A decade ago, Phillip Morris Companies, Inc. changed its name. Healthcare professionals around the world had declared war on smoking and the cigarette manufacturing giant wanted to distance itself from the negative publicity associated with profiting from the sale and marketing of an unhealthy, cancer-causing product.
So Phillip Morris did what any large corporation would do when in the midst of a crisis: they called their advertising agency. The highly paid ad executives went to work conducting countless focus groups, playing with various brand concepts and working their magic. Then, on January 27, 2003, Phillip Morris Companies, Inc. was set ablaze and a phoenix, Altria Group, Inc., rose up from the ashes, shining, virginal and new in every way except one: they never stopped making cigarettes.
Rebranding is commonplace among corporations and businesses worldwide. Indeed, firms regularly change their image in attempts to hide corporate malpractice, shed the odiferous cloak of bad publicity or to combat declining profits. The truth is, of course, that rebranding techniques almost never alter the essential nature of the firm being rebranded. It is merely a marketing tactic that changes the wrapping paper while the gift remains the same.
It's election time again in South Africa and the Democratic Alliance is rebranding. Gone are the DA's long associations with public engagement on behalf of a select few in South African society; gone, too, is its historical exploitation of racial divides for political gain, or so they claim.
The DA has done its focus groups, it has played with branding ideas and it has re-launched itself to South Africans, shiny, fresh, and brand-spanking new.
To be sure, the DA's "updated" policy platform contains the essence of its new message to the South African electorate. They were abandoning the negative aspects of their political legacy. They were no longer the party of a few white elites. They had thought it over and had decided, in this new time, to become instead a more inclusive political organization in which "people are judged by their character, their effort and their contribution, not by their race."
They polished their image, changed some candidates and began a charm offensive on the South African public, plying us with glitzy campaign images, new versions of history and urgent pleas begging us to believe.
And many might have believed. But any willingness on the part of the South African public to listen to the DA's re-wrapped clarion call ended on Sunday with the publication of an article in the Independent in which an unnamed DA leader was quoted saying "We are saying that we [the DA] are transforming, we want a black leader. Lindiwe [Mazibuko] is not black enough."
Not black enough. The words rolled like thunder across the country. Those who wanted to believe abandoned our wishful thinking and embraced instead the cold reality of one inescapable fact: the DA had not changed at all.
But firms often hit rough patches along the rebranding road and their leaders are usually advised to immediately address the issue, brush off the dust and keep going. Premier Helen Zille did no such thing. Her immediate response to the shameful words ‘not black enough' was not a fiery condemnation or a renewed focus on selling her party's post racial image. The leader of the DA offered no censure or rebuke and chose, instead, to make one thing clear: she was not stepping down as leader.
Let me make one thing clear: I am NOT stepping down as DA leader after the election next year. So premise of "succession story" is wrong.
— Helen Zille (@helenzille) October 13, 2013
In that moment, the DA threw off its sheep's cloak and revealed the same desperate wolf all too familiar to the South African public. The Democratic Alliance had not really changed at all and was merely trying to sway electoral trends with a new face and slick rhetoric. The entire country was left to wrestle with the inescapable truth that the DA's fresh crop of up and coming leaders were not selected based on character, merit or passion. They were chosen simply because they were black.
The core of the DA rebranding strategy is now painfully clear. There was no alteration to the policy of pandering to the interests of the few. There was no break from the racialised politics of its recent past. There was, in fact, no change at all to the DA of old. There seems to have been a tactical calculation within the inner sanctum of the DA political machine that South Africans are foolish enough to believe anything if you simply introduce a few black faces.
The further irony is that after all their racially based campaigning, of mobilizing coloured voters against the ANC claiming that it was "too black", it is clear that coloured leaders such as Dr. Wilmot James, Lennet Max, Patrica de Lille have also been sold out by the DA leadership. They will certainly not be black enough.
The DA has not changed at all. It hopes that if you put a black face on a racist agenda the rest of "us" will follow their lead, content, blinded and silent.
Dr. Phillip Dexter is the Chief Political Political Advisor to the Chief Whip of the ANC Parliamentary Caucus. He writes in his personal capacity.
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