DA twaddle a sharp reminder of why I left

DAVID DALLING

Sunday Independent April 8 2001

Reading the essay by Democratic Alliance researcher James My burgh reminded me sharply why it was in early 1992 that I and four other MPs resigned from the DP and joined the ANC.

Apart from our belief in the long practised non-racialism of the ANC, as also in the inclusivity that forms the very basis of its style. I was little enamoured with the vitriolic and destructive attacks launched on the ANC by people in the DP who while purporting to back national unity were in fact promoting exactly the opposite goal.

Demonising the ANC and its leadership was the strategy then, and it is still today. The DP (now the DA) continues true to form. Myburgh describes an ANC that I have never met and do not know. He describes President Thabo Mheki in terms that bear no resemblance to the president whom the majority of South Africans support and admire.

The essay evidences the politics of destruction and polarisation, and clearly seeks to divide and not to build. The methodology of this piece of propaganda is to use carefully selected quotations, some of which bear no relevance to the Mbeki presidency, to paint him as being a heartless, cynical and power-hungry despot. And by introducing through the pens of others such odious comparisons with Hitler arid Stalin, the scene is set for a literary "chop job".

Such ANC personalities as Cyril Ramaphosa and parliament's speaker, Frene Ginwala, are names introduced into the article in a manner calculated to separate them from the ANC leadership, and my guess is that they would be the first to laugh off this fairly obvious ploy. The next insult is set out in the paragraph accusing ministers Jeff Radebe and Steve Tshwete of putting their names to documents that the writer alleges were written not by them, but rather by Mbeki himself. I don't believe it. What I do believe is that before an allegation as serious as this is published, the accuser should have before him strong evidence to back up the accusation.

Quoting Hannah Arendt from her work, On Totalitarianism, who wrote that once he has consolidated control and once the party has been trained to implement his will ... "the leader is irreplaceable because the whole structure of the movement would lose its raison d'etre without his commands". Myburgh seeks to paint the ANC with this tarbrush. What twaddle.

The quotation, however, is certainly apposite of the National Party under PW Botha, but describes the ANC not at all. President Nelson Mandela of his own will left the leadership and the presidency at the conclusion of his first term. The ANC did not lose its raison d'etre. Mbeki will, without doubt, retire from the presidency after his second term, in accordance with the constitution. What the DA fails to understand is the often pronounced Mandela dictum that the movement is larger than any individual, and that no leadership position is ever one of right or one of indefinite permanence. The ANC is founded on principles and policies that will endure regardless of the personalities of its leaders.

The article is a clever piece of work. It is also mischievous, destructive, divisive arid potentially damaging to the cause of building a national consensus. But then the DA is not into building, it is rather into wrecking and destroying. As long ago as 1991, Tony Leon, now the DA leader, was already promoting the strategy of joining with the Nationalists to block the ANC. That is one of the reasons I resigned. It is hardly surprising, though somewhat ironic, that they behave more and more like the Nats of old.

Stellenbosch