HELEN ZILLE, LINDIWE MAZIBUKO AND THE DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS OF THE DA
In my Politicsweb article of 04 January 2012, which was written in reaction to the unfortunate and offensive use of the term "professional blacks" by Helen Zille, the current leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Premier of the Western Cape, I called upon her to resign from her position as the DA leader and to hand the leadership of the party over to Patricia de Lille, the DA Mayor of Cape Town. I further predicted that were she to fail to so resign, she would in the near future preside over an internally warring DA party, lose the Western Cape in the 2014 national elections, and lose her party's municipal gains in the 2016 local elections.
I predicted that all these would happen, instead of the rosy picture her DA was painting at the time in terms of its intention to win the 2019 national elections and depose the ruling ANC from national power.
I did state in the article that I was aware that Helen Zille would not heed my advice. And of course she did not. But I confess that even I have been completely shocked and utterly surprised by the very vicious and ferocious internecine, no-holds-barred warfare that has broken out within the DA, a factional fight to the finish. It certainly is one to easily rival, and even surpass, some of the ANC's very worst factionalist excesses since the ANC Stellenbosch Conference of 2002.
The DA is clearly not the party of white angels anymore, if the unintended pun can be excused. The only surprise is that this mighty DA factional fight has not inspired SA's columnists, cartoonists, satirists, comedians and two-pence political clowns the way the ANC's now legendary factional fights do.
Yet there can be no doubt that today the DA is undergoing its most profound crisis ever, under the leadership of Helen Zille. Had Zille heeded my advice of 04 January 20212 to resign from the DA leadership then, she would have spared the official opposition party the insurmountable and mortal internal crisis it is facing today, few months before South Africa's historic 2014 national elections, which will coincide with the 20th anniversary of our teenage democracy.
The sad truth is that as long as the DA is led by Helen Zille, it will continue to fumble and to lack the capacity, as well as leadership capability, to pull itself out of its worsening internal morass. Even worse, as I predicted in my 04 January 2014 article on Helen Zille, the DA is and will continue to face inevitable implosion, because no political party can survive for long when it lacks internal ideological coherence and a unifying vision.
The hour of Helen Zille's reckoning has finally arrived. She is now facing her own, self-made Rubicon.
In my Politicsweb article entitled "Lindiwe Mazibuko: An assessment", which appeared on 23 December 2011, I indicated that unless Lindiwe Mazibuko was able to decisively confront and deal with the racist white male patriarchy pulling the strings in the DA, she would fail miserably in her role as the fetching black face of the DA meant to win the DA the elusive black vote. I characterized this powerful but unreconstructed, racist white male patriarchy within the DA as Mazibuko's biggest leadership obstacle, on par with the challenge of the reactionary and backward black patriarchy within the ruling ANC.
Now the daggers are drawn against her DA parliamentary leadership.
The current crisis of the DA around the Employment Equity Amendment Bill (EEAB) has been deliberately and intentionally precipitated, in the main, by the well-orchestrated and well-choreographed middle- to old-aged white male DA members and supporters, or the DA's white male grandees, if you like, who have used this piece of draft legislation to expose both Helen Zille and Lindiwe Mazibuko as merely their female puppets.
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