The ANC has always used race as a bludgeon. It gets the blood of its members stirred up by reminding them of the injustices suffered by black South Africans, solely on the grounds of their race. Vicious, systematised racial discrimination is so unfair, egregious, insulting and wasteful it has the power to unlock even stronger passions in young people who never experienced it than those who felt the sharp end of the myth of racial superiority.
For those seeking to challenge the ANC’s offering of crooked governance and failed socialism, the temptation to try and draw the sting from the ANC’s gut-level narrative became manifest.
After being told for years by the punditocracy that “The DA will never get anywhere without a black leader”, the party succumbed. More accurately perhaps, Helen Zille, advised by an inner circle who vastly overestimated the reach and influence of the hostile, left-wing bubble in which they operated, succumbed and decided that to advance the DA’s cause, she had to step down in favour of a black leader.
Underlying this was a patronising, even racist narrative that black people are intrinsically racist and would never be able to see beyond skin colour to judge any political party on policy or results. Therefore, they would only ever be able to vote for somebody who looked like them and could be trusted to advance their interests. There can be little doubt that this sort of thinking exists in every race group, in measure that can’t be quantified, but to pander to it and to place this at the centre of strategy showed a disdain for what the country needs to lift itself, and was cynical and wrong.
Zille stepped down and played a key role in elevating the relatively young and politically inexperienced Mmusi Maimane to the leadership. More than that, a sort of unofficial mantra echoed through the party that “You cannot stand for a leadership position if you are white”. This undercover hyper-consciousness of race, went directly against everything the party’s liberal history had advanced: that people would be judged on merit, on their talents, on willingness to work hard and on the morality and efficacy of the decisions they took. The wide spread, global appeal of the DA’s traditional liberal values was brushed aside.
The results came rapidly. By the time the 2019 election campaign began 8 of the 9 provincial leaders were not white, neither were the leaders of the women’s organisation, the youth or the student wings. The party’s ruling Federal Executive was dominated by people who were not white. Party spokespeople were only chosen from amongst black MPs and the party’s all-powerful paid staff leadership decried the success of white MPs in getting into the media, on the grounds that it portrayed the wrong image.