DA, the new UDF... - Thought Leader

Helen Zille’s letter to City Press editor Ferial Haffajee on News24 raises interesting new possibilities for the DA. Zille writes, “The DA is the new UDF.”

The letter is a response to a News24 column (“How the ANC lost the coloured and Indian vote”) by Haffajee, a former Mail & Guardian editor. In her piece, Haffajee explains that many people who have been loyal to the ANC and the UDF are now alienated by its apparent abandonment of non-racialism. The very divisive language of race that the ANC challenged has now made its way into its everyday discourse. At the moment many newspapers, along with the ANC, are talking about the party’s loss of the “minority vote”.

Haffajee makes sense of this about-turn on the part of the ANC by making the following assertion: “The ANC brought the ideology of minority and majority into its mainstream thinking when it assimilated the Nationalists like Marthinus van Schalkwyk into its fold. It co-opted the coloured and Indian nationalists too (people we had regarded as sell-outs), all of whom brought this dangerous ideology of difference right into the non-racial heart of the party.”

Zille’s timing could not be better. “The ANC has now become a racial-nationalist party,” she says in her reply to Haffajee. It is true. If remarks by Julius Malema, Jimmy Manyi and the late Blackman Ngoro (remember him?) are anything to go by, ethno-nationalism certainly seems to have reared its ugly head in the party over the last few years. Criticism of BEE and over-the-top displays of wealth on the part of the new black elite minority also does very little to shift negative perceptions of the party. The irony is rich for those who grew up on the writings of Frantz Fanon. Fanon has lots to say about the rise of ethno-nationalism as a device of control for the rising black elite minority in post-colonial African states. The Afrikaans press is also beginning to see parallels between the ANC and the NP in the 80s.

Zille goes on to say: “The DA is the new UDF. We are the most non-racial party South Africa has ever had. We never once used or exacerbated racial divisions in this campaign, even though we could have, for short-sighted purposes of maximising our vote.” The party certainly did position itself as racially inclusive, notwithstanding the fact that Zille’s cabinet is far from representative in terms of race and gender.

What is worth noting here is that Zille is not saying that the DA is like the UDF on the score of racial inclusivity. She is saying it is the new UDF. Optimistically, I am going to interpret this as an assertion that the DA has reinvented itself. It has broken with its past as the party of those who voted for the National Party and, by implication, supported apartheid. To paraphrase her, the ANC has betrayed its own history and the DA is going to fill that vacuum.

Some critics would say that Zille is opportunistically appropriating the Struggle and the legacy of Nelson Mandela in order to score more votes for the DA. I am not going to pursue that argument because it would be very easy to invoke racial binaries and generate more racially divisive thinking. I am interested in what Zille’s claim potentially means for the DA.

If the DA is going to be the new UDF, if it is going to build a truly inclusive party and live up to the ideals of the Struggle, it should do what the UDF did in 1983: adopt the Freedom Charter. The DA would then truly reinvent itself.

The part of the Freedom Charter that inspired so many of us in the 80s was the following:

“THE PEOPLE SHALL SHARE IN THE COUNTRY’S WEALTH!

The national wealth of our country, the heritage of all South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and the monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well-being of the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.”

If the DA is going to live up to its assertion that it is the UDF, then it should put its money where its mouth is. So many young people sacrificed their blood, their innocence and their idealism to make the Freedom Charter a reality. Instead, their blood gave us Gear, Asgisa, the failure of the RDP and the murder of Andries Tatane at one of many service-delivery protests in SA.

Their sacrifice gave us a macro-economic policy so neo-liberal that it got the thumbs up from the IMF and the DA alike. The uneasiness of the markets when Mandela spoke of delivering on the promises of the Freedom Charter (specifically, nationalisation) upon his release from prison was forgotten by the time our new finance minister took office and steered us in the direction of the “free” market.

If the DA is going to claim the history of the UDF and the struggles of so many ordinary people in the mass democratic movement, then it should be prepared to make the kinds of sacrifices that were made by those people. If it wants to claim that it has broken with its racially divisive past, then it should take a long and hard look at its own neo-liberal economic policies.

Race is the red herring, as always. It is economic policies that determine the extent of the growing racialised class divide. The real way to build an inclusive society is to ensure that all people are involved in securing social justice. You cannot leave it to the market to generate a better life for all. You cannot leave it to cadre deployment. And you certainly cannot leave it to “speak left, act right” politicians — whether they are from the DA or the ANC.

Zille, now is the time to become the UDF. Now is the time. I dare you.