Will South Africa Be Okay?. Jan-Jan Joubert
in tribal areas, and has also not made much headway among black township voters. We have already looked at the phenomenon of individual local black leaders that cause DA support to flare up or wane, and at the necessity of sustained community involvement rather than the fire-engine model, but the DA’s lack of growth among blacks is actually attributable to a much more extensive cause and one that cannot easily be changed.
In a nutshell, poor black voters don’t see the DA as a party that primarily cares about them. The perception is that the DA is not in principle indifferent or opposed to poor black voters’ interests and problems, which is the perception they harbour of the FF Plus, but that the DA puts the interests of minorities and the middle class above those of poor blacks. This perception is reinforced by the fact that DA councillors almost exclusively represent wards that are made up of minority areas (like Coloured and Indian population centres), middle-class areas and, in the Western Cape, Eastern Cape and Northern Cape, rural areas where black people don’t form a majority. Since there is competition for limited municipal resources, any councillor worth their salt would do their best to ensure as much expenditure and development as possible for the ward they represent. This inevitably pits the DA ward councillor against the interests of the poor, black ward, usually represented by the ANC.
Moreover, the DA struggles to communicate with poor black voters in a way that resonates with them. Besides DA leaders from minority groups, this also applies to many of the DA’s black leadership figures at the national level in particular, who generally represent middle-class rather than township or rural sentiment, and who tend to speak English in public – mostly without an accent of an indigenous language. Many of the younger black DA leaders attended former Model C schools and studied at the best local (or international) universities. None of these aspects are without considerable advantages. The disadvantage, however, is that poor black South Africans frequently report that they find it hard to identify with DA leaders, and also believe that DA leaders don’t really identify with them in the poverty-stricken reality of their lives. In addition, the DA’s generally laudable emphasis on merit, competence and qualifications in the appointment of candidates unintentionally acts as a definite barrier and even a ceiling to the advancement of community leaders who may have low educational levels and lack qualifications. The points outlined in this paragraph are extremely tough issues to tackle because they carry with them so many shadows and echoes of South Africa’s history.
I don’t want to delve too deeply into this aspect, but something that comes across as jarring is that during speeches at its mass rallies, the DA has people who shout interjections in support of the speaker over the sound system in an organised fashion. Because of the nature of my job I have probably attended hundreds of political rallies of all kinds and of every conceivable party at every conceivable place in this country, but I have never encountered this annoying, alienating and frankly impolite practice in any community. One wonders where the DA got it from.
A further challenge for DA growth among black voters is that the DA has lost its position as the only big countrywide alternative to the ANC. The EFF has grown to such an extent that the DA is no longer the inevitable recipient of disgruntled black votes.
Lastly, the DA as a party that stands for strict governance tends to clash more directly with voters when they battle to pay for services such as electricity. In this regard the DA is undoubtedly right, and it is the ANC that, in addition to mismanagement, corruption and the deployment of under-qualified cadres, is also largely responsible through lax discipline for the collapse and bankruptcy of municipalities due to the culture of non-payment. That strict governance costs the DA support in poor areas is undeniably true, albeit at a price any proper government must be willing to pay.
For the DA to grow its poor black support, the party therefore needs to be fully present and empathic. It has to attract and retain poor black community leaders who truly represent the party’s values and policies and enjoy popular support, and make sure that they prioritise the wellbeing of those poor communities. The party may also have to accept that some voters who do not feel strongly about the reckless and populist squandering of public assets should not really be voting for the DA. The DA will also have to communicate in a comfortable, authentic and friendly way in the language and language variant of the voter’s preference in order to win and to retain such a person’s vote.
A big ask, certainly, but no one said it would be easy.
An equally important task for the DA is to figure out what is wrong with the party to have caused about 250 000 of its white Afrikaans-speaking voters to turn to the FF Plus in 2019. This is where the party’s decline lay, and without a precise, honest plan to appeal in particular to the kind of white Afrikaans voter who defected to the FF Plus, the loss of support and seats won’t be reversed. Judging by those voters’ comments in the formal media and on social media, the switch from the DA to the FF Plus was often accompanied by a measure of aggression and bitterness towards the DA.
It is firstly important to realise that the vast majority of white Afrikaans voters already vote for the DA, and that in its attempts to win back the lost voters, the DA has to guard against throwing out the baby with the bathwater. The DA should always be the party of racial reconciliation. It won’t do any good if the DA tries to out-FF Plus the FF Plus – not that there is much likelihood of this happening. The FF Plus has a hard core of right-wing voters, and they don’t belong in the DA. For the DA, the focus should fall on those former DA voters who subscribe to the ideals of reconciliation and non-racialism, but didn’t see themselves, their aspirations and their fears reflected in the DA’s behaviour and campaign in the lead-up to the 2019 elections.
In the chapter that deals with where the FF Plus votes come from, we shall consider in detail how the DA’s behaviour drove some voters into the arms of the FF Plus. Hence we won’t explore it extensively here as well but, to sum up, it centred on six issues in particular: the Nick Mallett–Ashwin Willemse incident, the Patricia de Lille saga, the Gauteng DA’s handling of Panyaza Lesufi, the Hoërskool Overvaal events, the controversy at Schweizer-Reneke, and the hullabaloo around MultiChoice, Steve Hofmeyr and the Ghoema music awards.
The common denominator in all these matters is that the DA dealt with them in such a poor, rushed and ill-considered manner that the party alienated some of its white Afrikaans supporters. On top of that, in all of the cases the negative consequences were unnecessary and avoidable. A few proactive steps could lead to huge improvements.
In the first place, language is important to Afrikaans-speaking people, and specifically the need to be addressed in Afrikaans. Former president Nelson Mandela understood this well when he said that when you speak to Afrikaans people in Afrikaans, you go straight to their hearts. If the DA wishes to regain its lost Afrikaans voters, it will be worth the party’s while to also issue its press statements in Afrikaans, to have its public representatives attend significant Afrikaans cultural events, and to regularly let its Afrikaans-speaking public representatives (but also others, and the party leader in particular) communicate properly and coherently in Afrikaans, at public appearances and on social media. And I don’t mean just a greeting or an occasional throwaway sentence. I mean the proper formulation of a well-thought-out argument. Public representatives of the DA who write comfortably in Afrikaans can, for example, communicate bilingually on social media with their non-racial circle of friends, many of whom may be unable to understand Afrikaans. One of the DA’s national spokespersons should also be able to express himself or herself in excellent Afrikaans, and be a mother-tongue speaker of the language. That is, if the DA is serious about recapturing those lost Afrikaans votes and wants to prevent the loss of more such votes in the future. One can rightly ask: is the DA serious about Afrikaans?
Secondly, the DA is in need of a more likeable or at least agreeable image, and the easiest way to achieve this is to become a more likeable party – a group that acts in a genial and good-natured manner towards themselves and others. At present the image of the DA is that of a speed cop. You know that speed cops enforce the law, that they fulfil a necessary role and prevent deaths and injuries, but you’re never happy to see a speed cop, and few people want to become one. It is to the DA’s credit that it is the only party that tackles ANC corruption effectively, and it has many other positive aspects, as we will see below. But something of the speed cop mentality vis-à-vis the ANC has rubbed off on their general attitude