This weekend a DA delegation will attend the National Convention in Johannesburg organised by Mosiuoa Lekota and Mbhazima Shilowa.

When Mr Lekota initially proposed a National Convention, he said the purpose was to discuss the ANC's abuse of the Constitution and its implications for South Africa. He enumerated the specific issues for discussion, including:

• Protecting all institutions of the Constitution, including Parliament, the judiciary, Chapter 9 institutions and upholding the rule of law;
• The principle of equality before the law;
• Introducing a constituency-based electoral system for national and provincial election and introducing direct elections for the President, Premiers and Mayors;
• Progressively realising socio-economic rights;
• Combating corruption; and
• The regulation of party funding

These agenda items were confirmed by Mr Shilowa in a telephone conversation with me on Monday.

As the DA has been at the forefront of the debate on these crucial issues for the past decade, it is consistent, logical and necessary for us to continue this role. This is the main reason why we will be attending the national convention. We will use the opportunity to re-state the DA's position on the supremacy of the Constitution, which has been seriously undermined during the ANC's 14 year rule.

If we chose not to attend, this debate would happen without our voice, which has been central to defining the issues. It would be a mistake to allow this to happen.

We are also aware that the organisers of the Convention are planning to form a new political party in December.

That is their right in an open democracy. Messrs Lekota and Shilowa have both assured me that the Convention itself will not be used as a platform to launch a new political party, and it is on this basis that we have agreed to attend. We are there to discuss the key issues facing South Africa 's future. What other participants decide to do after the Convention is up to them.

The DA's attendance at the Convention is not an endorsement of any other political formation. The DA will move into the future, consolidating its position as the champion of the Constitution and promote the open, opportunity-driven society for all.

We will participate in the discussions and we will state our views. We will not necessarily commit the DA to any resolutions or declarations, unless they restate mandated DA positions. Here then, are the key issues that the DA looks forward to debating:

1. The Supremacy of the Constitution

It is a welcome development that Messrs Lekota and Shilowa and their supporters appear to be recognising the grave risk to the future of democracy posed by the ANC's abuse of the Constitution. The DA recognises that this abuse was initiated under President Mbeki's watch and is epitomised by the ANC's cadre deployment policy endorsed by the Mafikeng Congress in 1997. In terms of this policy, the ANC converted institutions established by the Constitution to defend the rights of all South Africans into extensions of the Mbeki faction. The Zuma faction has now usurped this role. This is the central reason for the ANC split.

If Lekota and his supporters now recognise the grave risk of this abuse of the Constitution, to which the Mbeki faction was party, this is a welcome development. We are not interested in the politics of patronage that simply exchanges deployment powers between rival factions. We will state our case that the institutions of the Constitution and the state must defend the rights of all South Africans and remain independent of the ruling party.

2. Equality before the Law

We welcome the repeated statements by Mr Lekota and his supporters that all South Africans must be equal before the law. We believe that this applies to Jackie Selebi and Jacob Zuma, both of whom appear to have been protected from this principle by rival factions within the ANC.

We will use this opportunity to emphasise the centrality of the NPA's independence and the conflict of interest occasioned by the fact that the President has the power to appoint and dismiss the National Director of Public Prosecutions. We will remind the Convention that the ANC's primary motive in disbanding the Scorpions was to protect senior ANC members from investigation and that this fundamentally undermined the principle of equality before the law.

3. Electoral Reform

The DA has long called for electoral reform. We will put forward the case for introducing a system of multi-member constituencies combined with party lists to achieve overall proportionality.

We also look forward to debating the merits and demerits of directly electing Mayors, Premiers and the President. The DA has been considering adopting direct elections for these office bearers as part of our policy review process because it gives more power to voters, although it is not currently DA policy. There is a good argument that if holders of high office are directly elected, parties may be more circumspect about the qualities of the individuals they nominate as their candidates.

4. Socio-economic rights and poverty alleviation

We have always championed the progressive realisation of socio-economic rights for all, not as a lever of patronage to reward supporters or punish opponents of the ruling party. At the Convention, we will set out our proposals to provide quality education and extend opportunity to more South Africans.

5. Party funding and Combating Corruption

In the discussions around party political funding, we will re-iterate the DA's long held view that legislation needs to be enacted which prohibits donations to political parties from foreign governments and obliges parties to disclose all donations above a fixed threshold. Any such legislation must ensure fairness, transparency and be equally applied to all parties. It must contain watertight guarantees that disclosure will not result in the state discriminating against companies that donate to opposition parties. Legislation that deals with party funding must put a stop to the corruption inherent in Chancellor House whereby the ruling party receives kickbacks for the awarding of state tenders.

The DA will put forward our views on these and other relevant issues at the Convention, but our aim is not to deliberate until we have reached consensus with the other participants. Our aim is to state our position.

The DA recognises the potential of the Convention to be a turning point in South African politics. The DA has long noted that the current political formations, trapped in the racial rhetoric of the past, are obsolete and that a political realignment is necessary to reveal the real political choices South Africa faces.

The Constitution must be the basis of this realignment. Defenders of the Constitution are currently located in various political parties, with the DA at the forefront. All those who believe in the supremacy of the Constitution, what I call the regstaat, belong in the same political party. All those who believe in the supremacy of the ruling clique of the ruling party, in other words "the higher law of the party", or the magstaat, belong in a different party.

The dividing line between these two opposing philosophies runs down the middle of the ANC. We believe that the National Convention could help separate the wheat from the chaff.

If the National Convention facilitates this, it will, with hindsight, be recognised as a pivotal development in South African politics. If however, it merely spawns a carbon copy of the old ANC, differentiated only by revenge and competing power cliques, it will be an opportunity lost. We will evaluate developments at the Convention to determine whether it will lead to progress or stagnation.

If the Convention unleashes processes that open the prospect for the peaceful change of power through elections in various provinces, then it will have contributed enormously to consolidating democracy in South Africa. We will seek to facilitate progress in this direction and to highlight the key choice South Africans face: between the open, opportunity-driven society for all championed by the DA, and the closed, patronage-driven society for some, promoted by the ANC. The regstaat vs the magstaat. We believe that this choice is becoming clearer and that, for the first time since 1997, there is a realistic prospect of the Regstaat winning out in the new South Africa. This alone is sufficient reason to attend the Convention.

This article by Helen Zille first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, October 31 2008