What's wrong with a Cope-DA marriage?

“Quite early on after the bomb I realised that if I was filled with hatred and desire for revenge I’d be a victim forever. If we have something done to us, we are victims. If we physically survive, we are survivors. Sadly, many people never travel any further than this. I did travel further, going from victim to survivor, to victor. To become a victor is to move from being an object of history to become a subject once more.” Father Michael Lapsley, an Anglican priest and anti-apartheid activist who lost both hands after receiving a letter bomb.

In 1948 the National Party introduced a backward and horrendous system of racial discrimination known as apartheid. This system was to be later declared by the whole world through the United Nations as a crime against humanity. The perpetrators of such a system, the National Party, could therefore be officially called criminals against humanity.

Despite this, the ANC and National Party found it plausible to form a government of national unity after the general elections in 1994. Sworn enemies governed the country side by side for the sake of reconciliation. FW de Klerk, who was then second deputy president, had only recently presided over a government that had openly killed and maimed children in 1976 and ordered cross-border raids into neighbouring countries targeting people who spoke out against their criminality such as Father Lapsley. Lapsley’s simple sin was to be a chaplain at the then University of Natal and one of the ANC chaplains. His bigger sin — to be white and yet opposed to a white criminal regime. Unlike those that perished, he lived to tell the tale.

As the first president of the democratic republic, Nelson Mandela, who was unjustly jailed for 27 years, was heading a team among who were his erstwhile jailers, people who wanted him dead. This seemingly unholy alliance could only be possible because of untold forgiveness by those like Lapsley. Let us be reminded promptly that such collaboration produced one of the finest constitutions in the world. The least we could do to contribute to global dialogue on constitutional democracy after we had been the skunk of the world since 1948.

So when historians assess the government of national unity they will stand in awe that those who were at war in every conceivable sense had turned a blind eye to the historical transgressions and sought to build a foundation for a new society. Let us remember that the ANC’s own hands were not clean at all. They had ordered the deaths of the National Party faithful and set out to destroy the country’s infrastructure in retaliation. So though history will always favour the brave, it is worth acknowledging that the National Party had to suspend the prejudice that had informed their policy of discrimination to work with people they had always considered terrorist and inferior. And so the cookie crumbled further with the National Party soon disappearing from the political scene when this romantic set-up evaporated with historical twists and turns. The criminals against humanity’s last leader, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, gleefully accepted a ministerial post in an ANC-led government. The last residue of any semblance of a National Party-type existence — the Freedom Front — serves the government as a deputy minister to follow in the fine tradition that can be described as a wholesale sell-out especially after an agitated Afrikaner, nationalistic campaign by the said party in the previous general election.

When you consider this, including the current alliances between the DA and the ANC in various municipalities, previous collaboration in provincial government and other municipalities with the likes of the Freedom Front and the National Party you wonder quite frankly … why does it generate such high temperatures when Cope seeks to cooperate with the DA. We are not even talking a merger yet, we are not talking about making someone your deputy minister, nor are we talking about forming a government of national unity with the DA no — clearly, that is the preserve of the ANC to do so without anyone calling them the “black NNP“.

This week if all goes well collaboration between Cope and the DA will produce a victory of a 10–10 hung council in the Coega municipality in Humansdorp. This will force the ANC to learn to listen to other political parties. Something that it does not do too well when it is adorned with unbridled power. Hopefully an alliance can stop the rot in that municipality where things are so bad that municipal officials have been accused of selling RDP houses.

The ANC’s sneering and jeering at the collaboration between the ANC and DA is understandable. It can only hang on to power if the opposition remains fractured. The unity of the opposition with a clear plan and collaboration tactic can see the ANC unseated in many municipalities in the 2011 local elections. At the back of the incompetence of many of these municipalities the ANC’s grip on power at local level is more on the line than it realises. The South African voter is beginning to question the wisdom of returning people to power who do not serve them first but put party loyalty at the top of their agenda and use this attitude to plunder the resources of the country.

In the by-elections in Tembisa recently people voted for a community leader backed by Cope who is known more in that community for his good deeds than his Cope affiliation. The traditional voter who just blindly voted for the ANC will soon be something of the past. The black voter is beginning to see past the political oogklaps of racial categorisation and therefore is beginning to realise that there is nothing untoward if Cope jumps into political bed with the DA if it makes sense. After all it is not as half dirty as the National Party and its crimes against humanity.

If the ANC was able to put aside the National Party’s criminal record and co-govern with them for years why should it be so criminal for Cope to coalesce with the DA?

South Africa’s political landscape must grow up and see beyond the ideologues in forging new political alliances of a future focused on a united South Africa. We can all take a leaf from Father Lapsley who despite having a reason to do so has freed himself from the shackles of the past. It is clear to me that those who still think in politically narrow prisms are prisoners of the war of yesteryear.

Cope’s approach, like Lapsley’s, is to reach out to all South Africans regardless of what they may have done or on which side of the war they may have participated. That is the only way we are going to win the battle of reconciliation and nation-building. We should never go back to a system that seeks to turn citizens who are trying to get along into criminals who must apologise for their new-found friends.