They, (the ‘ouens’ what know), say that if you want some perspective on your country, step away from it and listen to foreign viewpoints and opinions. Some call it blind-spot feedback, and it applies as equally to psychology as it does to domestic politics. Which is perhaps why the DA did not see its controversial former leader, Helen Zille’s return to party centre-stage and power as precipitating an exodus of its’ black leaders. They were too busy debating inviolate liberal principles which they say now-resigned leader Mmusi Maimane diluted beyond recognition with a too-ANC-friendly approach in a bid to woo away a politically-significant proportion of the black voter base. It’s a debate which could cause napkin-throwing and even some storming from the room in the genteel leafy suburbs of Constantia or Sandhurst. As well it should. The question is fundamentally vexed. A quick review of how highly influential overseas newspapers paint us might just help inform (or inflame?) the debate… – Chris Bateman
By Thulasizwe Sithole
With the loss of the DA’s black leaders, the long-standing majority black view that it has always been a party dominated by vested white interests seems to have been cemented in, influential overseas media reportage, especially in the Financial Times, shows.
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This dominant outside view of South Africa is backed by World Bank data showing it to be the world’s most unequal country with the top 10%, mostly whites, holding 70% of the wealth, while the bottom 60 per cent, overwhelmingly in the black majority, have ten times less.
Random vox-pops in Soweto mixed with academic analyses in the overseas reporting show the dominant local black belief to be that Mmusi Maimane, the former DA party leader, was only ever a ‘front’ – who just took a while to wake up. A dominant academic view, summed up in the words of Sithembile Mbete, a Pretoria University political scientist, is that South Africans are unable to agree on the basic historic causes of inequality, let alone address them. She’s quoted as saying this makes it “almost impossible” to build a non-racial coalition that can take on the ANC.
Not only has the infighting exposed a deep divide in South Africa’s post-apartheid democracy, it has weakened an important check on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government as the country grapples with weak economic growth, frequent power blackouts and ANC infighting, the report says. The trigger was the return of Helen Zille, a former leader who rejoined the senior ranks of the party this month, despite past seemingly incendiary comments that colonial rule in South Africa was not all bad.
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Resigned-in-sympathy, DA Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba is quoted as saying, “I cannot reconcile myself with a group of people who believe that race is irrelevant in the discussion of poverty and inequality in South Africa in 2019 – they cannot see that the country is more unequal today than it was in 1994.”
The overseas reportage made much of the DA having gained votes from the right in the recent elections, citing the party’s own post mortem admission that the push for black voters had cost it a significant chunk of traditional voters. The party introspection criticised Maimane for what it termed his ‘lack-lustre’ campaigning at the polls. Again, Ms Mbete is quoted as saying there was “never a coherent response” from the DA as to the main economic problems faced by black South Africans.
The party failed to develop an alternative to the ANC affirmative action policies, despite abuses of the system and evidence that black economic empowerment favoured a politically connected business elite. Black voters nevertheless, remained largely in support of such explicit redress, the FT reported. It added that factions in the DA fought over whether to back AA calls or rely on faster overall economic growth to lift black fortunes. It had since retreated from this embarrassing debate, narrowing the space for contestation of ideas. This would, according to Ralph Mathekga, a political analyst, negatively impact on the breadth of politics in South Africa.
