Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane on Saturday called for a revolution in South Africa and for citizens to “rise up against this government”, but to do so at the polls.
“We don’t want bloodshed, we don’t want a war. We will take power through the ballot box, not through the barrel of a gun,” Maimane told a near capacity crowd at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto, close to where he grew up.
Throughout proceedings the DA preempted both the typical militant rhetoric of the EFF and the anti-Maimane approach, and call for loyalty towards liberators the ANC favours.
Both those parties are due to hold their final election rallies on Sunday.
The ANC, said DA spokesperson Phumzile van Damme in a curtain-raiser speech before Maimane, “spent the entire election campaign talking about Mmusi Maimane because they have nothing to offer”.
Maimane himself spent much of his 35-minute speech arguing against a loyalty vote for the ANC.
“In a democracy you don’t need to be loyal to one party forever,” he told the crowd.
“A vote is not a tattoo, it is not something everybody can see. It is your secret.”
“You don’t have to pledge your lifelong allegiance to any party,” he said.
Maimane quoted Thabo Mbeki, Chris Hani and Nelson Mandela, sticking closely to the party’s “do it for Madiba” message throughout. He also invoked the memory of Helen Suzman, but steered well clear of any reference to his party’s recent past leadership.
The DA leader spoke of his own initial loyalty to the ANC in 1994 and how that party had become “a very strange organisation” with the election of Jacob Zuma to lead it.
“On that day the selfish struggle gave way to selfish accumulation and the politics of the heart gave way to the politics of the stomach,” Maimane said.
But Maimane spent comparatively little time emphasising corruption and barely mentioned either service delivery issues or the performance of the DA-led city of Cape Town. Instead he delivered a personal speech, framing politics by way of his own experiences and talking about his family.
“It was right here, as a junior, as a young South African, where I started to learn to play football,” Maimane said.
He then delivered a tale of an underdog team that believed they could win and which occasionally did as a result.
“I was nine years old when Nelson Mandela was released from prison,” Maimane said, by way of introducing a comparison between the ANC of Mandela and that of Zuma.
The ANC had turned its back on everything Nelson Mandela had fought for, Maimane said.
And so, “when I decided to make a different political choice, I did it for Madiba”.