DA leader Tony Leon will hand over the mantle of leadership this weekend. The Mail & Guardian’s deputy editor, Drew Forrest asked him to assess the pros and cons of his 13 years in the hot seat
Looking back over your term as DA leader, what gives most satisfaction, and what causes most distress?
I’m bequeathing a viable party to the next person, rather than the shattered and demoralised party it once was. The DA’s viability is not in doubt. We’ve also helped establish the concept of opposition as a legitimate part of the new democracy. We’ve encouraged a degree of opposition cooperation, not just as a construct, but in government — 80% of our Western Cape councils are ruled by coalition. And we’ve created a following wind for certain ideas. We introduced Aids drugs in the Western Cape in the teeth of the fiercest resistance; that’s now part of the governing reality. Likewise our reading of Zimbabwe. Our critique of the ANC’s Leninist control freakery is another idea which now gets a lot of airtime.
Our biggest mistake was to back floor-crossing legislation. The argument was freedom of conscience, and we’ve since changed our position. But it damaged us and disillusioned voters.
Wasn’t the abortive merger with the New National Party your biggest mistake?
I’m familiar with the argument: we tried to short-circuit history. It caused a lot of pain and suffering. But we wouldn’t be where we are in Cape Town — our share of the vote went up from 12% to 42% — and other Western Cape councils if we hadn’t got Nat voters to support us.
[NNP leader] Marthinus van Schalkwyk is a thoroughly dishonest person whose only motive was to look after himself. Some old Progs [Progressive Federal Party members] may have displayed feelings of cultural superiority towards the Nats. But I started out as an outsider; I took on the establishment in Houghton, the Jo’burg city council and the DP. A lot of my leadership was spent reaching out to people outside my natural milieu.
And your ‘fight-back†theme in the 1999 election — didn’t that harden perceptions of the DA as a white party?
It took us to 38 seats in one election; many DP critics of the strategy benefited from it. Decontextualised, it was used by the ANC as a stick to beat us as anti-poor and anti-black. But that is how the ANC’s ruling elite deals with its opponents, external and internal — like Mac Maharaj.
Didn’t your early, dismissive stance on black empowerment and affirmative action alienate black people?
I was trying to stick to the party’s principles of non-racialism, individual freedom and reward on merit. The DP was indifferent to affirmative action, but there’s a world of difference between promoting diversity on the one hand and proportional representation and strict quotas on the other. We’ve moved on, but so has the debate.
Was a new leader needed for the DA to attract more black support?
I don’t think I’m the problem, and the DA’s black activists would agree. I’ve spent an enormous [amount of] time in black areas trying to grow the party. The problem is the prominence of identity politics over issue politics in South Africa. It’s taken the United States 200 years to reach a point where a black, a woman and a Mormon are presidential candidates; we’re not there yet. We’re a living example of what Marxists call ‘false consciousnessâ€.
I hope my successor breaks new ground, but that will depend on a shifting of the tectonic plates under our politics — people voting on interest, not racial identity.
Do you still believe only privatisation, freer markets and curbs on union power are needed for economic growth?
Those things help, and I still think the market is the best determinant of job creation, but along with the rest of the world I’ve refined my views. There’s an absolute role for the state — the Fidentia scandal shows that. But it must know its place — it can’t pick winners and losers, as the Public Investment Corporation tries to do. It’s a tragedy that, in the midst of a world commodities boom, international companies are disinvesting from our mining industry because of government policy. There’s a terrible assumption in government that it can just wade into an area and will a result.
Wasn’t your open hostility to the trade unions a miscalculation?
My attitude has shifted. They have a role in advancing certain values, and Cosatu’s [Zwelinzima] Vavi has been a more strident opposition leader than I have. I’m not scared of being on the right side of an argument with the wrong people. On labour legislation, I feel they have too much power; on other issues — because they’re completely sidelined in the ANC — too little.
It’s said that you and Helen Zille do not get on well, and that your inner circle asked Athol Trollip to stand for the leadership …
Rubbish. Helen and I get on perfectly well. Since she came into the party in 1999, we’ve worked closely together and I encouraged her advancement to the Western Cape legislature, to party spokesman and mayor. And Athol is an assertive person, he needed no pushing.
You called in Zille and Western Cape leader Theuns Botha last week over a squabble. Do divisions in the province worry you?
Western Cape politics are iets anders, complex. My need is to get everyone singing from the same songsheet so that our opponents don’t have room for mischief. But there are no essential differences. Both are committed to the same project — winning the province in 2009.
Some members accuse Zille of being unwilling to placate DA conservatives, of being divisive …
I’ve not heard one substantive complaint about her management of the DA caucus in Cape Town, 90-odd councillors from everywhere from Constantia to poor areas of the Flats. And she’s had to manage the six parties in her coalition. If she prevails on Sunday, and runs the party like that, she’ll do well.
Haven’t her past attacks on the Independent Democrats complicated your alliance with that party? It was striking how Patricia de Lille piled into her last week.
Voters have punished the ID in two by-elections for joining forces with the ANC; that’s what has determined their strategy. Whether or not De Lille likes Zille, there’s a real duty to cooperate.
You’ve seen Thabo Mbeki in action over many years. How do you assess him?
As deputy president, he had an open-door approach and was engaged, affable and thoughtful; after becoming president he withdrew. I think his isolation explains his conduct on Aids and Zim. But he’s driven through good macroeconomic policies with great determination. His legacy is very mixed.
Your reaction to the ANC leadership struggle, and preferences?
The obsession with the personality of the ANC president points to the underlying fragility of our democratic institutions — the feeling is that if the wrong person gets the job, democracy can be turned on its head. And it’s extraordinary that the candidates can’t show their hand or campaign. It’s the Kremlin, or Byzantium, come to Pretoria.
You want someone balanced like Cyril Ramaphosa or Terror Lekota. An apparatchik like Kgalema Motlanthe, who’s never been in public life and most people don’t know, surely can’t run a complex entity like South Africa. Jacob Zuma is a lightning conductor for dissent in the ANC. The left forgets that he was in the Cabinet that made Gear part of the nation’s governing reality.
What gains can the DA realistically hope for in 2009?
The party must keep going to keep going, growing its base at every election. A million whites are said to have left South Africa and we must compensate by growing in new areas. In last year’s municipal poll, we got 5Â 000 more votes than the ANC in the Western Cape. We must win the province in 2009. And we must be ready to take advantage of what happens on the other side of the aisle. At some stage, the much-anticipated realignment in the ANC will happen.
Broadly, how does the future look to you? Are we slowly mastering our problems or slowly sinking?
There are elements of both. In the ‘Prague spring†of 1994-96, when Parliament called ministers to account and Joe Slovo asked questions about the arms deal, we had glimpses of the vibrant multiparty democracy we could become. Mbeki has been a large factor in suppressing that.
Two baleful moments have made me feel less optimistic: the suppression of FNB’s crime campaign and Tony Yengeni’s hero’s send-off to jail. That didn’t even happen under apartheid; Pietie du Plessis entered prison alone with his family. I’m worried by the march to mediocrity, the wrong policies that aren’t corrected, the ministers who aren’t up to it but stay on forever because we can’t admit mistakes.
Obviously, the country’s much better off than under apartheid — compared to that, things are fantastic. But compared to what we could be … that’s where the problem lies.