The DA needs to look forward
The DA campaign: "Know your DA," has proved surprisingly controversial and effective. Its achievements so far include an energising of DA grassroots campaigners, attracting a disproportionate amount of ANC anger and a definite uptick of support in the target community.
The unseemly haste of the ANC leadership to be photographed with President Nelson Mandela and the tasteless use of his image is directly ascribable to the DA campaign.
Helen Zille expressed her mystification at the fact that some people actually believe the lie that the DA would bring back apartheid when elected to power. The ANC played this card in the last election and some voters who do not read the newspapers or watch anything other than SABC TV can be forgiven for believing that the ANC is the only show in town.
It is said that the winners write the history and the political history of South Africa has been rewritten to exclude the anti-apartheid contributions of the Progressive Party, the PRP, the PFP and the DP in the long years of apartheid rule. The PAC, AZAPO, the Black Consciousness Movement and even the UDF have to a larger or lesser extent been airbrushed out of history. Only the ANC did anything.
In attempting to correct the historical perspective and make it clear that the leaders of today's DA are the last people who would want apartheid back, the focus has been on who did what when. This is essentially a backward look and while necessary to set the record straight, it nevertheless invites finger-pointing and blaming for things that happened long, long ago. The ANC has pointed out that the PP in the sixties stood for a qualified franchise.