Good sign or good riddance?

The appointment of veteran Democratic Alliance (DA) politician Douglas Gibson as ambassador to Thailand signals a thawing in relations between the DA and the ruling party, a senior African National Congress (ANC) MP told the Mail & Guardian recently.

Gibson tended to confirm this reading. Speaking from Pretoria, where he is on a foreign affairs department course before taking up his new post in February, he said: ‘The fact that the president, acting on the advice of the minister of foreign affairs, has appointed someone like me — known to be a DA loyalist and strong [Helen] Zille supporter — sends out a message. Surely it’s that there is room for all views in our democracy.”

Independent Democrats leader Patricia de Lille also said this week that the appointment ‘signals some mind shift towards the DA”.

The last time an ANC government awarded a DA or DP leader an ambassador’s post was immediately after the 1994 election when former president Nelson Mandela sent Zach de Beer to Holland.

The ANC MP, who asked to remain anonymous, suggested the ‘a shift in the terms of engagement” was in large part due to a change in leadership style under DA chairperson Zille and parliamentary leader Sandra Botha.

Mbeki had set the tone for detente through such gestures as meeting Zille immediately after her election as DA leader, their joint appearance at an imbizo in Khayelitsha, where he defended her against a hostile audience, and the ANC head office intervention in provincial moves to unseat her as mayor of Cape Town. Zille is known to have a good rapport with Western Cape Premier Ebrahim Rasool, an Mbeki ally, who was also on stage at the imbizo.

Equally telling was ANC secretary general Kgalema Motlanthe’s condemnation of Zille’s arrest during a recent anti-drugs march in Mitchell’s Plain.

The MP also pointed to the contrast between ANC documents drafted for the December conference in Polokwane and the Stellenbosch conference five years ago. The latter had laid heavy emphasis on an alleged counter-revolutionary axis of the DA and the ‘ultra-left” — a line that has now been discarded.

Gibson underscored the exchange of gifts between Mbeki and exiting DA leader Tony Leon at a 45-minute meeting in May this year, their first, and the warmth of Mbeki’s farewell tribute to Leon in Parliament, which ‘surprised people”.

However, this is not the only version of events. A senior DA MP argued that Gibson’s appointment mainly reflected his reduced political circumstances after Leon’s abdication and friendly ties with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, rather than any change in the party climate.

‘This is between Douglas and Nkosazana — he’s done some foreign ‘spokespersoning’ and endeared himself to her,” the MP said. ‘It has everything to do with the changing of the guard in the DA. Ian Davidson has taken over as chief whip and Douglas is no longer part of the inner circle.”

Gibson (65), who began his political career in 1970 as a United Party provincial councillor, hotly disputed suggestions that he was tired and wanted to be put out to pasture.

‘It’s dead wrong to say that I’m tired of Parliament or applied for the post,” he said. ‘I was looking forward to a turn as the DA’s finance spokesperson.”

The ANC parliamentarian emphasised that Gibson had been central to Leon’s leadership team and that the latter’s former policy adviser, Ryan Coetzee, now an MP, also seemed ‘a spent force”.

Under Zille and Botha, the party was seeking to project itself as more than just ‘muscular opposition”, by claiming a stake in the government of the country.

‘The strategy was to ‘out-opposition’ the National Party, but that’s served its purpose. Now they’re taking collective responsibility. In Cape Town they’re building a 2010 stadium like other cities; they’re working with provincial and national government.”

The parliamentarian said another straw in the wind had been Botha’s handling of last week’s motion of no-confidence in Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang in the wake of DA MP Mike Waters’s controversial ejection from the House.

Waters, stylistically in the Leon mould, provoked ANC hostility by projecting ‘disrespect for an older black woman”. By contrast, Botha had focused on South Africa’s public health crisis in a thought-provoking speech, steering clear of the theft and alcoholism allegations against the minister.

The MP said that ANC parliamentarians had a ‘visceral dislike” of Leon’s strident style, which told them: ‘Look what happens when a black government takes over.” The move away from ‘endless set-piece confrontations” between the parties was a sign of South Africa’s maturing democracy.