Mmusi Maimane, targets 5m voters for new political party BOSA

Despite having stepped down as DA leader three years ago, Mmusi Maimane remains popular among South Africans, second only to Cyril Ramaphosa as their most popular leader. After realising the promised electoral reform will take much longer than anticipated, on Heritage Day (September 24) Maimane re-entered the fray with the launch of Build One South Africa (BOSA), the country’s newest political party. In this interview with Alec Hogg of BizNews, the former leader of the Opposition explains why he identifies with Teddy Rooseveld’s ‘Man in the Arena’, shares his dreams for SA and unveils plans for BOSA to secure a significant share of the vote in the 2024 national election. These include applying an Obama-style digital approach to targeting 5m voters.

Excerpts from the interview with Mmusi Maimane

Mmusi Maimane on creating Build One South Africa

I genuinely believe in this country. I genuinely think the people of this country are looking for an alternative. I know that our fight in amending the Electoral Act is one that is still ongoing but won’t be ready before 2024. So the only way you can legitimately run for the presidency is to run with a political party and invite citizens who share your values to stand with you and contest in 2024. So if we are true about what we believe, if we believe in a non-racial worls, if we believe that this country is worth fighting for and saving, then we not only cannot afford to sit on the sidelines, we have to do our best to get in the ring and fight for it in the best way we can. This is me doing that.

On daring to try

I think it sits within every human being to seek to do something great. And I think it is emblematic of our country that despite all the negativity, we’ve triumphed before. And I’m convinced we can again. But also at a personal level, it summarises some of my journey in the last number of years. I know what it’s like to fail and fail greatly. I know defeat. I know what it’s like to walk away from parliament to literally no income. I know what it’s like to be victorious in an election to set up coalition governments and everybody celebrates that. And I’ve also known the fact that anything worth doing requires the intensity of the fight. So I like to consider myself as someone who says your actions – however impossible, however difficult, are better than inaction, born out of some form of inertia and overthinking things and sitting on the sidelines and kind of going, well, it’s impossible because that becomes highly cynical. I remember the words of Barack Obama in his final address in Chicago, where he said, “The thing we must guard against the most is cynicism, because once you’re cynical, that is the seedbed of corruption. Once you’re cynical, you forget the fact that it is still possible to do something of great significance”. And others, as I opened my address on Heritage Day, said people would think we’re crazy. But then again, it is indeed the crazy ones who tend to try and change the world.

On the changes in the electoral act changing Mmusi’s strategy

It had to do that and will continue to fight for electoral reform both inside parliament and for the long term good of this country. Because I still hold the beliefs that say that politicians are best functional when they’re accountable to communities directly elected by the people, that doesn’t change what has needed to happen here and here are some key impediments to this issue. So if I said anyone, an independent, must stand for elections. Let me use Rob Hersov as a name. He would need to get 80,000 votes, which is impossible, generally speaking, because I think political parties get less than that and get two seats. And even more seriously, the ability to register to be on the ballot takes harder work in the sense that you need about 15,000 signatures and actually a political party only needs a thousand. So the typical analogy I’ve used is to say the Parliament is asking people to say, if you want to run the comrades as an independent, you’re going to have to run backwards without shoes and we’ll hopefully see you at the finishing line.

And it’s clearly impossible. So we’ve had to change strategy. We don’t change the principle. We’ve put together a political party. I also believe version 2.0 is that at some level we are franchising the model of politics by saying, given the vision that we hold for this country and I’ve always told you that my rallying call for South Africans is it possible to put a job in every home? Right? So if you just take that as a rallying call, as our “build the wall”, as “a chicken in every pot.” But if that is our organising mission, then everything that we do, whether it’s legislation we must answer, does it put a job in every home? Whether it is education? Does it help our kids get through school? So we put a job in every home, whether it’s health care. Do we have a healthy labour system? Whether it’s about safety? Can we get tourists in the country so that we can create a job in every home? So that’s our organising mission. And I would argue that now we can aggregate all the citizens in their communities to be really excited about the fact that I can put jobs in my community, I can put jobs in my street. And if we get more people animated by that, I really believe this whole matter conversation that the former president is having and others are having about a lack of consensus, how we say to ourselves, actually, the only consensus we need to come down to is to say, can we deliver economic prosperity for all citizens and make sure everyone is safe?

If we work on that and build South Africa, we can ask business to do that. We can be a civic society and ultimately, we have a goal. And to underscore the point, when we targeted the World Cup in 2010, no one can deny that this country had a budget surplus, we were able to ride the 2008 crash. Actually, the murder rate in 2010 was less. And equally so, it gave us something as a country that we could focus on. I’m saying 2024 to 2029, we’ve got to put that on the table. Ask every citizen to focus on nothing else but that. And I think we can turn to what this country has shown before, it can do again.

On who he expects to vote for BOSA

I want to talk to citizens who share values like mine. And I know it sounds easier, but there are voters sitting in the ANC who say, I actually want a non-racial country. I want a country that is safe. I want jobs. I want education. They are like me. There are voters who are registered to vote. So of the voters roll of 19 million people, There are enough citizens sitting at five and a half million who already would commit and share the values. Currently they’re fearful. They’re worried about what’s going to happen when the ANC collapses. They’re worried about their tomorrow. We’ve got to be able to guide them in a time of crisis to be able to say, we have a plan to get you out. So that’s already within the registered constituency. You don’t have to pay all the fees to get them registered. But furthermore, I think, you know, I was on another radio show this morning with young people and young people have been incredibly responsive to this issue. As we see in universities. Let me take one simple example. If you look at the UCT elections that are just taking place right now, the biggest winners in that were all independent candidates. They divorced themselves effectively from the current political system and said, we want to work for something different. So I think young people are looking for something fresh. The work that we’ve got to do is the work that inspires hope. It’s the work that tangibly shows people, we’ve got a plan because young people didn’t fight for #FeesMustFall. For you to stand up and say to them that you’re going to make it impossible for a kid to get into university, make it possible for them to do that. I think they’ll align, they’ll register to vote, and they’ll do the job that you need them to do.

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