/ 21 October 2011

DA leadership — it is a matter of style

If I was a member of the Democratic Alliance (DA) parliamentary caucus, I would have voted reluctantly for Lindiwe Mazibuko over Athol Trollip as the next leader of the official opposition. My vote would be “reluctant” because the differences between them are stylistic and tonal rather than ideological.

When I ask Mazibuko whether there are differences in vision and ideology between them, she answers quickly: “No, I don’t think so. Our differences are methodological.

Ideologically, and in terms of our vision for the country, we are on the same page.” The tie-breaker, for me, would not be the fact that Mazibuko is young. It is not that she is black. It is not that she is female. The tie-breaker is simply tone and style. There are two consequences I want to establish.

First, there is less at stake in this leadership contest than many of us have claimed or hoped. Second, I want to make the case for why tone and colour (pun intended) is an acceptable tie-breaker in Mazibuko’s favour.

I ask both candidates why they want the job. “I’m a career politician” is the rather honest, if uninspiring, answer from Trollip. He does, however, have a bigger set of political achievements than Mazibuko, although the 16-year age gap between them probably accounts for that. He claims to be well regarded within the party, including by leader Helen Zille, for having done a sterling job as caucus leader so far. For that reason alone, he thinks he deserves the opportunity to continue in the role.

Trollip also claims responsibility for a more diverse caucus, greater media exposure for that caucus and excellent committee appointments such as DA MP Dene Smuts to the parliamentary committee working on the Protection of Information Bill. When I playfully suggest that, perhaps, a diverse caucus is the result of the party’s national selection policy, he reminds me: “Someone has to make strategic calls in Parliament and pull the team together. I have been responsible for that.”

The media-exposure claim also struck me as hasty, especially because Trollip was conspicuously absent during the local elections. To this he responds firmly: “Politics is about marketing. Marketing is the key to being successful. Hence, Lindiwe was chosen to be the face of the campaign, with Patricia de Lille and Zille — Read between the lines.”

I do not have a biblical gift of interpretation, but imagine that Trollip wants me to conclude that white men were deliberately hidden like drunken uncles in the hope that doing so would result in more favourable electoral outcomes. I heard nothing in that response about Mazibuko’s skills set or ability to communicate the DA message, but only about the aesthetic advantage of her face on posters.

Into inspiration
In her turn, Mazibuko gets into inspiration mode. She tells me: “We are facing a pivotal moment in South African politics. We can continue to grow. But we must seize the moment, or just risk reaching the ceiling. This, I have realised, is a huge turning point for me. If we are to do well in 2014 then we have to do something about it.

“We have to actualise the hopes and the fears of voters. We must become a party that has the will, that has the plan. And the principled platform from which we can do that is Parliament.”

You feel her emotion when she speaks. Mazibuko’s energy and enthusiasm are infectious.

Yet Mazibuko is in danger, if she is not careful, of downplaying substantive policy and intellectual detail in favour of the quick returns on a crisp sound bite. This energetic soliloquy about “a pivotal moment” reminded me of the public statement she released when she announced she was running for this position: nothing in that statement, nor in her opening remarks to me now, spelled out a vision, an ideology, or even a signature policy or idea.

She needs to spend more time in the policy trenches and in communities across the country. What is needed in her camp is a strategic reorientation: she must deliver more speeches speaking to substantive issues and fewer that speak to vague, abstract values or responses to her identity.

So, on balance, neither candidate wins my nonexistent vote in response to the question of why they want the job.

I decide to speak about the elephant in the room. “If, hypothetically speaking, after evaluating you on merit, I score both of you 83 out of 100, would it be okay in that scenario to vote for Lindiwe because she is black?”

When I put this question to Trollip, his response is firm: “No. If we are all equal, then race should play no role. I can do nothing about my race.”

This stuns me for two reasons: his quick dismissal of the very topic of race justifies the fear of the majority of voters that the DA leadership has a deeply ahistorical attitude towards contemporary South Africa’s problems. It is shocking that an incumbent leader of the opposition has a conception of equality that is formalist rather than substantive, as would be in line with the constitutional jurisprudence on equality. Second, Trollip contradicts his own party’s view on race.

‘A legitimate tie-breaker’
In the scenario I sketched, race would be a legitimate tie-breaker, according to DA policy. Trollip is clearly fundamentally opposed to race-based redress. I doubt he was simply mis-speaking.

Mazibuko, by contrast, endorses race as a tie-breaker in the event of two candidates being equally qualified. “Yes, I think that’s perfectly legitimate. Diversity is important within the DA. So, in that case, choosing a black candidate would be fine. Of course, these are tough questions because they are personal in this instance, but yes, in theory, that’s right.”

I have no idea why Mazibuko earlier insisted there was no difference in ideology between her and Trollip. She was either being imprudently naive or telling a white lie for fear of alienating some caucus members.

I am marginally comforted by Mazibuko’s engagement on the race question, because she did so in line with both our constitutional jurisprudence on equality and the DA’s own policy on race-based affirmative action. Still, I have heard Mazibuko speak on race several times. She might be committed to “diversity”, as she puts it, but the mechanisms she supports do not necessarily include explicit race-based solutions that target groups because they are, say, black or coloured or Indian.

Being black does not mean that she must of necessity be of a black-consciousness bent, or that she must regard race as the primary or most useful framework for understanding our social challenges or the interventions needed to tackle them.

My point is not that it is wrong for someone to be black and possibly colour-blind. I leave the debate on race for another day. The point here is rather that there are no interesting, deep or important differences in ideology, even on the question of race, between Trollip and Mazibuko. Why then would I nevertheless, in the end, still vote for Mazibuko?

Mazibuko has run a very open campaign. She has a modern-day public relations team managing her diary, sending out statements, and so on. She tells me that this race is not just about Parliament but about the DA showing the ANC what an open and honest contestation of ideas and leadership positions looks like.

She refuses, furthermore, to divorce Parliament from provincial and national politics, which is why she fully endorses this as a national contest, even if only caucus members get to vote.

Trollip, on the other hand, has rebuked Zille and De Lille for expressing public support for Mazibuko. He insists that media coverage is not appropriate and that this contest should have been restricted to discussion and debate within the caucus. Many of my questions were deflected with a “Speak to me about that after the election!”

This is a profound and tie-breaking difference in attitude between Mazibuko and Trollip.

Last, although Mazibuko artfully stops short of bluntly criticising her predecessors, she makes it clear that the aggressive tone of opposition communications and debate in Parliament, though sometimes justified, needs to be varied with a greater range of softer and harder tools. She says insightfully: “People don’t hear what you say. They hear who
you are.”

She therefore thinks about how to communicate within the reality of a country where arbitrary facts about you are used to judge you both before and after you have spoken.

Trollip, by contrast, shows no self-criticism about his own dialogue habits and none of Mazibuko’s strategic awareness of how to negotiate the irritating reality of political discourse in a space where “who you are” means, rightly or wrongly, that the right tone, style and wording matter.

For its own sake, the DA caucus should therefore elect Mazibuko over Trollip, but follow that up with a more meaningful conversation about ideology, vision and policy before the electorate becomes suspicious of the cosmetic, stylistic and tonal changes. These changes are a good start. But more is needed.

Eusebius McKaiser is a political analyst