The more the infighting within the Tripartite Alliance (TA) intensifies, the more frustrated the ANC becomes with its partners' lust for power, and with their pursuit of an illusory ideology as they seek to grab control of policy from a dithering Jacob Zuma.
The Financial Mail's Barney Mthombothi calls the TA an " unholy alliance". He concludes that "it won't die or be broken without a challenge from outside". (Financial Mail, 18 December 2009).
[Stanley Uys writes on the conflict in the alliance here - Editor.]
Meanwhile, Democratic Alliance leaders are watching closely as the infighting continues, weighing up what the TA's disintegration might mean for their party's election prospects if they play their cards skilfully and ethically.
One thing is sure. There are ANC supporters who are increasingly disheartened as the DA, official opposition in the National Assembly and deftly led by Helen Zille, draws wise counsel from the current mayhem.
The DA knows it has to be careful - to take the long view and resist the temptation to go for short-term gains by wooing disaffected ANC moderates and hinting at the possibility of compromises. Taking its bearings from what happened to the National Party, it knows that "If you don't like our principles, we've got others" would mean disaster.
The reality is that time is on the DA's side. Zuma has turned the ANC into a blatantly racist party and has clearly abandoned the vision of "a rainbow nation". Now it seeks to enforce ethnic "representivity" on employers. Clearly it has become a party whose sell-by date is well past.
Hewing to an outdated "liberation" theology is like driving through the rear-view mirror. As a result the ANC contributes little to solving today's pressing problems of mass unemployment. impoverishment and a growing feeling of hopelessness as it turns its back on the only pragmatic remedy: a dynamic, expanding economy with a business sector spurred by individual enterprise and new investment that would raise productivity, deliver GDP growth and generate millions of better-paying jobs.
Instead the ANC makes empty promises and clings to the illusion that more economic planning by the state is the answer. But now the word is out: between 2005/06 and 2008/09 no fewer than nine large state-owned enterprises (SOEs) had to be bailed out, wasting almost a quarter of a trillion rands of taxpayers' hard-earned cash: R242m to be exact.
Millions of disenchanted township dwellers and suburbanites have had to cope with "lights-out" because of gross mismanagement of Eskom. Ditto at South African Airways. Ditto at the SABC and not a few others.
Widespread coverage in the media of the incompetence, fraud and waste at state-owned enterprises has not gone un-noticed. Nor has growing public anger as Zuma's hand-picked officials drive home to expensive security-guarded mansions in their shiny, over-powered, top-of-the-line BMWs accompanied by police escorts while poverty-stricken black families go hungry. Voters are also aware of the greed, corruption and incompetence that's rife among provincial and local government officials who can't even be relied on to deliver clean water.
And everywhere criminals are waiting to pounce. No wonder Johannesburg has earned the reputation of being "the murder capital of the world".
With the Tripartite Alliance focused on its war of words and an ANC whose helmsman can't make up his mind whether to steer the ship of state to port or starboard and an electorate that's becoming more and more disillusioned - why should the DA even contemplate trading principles (or leaders) for the promise of voting support of lesser rivals?
On the question of whether a white-led political party can ever win a general election in today's South Africa, pundits caution "never underestimate blind loyalty to the ANC".
Be that as it may. But as more supporters of the ANC and smaller independent parties lose confidence in their leaders even the blind will eventually rebel, decline to vote, and take to the streets as they have done throughout history.
Meanwhile the DA is surfing a wave of voter support that can only grow. Here are some numbers:
- In the 1999 elections the DA got 1,527, 337 votes or 9.56% of the total and won 38 National Assembly seats
- In 2004 it got 1,931,201 or 12,37% and 38 seats
- In 2009 it got 2,945,829 or 16.66% and 67 seats and an outright majority in the Western Cape Province.
Support for the DA also grew in eight of nine of South Africa's provinces and its seats in provincial legislatures increased from 51 in 2004 to 65 in 2009. The ANC's representation in the national assembly dropped from 297 seats to 264 or from 74.3% to 65.9%. That also cost the ANC the two-thirds majority needed to change the Constitution unilaterally.
So the trend is clear. Each year the DA is gaining ground; each year the ruling alliance is in greater disarray, and in coming elections the ANC is likely to lose votes and seats.
Bottom line: the DA under Helen Zille has already succeeded in realigning South African politics and in the process safeguarding the integrity of the Constitution. That may be enough to tempt some in the party to go for broke in the run up to 2014 by actively wooing disaffected moderates in the traditionalist wing of the ANC and members of the handful of small independent parties.
Of course, should former ANC or minority party supporters themselves decide they want to join the DA because, at last, they genuinely recognize the value of the principles it fights for, well and good. But overtures that come with quid pro quos attached should be firmly rejected.
Likewise any suggestion, from within or outside the ranks of the DA, that Helen Zille should be replaced by a black leader because that would improve the party's chances of winning upcoming elections, should be unequivocally rejected.
To do otherwise would be to succumb to the racism that the DA is pledged to overcome.
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