shall make myself available as candidate for the DA leader’s vacancy at our coming congress in May this year,” he told reporters in Cape Town.
He is the second senior DA member to join the race to become the party’s new leader when Tony Leon steps down in May.
Last month, DA Eastern Cape leader Athol Trollip announced he was standing for the post.
Asked what he had to offer as a leader, Seremane, who turns 68 in August, said there is a ”great role” he can play in helping to transcend what he calls barriers to democracy in South Africa.
His decision to stand has come after much thought, as well as advice from various people, some of it ”very contradictory”.
In the end, his decision to stand had come down to ”what it is I want to contribute for the well-being of our country”.
Seremane faced a barrage of questions on race, and the fact he is a black candidate standing for leadership of a predominantly white party.
Asked if he thought the DA was ready for a black leader, he said: ”Yes, I think that is not really an issue, but there is a readiness for any kind of good contribution that can be made, irrespective of your pigmentation.”
Asked if he thought race might be an important issue in the succession race, he said: ”I think it is important. We are all grappling through this thing.
”I always think there are conservatives on both sides; people who are still hung up or trapped in the past. In the middle you have people who have … embraced the vision that we need to have a new country. One nation, with a common destiny, irrespective of our diversity.”
Seremane said people harped on the issue of race.
”It is a fact that most of us sometimes are controlled or guided by skin pigmentation, the ethnic group we come from, and these are things I think should be overcome and fought. You begin with yourself,” he told journalists.
Asked what he thought the advantage would be to the DA to have a black leader, Seremane rejected this as an issue.
”The bottom line should be the attributes that are needed, what contributions can be made by whoever.”
On what he would do differently should he become leader, Seremane said Leon had his own unique gifts.
”It’s another person stepping in, and the operative word … is our diversity. We are not a bunch of clones.”
There are ”diverse approaches to the solutions that we need”.
Asked what he thought is the biggest obstacle to his becoming the new DA leader, he said: ”Sometimes … prophets are not taken seriously in their own village.”
Seremane, who started his career as a school teacher, spent six years as a political prisoner on Robben Island in the 1960s.
He joined what was then the Democratic Party in 1994, and became an MP in 1999. — Sapa