The Queen of Hearts
Helen Zille's latest epistle ("My biggest mistake..ever", 25 May) shows all too plainly that something is badly wrong.
She starts by telling us that both her father and then Ryan Coetzee told her "never complain, never explain". She then decides that she is going to do both. What she is really saying is "I don't listen to advice or, if I do, I certainly don't take it".
She then says that offering Mamphela Ramphele the DA's presidential nomination was her greatest mistake. But she omits the fact that this was actually the second time that she had effectively tried to give away the party leadership to Mamphela. This ended farcically on the first occasion with Mamphela demanding nothing less than the dissolution of the DA as her price. So what Ms Zille is really telling us is "I refuse to learn from experience, even from quite disastrous experience".
To which could be added the fact that Helen long worked for Mamphela at UCT and had plenty of experience of what an arrogant, demanding and peremptory woman she was. Many people felt quite sorry for what Helen had to put up with. What this amounts to is "I refuse to learn my lesson even when my nose is rubbed in it."
Although she starts off by saying that the offer to Mamphela was her greatest mistake ever, she then twists this around to saying that actually it was the least worst decision and was thus justified. What this amounts to is saying "See, even when I am wrong, I am right".
Helen lists four people, of whom I am one, who strongly advised her against the offer to Mamphela. Yet she happily did the opposite. This is tantamount to saying "Even when I am given the right advice, I ignore it."
Helen then parades the twaddle that Richard Calland wrote about the matter. She nonetheless seems to have some regard for his views. Similarly, despite Mamphela's outrageous and self-regarding behaviour she still seems to think the world of her - she refers to her in glowing terms - "struggle hero, world citizen" etc. What this amounts to is saying "Even when people's behaviour vividly shows just what shallow human beings they are, I like to stick with my original preferences because not to do so would suggest my judgement was no good".
Helen then says she is being heavily advised from all sides to become the DA's parliamentary leader. (Indeed, I strongly advised her in that direction seven years ago, straight after she had become leader.) She then makes an elaborate defence of her refusal to listen to such advice. She greatly dislikes the "two centres of power" argument and says of the separation of the leadership and parliamentary leadership roles, "It has worked well before and it can do so again". Yet the facts are that it has worked so badly that she is now onto her fourth parliamentary leader in seven years, all previous occupants of the parliamentary leader role having decided that this is not a tolerable fate under Ms Zille. In effect she is saying "Although it is obvious to everyone that this separation of roles has not worked, I insist on my right to declare the opposite to be the case, whatever the facts".
Ms Zille suggests that 22% of South Africans have voted for her as President and nearly 60% of Western Cape citizens have voted for her as premier. This excessive and rather boastful personalization of votes which meant quite other things suggests a degree of egomania which can only be described as worrying.
What to make of all this? The DA is now in a perfectly awful mess. It has a leader who has twice tried to give the party leadership away and who insists publicly that members of her own federal executive are trying to "destroy" her. The party will now have a parliamentary leader who has no experience of parliament at all and, if that weren't disaster enough, is someone who supported former President Thabo Mbeki right through his Aids denialism and support of Mugabe. On top of that the party has lurched away from its liberal roots and has been racked by policy disagreements. Yet Ms Zille, who has brought the party to this pass, sits atop the wreckage insisting that she is right about everything and making a point of never listening to advice.
In the 1970s, when Valery Giscard d'Estaing was President of France, he led his party and government through many surprising twists and turns. None of us could understand, for example, why he should befriend the Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver, just to annoy the Americans or how he could possibly get away with offending Jacques Chirac, who had the power to bring him down. But every time one queried the rationale for these bizarre twists and turns, one would simply be told by his party stalwarts that Giscard was a very brilliant man. This was certainly Giscard's own opinion. Frustrated by this, I once asked one of his assistants who on earth the President turned to for advice. "Ah well, you see", I was told, "Giscard is a very brilliant man and when difficult questions have to be faced, he consults his own genius." All of which continued until Giscard went down in flames, his credibility in tatters. "Right now", as one Socialist MP grimly put it, "he'd lose a referendum in defence of motherhood."
Perhaps the most alarming idea in Ms Zille's epistle is contained in her complacent statement that if she turns out to be wrong (again) over the question of a separate parliamentary leadership, she can simply step in as parliamentary leader herself in a year's time. This is an utterly bizarre suggestion.
First, she herself has not been in Parliament for many years and is no more used to working that system than Mmusi Maimane. Second, if she were to do as she suggests, this would mean unceremoniously turfing out Maimane after just a year in the post. One can only shudder at the fun the EFF and ANC would have at the sight of the "arrogant white madam and her tea-boy". And third, of course, she happily assumes that she will still be leader in a year's time when everything suggests that her image and credibility are damaged beyond repair.
Each extra month that she stays on as leader now will be a burden for her party. Pity the incoming cohort of DA MPs. It is not, as cartoonists now universally suggest, that they have Godzille as a leader. It is actually rather worse. What they have as their leader is the Queen of Hearts.
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