A generous benefactor has sponsored a braai for the DA candidates and workers in inner city Johannesburg.
He recalls how Progressive Federal Party candidates in south Johannesburg were pleased if they got more than 100 votes. But they persevered in the face of adversity, and he wished to reward similar pioneering efforts by the DA today.
The DA got 3000 votes in the six inner city wards in the last elections, up from 1000 votes previously. It's about 14% of the vote in an area that is almost entirely black. In Soweto, the DA got about 7% of the vote, up from one to two percent previously,
It may seem small progress, but it is significant. COPE got similar support in black townships in its first election, which was then hailed as a major achievement.
I suspect that many COPE supporters, having already taken the difficult step to break with the ANC, switched to the DA. Times are changing. In the early days it was difficult for the DP/DA to campaign in township areas.
There was hostility and even violence, as when a DP meeting in Orange Farm in south Johannesburg was disrupted in August 1993. Petrol was poured on black DP supporters and posters and t-shirts were set on fire. Stones were thrown, and I I was lucky to get out with only a smashed car windscreen. A senior ANC member remarked: "The DP is a mosquito, but even a mosquito needs to be squashed".
Our first public meeting in Soweto took place in May 1992.
Denis Beckett wrote an hilarious account of it titled "A chilly toe tests new waters". The promised audience arranged by a rather weird Soweto DP member was a Sunday church gathering.
Tony Leon addressed mostly elderly congregants clad in Basotho blankets. They were somewhat bewildered by his speech that was erratically translated for them.
"Hardly a triumph", as Beckett put it, for "white South Africa's historic first Soweto rally", but he predicted we would do better in future.
It's been a long, hard slog, but we have come a long way since then. The first rather small milestone was when we overtook the number of spoilt votes in townships. This happened in the 1999 elections.
Tony Leon campaigned vigorously in black areas in the 2004 elections, but with little result. More effective were the black DA members who walked around proudly in DA t-shirts. They took a lot of abuse. But the atmosphere is completely different today.
Instead of throwing away our pamphlets, they are held onto and read. Our election launch was held in historic Kliptown, packed solid with enthusiastic DA members of all races. Twenty percent of the DA vote now comes from black South Africans.
The ANC's support is increasingly mono-racial as it resorts to racial rhetoric to keep its core base. ANC Nelson Mandela Bay chairman Nceba Faku has called for blacks who vote for "white" political parties to be driven into the sea.
If this defines the ANC as a "black" political party, then what happened to its proud non-racial tradition?
By contrast, the DA will continue to grow amongst all South Africans, as it has an enduring message of dignity and hope for everyone.
Jack Bloom MPL, is DA Leader in the Gauteng Legislature. This article first appeared in The Citizen.
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