The marriage between the DA and Mamphela Ramphele was such a defiance of common sense that perhaps one should congratulate the two parties on making it last almost a week. Even a passing acquaintance with Ramphele's record should have ruled it out but in addition, of course, it was simply based on a wrong analysis.
Helen Zille first described the acquisition of Ramphele as "a game-changer". This is a term derived from soccer or rugby where sending on one brilliantly appropriate substitute can turn a game. But politics, particularly South African politics, is not that sort of game. It is a protean struggle in which movement is regulated by tectonic plates far below.
DA politicians ought to know this better than most: from 1959 on the party was always looking to pick an Afrikaner as leader in the mistaken hope that he would be, yes, a game-changer. It always failed. Even so brilliant a figure as Van Zyl Slabbert couldn't work that magic. Apart from which, of course, it is folly for an opposition party which has grown steadily for twenty years even to suggest that it needs a game-changer.
The whole notion suggests acceptance of the ANC's race-card thinking and implies that the DA are a bunch of losers if they don't get that super-sub off the bench. This is exactly the opposite message to that which it should be sending out to its voters just months before an election.
The agreement reached between Zille, Wilmot James and Ramphele was also precarious because in reaching it both parties had ignored their own rules of democratic procedure. Ramphele, for all her rhetoric about democracy and inclusiveness, had not even bothered to consult her own party. Apparently, late in the negotiations with Zille she "remembered" this. For any politician to be able to "forget" such a thing in the first place bespeaks a degree of self-absorption unusual even in the most narcissistic personalities. But Zille had also completely neglected to put the proposals before her own parliamentary caucus - an equally extraordinary omission since a South African president is elected by Parliament, which means that a party's presidential candidate has to be the nominee of that party's parliamentary caucus.
Quite how such a complete denial of internal party democracy was possible in a party which normally takes such questions very seriously is a good question indeed. Inevitably, this high-handed behaviour on both sides created considerable resistance within both parties.
The official announcement of the new arrangement, accompanied by great displays of sisterly affection, was thus essentially an agreement between two rather imperious, even queenly women, rather than a proper agreement between two democratic parties. Ramphele almost immediately showed that politics has not restrained her prima donna side, walking out in the middle of an interview with Rapport because she didn't like one of the questions she was asked.
Similarly, it was clear in her interview with Chris Barron in the Sunday Times that she was several times on the verge of breaking off the interview. These were examples of what one can only call pre-political behaviour. A politician simply has to seize whatever media exposure they can get and do the best with it they can. Facing tough questions from the press is just part of what politicians opt for by offering themselves for public scrutiny.
Ramphele blew hot and cold all week - how Helen Zille could press on with the deal despite that, is simply staggering. Then on 31 January Ramphele declared that she was not a member of the DA and wouldn't be joining the party. "You may have by now seen "joint" statements issued by the DA in which it is claimed that I will be accepting DA membership on Monday. This is not true. Nor did I agree to any such statement. I am leader of Agang SA."
There were several remarkable points here. First, the denial that there had been any joint agreement - even though the DA said that the agreement was written in Ramphele's own hand. Second, it seems clear that she retained all her old criticisms of the DA as a "white party" which doesn't understand or sympathize with the damage done to Africans by apartheid; that is, she still actively disliked the party whose presidential candidate she had agreed to be. Third, she didn't just repudiate any agreement but insinuated that the DA was lying and trying to manipulate the situation. Fourth, most people would talk about "joining" (active voice) but Ramphele talked about (not) "accepting" DA membership (passive voice) as something bestowed upon her. And finally, she went back to saying she was the leader of Agang, ignoring the fact that she had just dealt that party (which was anyway bankrupt) a mortal blow.
Ramphele clearly did not understand that she had burnt her boats: it was now the DA or quit politics. Typically, she tried to have it both ways, suggesting it was not time for such an arrangement "yet". Could there really be a further chapter to this farce? The sheer lack of common sense thus far displayed suggests that nothing should be ruled out.
Ms Zille responded angrily that there had certainly had been a joint agreement, which is to say she now averred that her preferred presidential candidate was a liar. But, amazingly, Zille, James and company decided to give Ramphele an ultimatum: either agree the DA's terms within 24 hours or all bets were off.
This was another remarkable failure of judgement. How could you want as your presidential candidate someone who had to be bullied merely into becoming a party member? And who you now said was a liar to boot? And if, under that pressure, Ramphele agreed, who in the DA would ever trust her - and for how long? After all, this was the second performance of this apparently annual pantomime.
Last year it actually got to the point of the DA agreeing to a name change ("the Democrats") and printing tens of thousands of posters with the new name and Ramphele's face on them, all of which had to be expensively junked. In a sense, Ramphele had saved the DA from itself - and this time she did it again. Just imagine what a disaster it would have been if the 24 hour ultimatum had worked: the DA would then have had to go through an entire election campaign in a state of continual crisis and squabbling at the top.
Ramphele was never going anywhere in politics but the greater damage is to Zille herself and to Wilmot James. In a British or American party they would now both have to resign and would probably never recover from the sheer disgrace of the thing. For leaders to demonstrate so publicly that they lack judgement and common sense means that they have failed the first test of leadership. How can anyone follow a leader whose judgement they distrust?
Again, one has to ask why Zille has done herself and her party such terrible damage - for she has cheapened the brand, made it seem that the party's top honours are things easily flung away on outsiders, ignored the party's democratic rules of governance and created suspicion and resistance against herself in places where there was none before. And how, now, not to regard those televised displays of sisterly emotion - virtual love-ins with the two women kissing one another and laying their heads on one another's shoulders - with cynical derision ?
The original sin here is Zille's decision not to sit in Parliament. The DA stands centrally in the parliamentarist tradition of liberal democracy: all its leaders until now have sat in Parliament and its greatest figure, Helen Suzman, was a supreme parliamentarian. For a leader who sits in Parliament their parliamentary caucus is their key base. The other MPs are his/her colleagues and friends and they are primus inter pares largely because of their parliamentary abilities.
The caucus responds naturally to its leader's displays of parliamentary expertise and courage: Eglin, Slabbert and Leon all commanded great loyalty because of those displays. Zille, on the other hand, attempts to rule the DA from her premier's residence, Leeuwenhof, just as she rules the Western Cape from there. Her relations with all three DA parliamentary leaders have, unsurprisingly, been toxic and now she has ignored the caucus in a matter which centrally concerns it. In any party there is a price to pay for such behaviour.
The earlier flip-flops and re-flops on race and affirmative action were de-stabilising for the DA but this repeated pantomime with Ramphele and the lack of judgement and common sense that it has revealed could well cost the DA dearly in the election. Some DA stalwarts, it is clear, simply will not vote for the party when it behaves like this but the greater damage is likely to be the depression and demobilization of the DA electorate. Black voters who were considering a DA vote are likely to be switched off now. It is a large unsolicited gift to Jacob Zuma.
Perhaps more important, consider the situation of the black voter disaffected from the ANC, disgusted with Nkandla and contemplating a DA vote. Such voters tend to respond strongly to a party which has confidence, élan and momentum. But right now the DA is generating confusion, noisy discord and lack of direction. This will undoubtedly turn away those disaffected black voters - yes, to the great advantage of Julius Malema.
The honourable way out of this mess might be for Zille to tell the DA that she will step down as party leader soon after the election and that she will not again attempt to influence the choice of her successor. This is not really conceding much. After this debacle the DA's election campaign is taking on water and Zille's credibility has suffered a serious blow. Her ability to influence the succession is probably greatly diminished too.
But, if that's what one hopes, it would be better not to hold one's breath. Politicians seldom take the honourable way out. To push oneself forward as a politician, and particularly as a political leader, one needs a very strong and highly developed ego. But it is also the case, as Enoch Powell once wisely observed, that all political careers end in failure - and, indeed, so did his. And there lies the rub. People with very strong egos find it extremely hard to admit that they are ending in failure - they fight that as ordinary human beings rage against the dying of the light.
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