I’m currently reading Hele Zille’s autobiography – ‘Not without a fight’. One of the stand-out parts of the book deals with the formation of the Democratic Alliance (DA). What I found quite interesting was Zille’s candid account of the merger between the DP (The Democratic Party - comprised of self-proclaimed liberals) and the NNP (The New National Party - read NP, the same bunch that kept the apartheid government in power for many years). She describes the impact of the merger on the DP as being akin to her accident-prone terrier pup, Murphy, who at some point gorged down an entire pork roll and came to within an inch of his life. 

What is clear from Zille’s description of the formation of the DA in the chapter “The battle for the soul of the DA”, is that she was unprepared to accept the racial nationalism and political cronyism which existed inside of the NNP – a compromise which the then DP leader Tony Leon was willing to do in order to scale the party rapidly. Zille’s biggest fear during the formation of the DA was a reverse takeover, where the larger NNP would impose its principles and identity on the liberal principals of the DP. Zille goes on to describe the factionalism inside the DA (subsequent to its formation) which she attributes to the former NNP constituency’s underhanded attempts to take over the party from within. Zille’s contempt for the NNP constituency within the DA, and their ideology, is clear to the reader.

Fast forward to the present day. I, like many South Africans, am considering who to vote for in the upcoming national elections. The country has been through the ringer – bedevilled by nine years of blatant greed, corruption and mismanagement. The SOEs are crumbling, the economy is in a shocking state, the upper echelons of government have been bedevilled by state capture facilitated in part by the private sector, crime is out of control, the quality of education has gone backwards, the poor are getting poorer and economic inequality in SA is amongst the worst in the world. 

The ANC government, over the last nine years, has failed the people of South Africa and especially people like me who voted for this government. It’s safe to say, that the country cannot withstand another nine years of similarly poor governance to the past “lost” nine years.

So, who does one vote for on the 8th of May? The DA and its supporters suggest that it is a no brainer – making it seem as though only stupid and uneducated people won’t support the DA in the upcoming election. Their arguments are as follows: 

1) The ANC has dismally failed the country. 

2) The country needs a strong opposition.

3) The DA, through its governing of the Western Cape has demonstrated their superior ability to the ANC at being in power.

Before engaging on these points - here is the rub. The factions which Helen Zille speaks of in her book haven’t miraculously disappeared – they have been galvanized into a single entity under the DA banner, but its quite clear that those racist nationalists still exist inside of the party and probably still form a significant part of it.

Does it make sense for someone like myself to ideologically identify with those same individuals who supported the apartheid government which discriminated against people of colour for decades and which is fundamentally responsible for many of the problems which exist in SA today? I’m not sure whether I identify ideologically with the “liberals” inside the DA, but I am quite certain that I cannot identify with the former NNP racists inside the DA - for me, it’s a bridge too far. That said, I would not criticise South Africans of colour who were so frustrated with the shocking level of service delivery and corruption in all spheres of the Zuma-led ANC government that they saw the DA as their only alternative – and, I certainly wouldn’t label them as stupid. They are free to exercise their discretion and democratic right to vote for the political party of their choice. 

I would argue, that the key reason why the DA is so vague on their policies related to amongst others affirmative action, BEE and land reform is because they risk alienating the very constituency within the DA which Zille speaks about in her book (and whom at the time of the merger she clearly despised). 

In so much as the ANC has done a particularly poor job of running the country over the last 9 years let’s not forget that they did a fairly decent job prior to that. As a person of colour I almost fully agree with the ANC’s policies (including its position on land reform) – it’s the poor delivery and corruption which bothers me. In the case of the DA its hard to even identify what their policy position is in certain key areas. The DA’s strategy of opposition politics forged under the banner of “Let’s fight back” which was crafted by Tony Leon almost 20 years ago served them well and succeeded in scaling the party very rapidly.

This strategy continued to serve them well given the ANC’s spectacular underperformance over the last decade. However, the strategy hasn’t evolved over the last 20 years – what does the DA stand for and how does it solve the conundrum of having two ideologically opposed constituents consisting of the “liberals” and the “Nats” at its core. I suspect that the only reason that the DA has continued to grow is because the ANC has continued to fail. 

They key question is this – does the ANC continue to fail under the new leadership and is the Ramaphosa-led ANC the same as the Zuma-led ANC? I think that one needs acknowledge that there are still many of the rotten apples within the organization who were there under the Zuma government (some would point out that the current president was there). Naturally taxpayers, like myself, would like to see the heads of the corrupt individuals roll!

I think it’s fair to say, that President Ramaphosa and Co need to exercise political restraint in order to ensure that the ANC is a unified organization going into the upcoming elections – so it's hardly surprising that certain “concessions” have been made. It’s politics after all! 

What is a convenient untruth espoused by the DA and its supporters is that nothing positive has happened since the appointment of Ramaphosa as the leader of the ANC and the country. That is blatantly not true. Since Ramaphosa has taken over as leader, the Guptas have been driven out of the country, we have seen the incorporation of competent individuals and private sector technocrats into key positions – Pravin Gordhan, Trevor Manuel, Tito Mboweni, Jabu Mabuza (to name a few), we have seen a clean up at SARS starting with the ejection of Tom Moyane, a new NDPP Shamila Batohi replacing Shaun (the sheep) Abrahams, the exposure of corrupt private sector institutions (KPMG, Bell Pottinger, Bosasa) and more broadly the exposure of the extent of corruption under the Zuma government through the Zondo and other commissions.

Other positives include the finalization of the mining charter which likely goes a long way to reviving the mining sector, the expedition of the spectrum auctions which will stimulate the sector and in turn the broader economy and embarking on a massive foreign investment drive which has significantly boosted foreign investment in the country. Arguably, Ramaphosa’s mere occupation of the top job staved off a complete downgrade of our sovereign credit rating to junk status. There is definitely a closer relationship between business and government under Cyril’s leadership. Now this is not necessarily an exhaustive list, and some of these supposed wins are moot, but it does provide sufficient evidence to demonstrate that claiming that Ramaphosa has accomplished nothing over the relatively short period of time that he has been president is simply not true and is either based on ignorance or the result of political mischief.  

Back to some of the reasons to vote for the DA (according to their supporters). The DA currently identifies as the official opposition. Despite being significantly larger than the EFF, they have not had the profound impact on forging government policy as the EFF has. For the most part, despite their unconventional methods, it’s the EFF who was instrumental in ejecting Zuma, getting him to pay back the money related to Nkandla and raising the controversial debate of land expropriation without compensation – which ultimately resulted in the ruling party adopting it as part of their official policy. 

Moreover, the EFF has a clearly defined their mandate. They do not have the conundrum which the DA has where they need to satisfy opposing constituencies within their ranks. Do I want the EFF to become the national government? Hell no! I do think that that they have a place in the South African political landscape though, since they counterbalance the right of centre sentiments of parties like the DA and others. I also think that the EFF in time will become a more credible opposition to the ANC than the DA – in so much as they realistically could represent a much larger proportion of the population and in my view have more strategic thinkers making up their leadership. I believe that the DA’s growth going forward is dependent on the ANC failing – were it not for the spectacular failure of the Zuma government, the DA’s growth would not have climbed as rapidly as it did (recent polls seem to support this view). 

If using clean audits as the basis for saying that the DA’s governance has been superior to that of the ANC – then one has to acknowledge this as fact. I disagree that the DA has done a great job of running Cape Town though. Statistically, Cape Town is the most dangerous place in the world by number of homicides according to the Economist (and if you don’t believe me then Google it).

Think about that for a second – there are more homicides in Cape Town than in Johannesburg or even some of the most dangerous Latin American cities where violent drug wars are raging. To be fair this is not adjusted per capita, but it does illustrate that one person’s experience of Cape Town is significantly different to that of another – and that that delineation is based fundamentally on where one lives and the colour of one’s skin. 

Those homicides are taking place inside of the coloured and black townships – they are not happening in the plush parts of the southern and northern suburbs or the Atlantic Seaboard. In the townships, gangs are taking pot shots at each other, toddlers are being caught in the cross fire, pavements are overgrown, school windows broken, people are living in filth without flush toilets etc. Don’t believe me, take a drive though your nearest township (hopefully you come out on the other side).

Now it's convenient to compare Cape Town CBD to Johannesburg CBD (which was until recently run by the ANC government) as an example of the DA’s superior governance – but this is flawed – for the simple reason that no wealthy or middle class individual wants to live in Johannesburg CBD (they all live north of Johannesburg) wealthy people in Cape Town want to live in and around the Cape Town CBD – nestled between the mountain and the ocean (and when I say wealthy read mainly white).

Take a few minutes’ drive down the N2 to the closest coloured or black township and then do that comparison bearing in mind that people of colour were driven out of these nice areas under the group areas act into these townships so as to provide cheap labour to the whites who became the new occupiers. (and people of colour now struggle to reoccupy these plush areas because of inflated prices – read economic apartheid). 

The DA has done a great job… of preserving the status quo and looking after these areas and their wealthy residents. Once again, in fairness, the DA has done some good in uplifting poorer areas as well and it appears as though they haven’t stolen to the same extent as their ANC counterparts (possibly because they are a bit better at stealing discretely) – the point though is that I am not convinced of the claims of the DA’s supporters that their party will necessarily do a better job of ruling the country to the benefit of all South Africans, but my gut feel is that they won’t because they need to keep their mainly middle-class core happy – and herein lies a fundamental conundrum.  

So lastly, the question is this – will the ANC under Ramaphosa be as incompetent or corrupt as the ANC under Zuma? Based on what I have seen so far, I don’t think it will. I believe that the best bet we have as a country when confronted by the state of the economy, the crumbling SOEs, the level of racial tension, massive inequality and the tricky land debate is to have the current ANC under leadership of Ramaphosa, Manuel, Gordhan, some of the people they have roped in from the private sector handling these complex issues.

I don’t really know what the DA stands for – every time their leader speaks, I hear a lot of words but I’m still not sure where they are positioned. I get the strong impression that they don’t really appreciate the more complex social issues – as evidenced by the recent ruckus around some of the comments made by Zille herself. My guess is that as a reasonably well educated and middle-class individual having a DA led government would probably benefit me personally – but I’m worried about the majority of people (living in the townships) – where is the breaking point for them?

I am also not convinced that the DA necessarily has the quantum and quality of leadership to run the country – running little Cape Town is distinctly different from running the country and they have made some dubious regional decisions as of late. More importantly I know that I cannot support a party which contains a bunch of racists which supported the institutionalized and moral corruption of the apartheid government – supporting the DA will mean that I will need to sit around the same ideological camp fire as these individuals who also see the DA as their political home. 

What I hear from the EFF, often times makes a lot of sense. They represent a movement which is to the left of centre - which I think is what the country needs, but I worry about their economic policies which can be summed up by “nationalize anything of any importance”. I like the fact that they are around – but I worry about them coming to power. 

Which leaves the ANC… I don’t think the Ramaphosa government is the same as the Zuma government – if I honestly thought that, then I would leave the country. I don’t believe that the white DA supporters believe that either – cause if they did well then, I would probably get them at the airport. Many of us got it spectacularly wrong by voting in a Zuma government. For the sake of the country I hope we are getting it right this time around!