The DA's earnest campaigns to woo black people into their fold - - such as through the Youth Wage Subsidy proposal and its recent Economic Plan - presents this political party with an uncertain future and serious risks. It is clear that DA leader Helen Zille is so anxious to rule this country she would even go against the wishes of her party's white conservative members, who would rather have the DA remain white dominated both in terms of members and policy content. But Zille would have none of it as she has her eyes firmly fixed in ensuring that one day the DA becomes the governing party in South Africa.
In so doing, she seems to overlook or down play the heavy price that comes with black and African support to her party: the age-old national and class grievance of the African majority. The current living conditions of blacks and Africans in particular are fundamentally defined by this historic grievance of the African people. It does not really matter which organisation Africans join or vote for, their fundamental grievance is the same and will remain so for a good number of years to come.
Can the DA, a neoliberal and conservative white party, genuinely claim to represent the African grievance; which can only be solved by fundamentally tampering with historically bequeathed white privileges? Accordingly, does the DA have the necessary political and ideological will and wherewithal to fundamentally alter the current economic relations in order to address this old-aged historic grievance of the African majority?
This is where the rub is for Zille and her DA, because that is what the black and African members and supporters of the DA are going to demand, with increasing vigour. Needless to say, that will result in serious tensions as the DA grows its membership and support among the African and black communities.
It is an historical truism that human beings, in their quest to ameliorate their material conditions, always opt for various forms of organisation or alliances in order to achieve this. These forms of organisation are consciously shaped to respond to the historical necessity to drive a particular process of change for the benefit of human beings.
In this process, the most pressing needs of the members of the human species are almost always propelled to take priority over other less pressing needs within these organisations. So the values that shape these organisations will most likely take their cue from the dominant needs of their members.
Applying this analogy to the DA, the most pressing challenges currently facing our country have been identified to be unemployment, inequality and poverty, whose social consequences are crime, drug and alcohol abuse, HIV/AIDS and low levels of education. This triple challenge of unemployment, inequality and poverty - together with its social consequences - affects Africans and blacks the most. It therefore follows that the DA's increase of its black and African support will exponentially grow the dominance of the African grievance within the DA, as Africans are the most affected group by the identified triple challenge of poverty, unemployment and under development.
When this happens, two scenarios will present themselves to the DA. The first will be the white resistance of this black dominance from within the DA by pushing more vigorously the white grievance to counter the African grievance. This scenario will necessarily lead to bruising conflicts as each side of the two grievances will battle it out for dominance in the quest to influence the party in the direction that addresses their needs. This battle will either result in the fundamental reconstitution of the DA through break-away factions and/or the expulsion of large numbers of members in order to retain the historical identity of the party as a conservative neoliberal white party.
The second scenario, which is most likely, will be the transformation of the DA into the carbon copy of the ANC, as a new organisational form whose mission will be similar to that of the ANC. This will be more so because the black and African support for the DA is traditionally ANC support - whose grievances could not be addressed by the ANC owing to a variety of factors. The fact that these blacks and Africans changed political allegiances - from ANC to DA - does not necessarily change their historic grievance.
However, the only difference from the ANC with this possibly new organisational form MAY be its emphasis on modernity, professionalism, high standards and a different work ethic. This will be in contrast to the ANC's negative elements (unless the ANC addresses these as promised) such as ill-managed cadre deployment, tolerance of poor performance, indebtedness to corrupt comrades thus tolerating corruption; perceptions of generalised corruption in the ANC led government, internal leadership conflicts, sloganeering and ill-discipline.
Considering the second scenario, one thinks that by the time this new organisational form is in full motion, those who still shared the vision of the old conservative and liberal white DA would have been purged. It remains to be seen if Zille and her close colleagues will be part of this new African dominated political entity similar in vision to the ANC.
Mzukisi Makatse is a member of the ANC and ANCYL writing in his personal capacity.
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