The political mills grind exceedingly small

The contrast could not be starker. While the African National Congress ponders putting their Young Turk up for adoption or yet again smacking his wrist and banishing him to the naughty corner, the opposition has elected theirs as parliamentary leader.

The Democratic Alliance’s Lindiwe Mazibuko this week easily ousted her pale male predecessor, Athol Trollip, from the post of Leader of the Opposition in Parliament. It was a dramatic, necessary, but potentially risky move by the 83-person DA caucus.

The 31-year-old Mazibuko, protégé of party leader Helen Zille, was elected as MP in 2009 and joined the DA only five years ago. That’s as long as she has been active in politics, her interest whetted by an honours dissertation on Zille’s leadership style.

The campaign to oust Trollip highlights another DA difference from the ANC. In the governing party, naked political ambition is officially frowned upon as conduct unbecoming the loyal cadre.

Whatever secret backstabbing might take place behind the scenes, ambitions must remain cloaked from the public until the ANC faithful mysteriously bring forth the summons for deployment. Even the slightest whiff of ambition can mean exclusion from the inner circle, as Jacob Zuma can bitterly attest.

In contrast, Mazibuko ran a slick, some would say brash, campaign, employing a public relations agency to lobby her caucus colleagues for their votes. She came public with her ambitions at a press conference where she introduced her backers — both black and white, both lefty and conservative — and in the following weeks the media was drip-fed a steady stream of glowing collegial endorsements, timed to create the impression of a tidal wave of support.

The outgunned Trollip camp objected in vain that a public campaign would “create divisions” in the party, incidentally a line much favoured by ANC incumbents under similar siege. At a federal council meeting presided over by Wilmot James, a Mazibuko backer from the outset, the DA ruled that she had done nothing improper and it seems that the obvious, interesting question — who was funding her campaign? — was never asked.

Zille stood theoretically aloof from the fray, though she spoke coyly to the New Age on the need for a “generational mix” in the leadership and of “infusing new blood” as the way forward. Provincial leaders and party representatives felt less constrained and the sometimes embarrassingly treacly endorsements of Mazibuko kept flowing.

Mazibuko was “compelling”, “extraordinary”, “inspirational”, “excellent” and with a “relentless work ethic”. While one killjoy described her merely as “intelligent”, others opined that she was “brilliant”, “vibrant”, “with an inherent grasp” of DA policies, and a “political visionary” who “no doubt will exceed all expectations”.

Dene Smuts, the DA’s shadow justice minister, was one of the few to publicly support Trollip in what was clearly a losing battle. The pugnacious Smuts, not one to trim her sails to prevailing winds, cheekily appropriated Zille’s favourite imagery of the DA growing its own forest of future black leaders.

“This is a contest between an untested sapling from the grow-your-own-timber nursery against a tree that has shown it does not bend,” growled Smuts. The parliamentary leadership should not be seen as a “transformation test” for the DA, since there were “far stronger” black leaders than Mazibuko. Another MP, black, earned Zille’s ire when he used the term “window dressing” to describe Mazibuko’s candidacy.

In a swipe at those, including Zille, who had wanted Trollip to withdraw from the race “for the good of the party”, Smuts told the Sunday Times: “[He] has my support because he tells any party boss who tries to take the democratic out of the [Democratic Alliance] to get lost … in robust terms.”

Trollip might lack charisma, but robust he certainly is. In an appeal to the caucus, he noted that instead of being both party leader and leader of the opposition as was customary in the DA, Zille had chosen to instead serve as mayor of Cape Town and then premier of the Western Cape. That meant his election as parliamentary leader was “essentially a support role” to Zille.

“What made this difficult was the fact that my election was not the leader’s ideal outcome. This meant that I was also faced with a somewhat truculent parliamentary support staff that had been systematically appointed to support the other candidate,” alluding to his Zille-backed opponent in 2009, Ryan Coetzee.

Zille was obviously delighted when Mazibuko won. Aside from it being the triumph of her protégé, it was a sweet victory over the man who had once challenged her for the leadership of the party and had thwarted her plans for another protégé, Ryan Coetzee. This was “the dawn of a new era”, the DA had taken “a big step into the future”, and had “crossed the first Rubicon”, Zille enthused.

South African politicians should perhaps avoid fluvial allusions. Rubicon crossing has an unhappy history in this country, with president PW Botha drowning, metaphorically speaking, during his much heralded but infamously failed crossing.

Whatever the gloss put on it — necessity is often expediently recast as an act of virtue in politics — with the election of Mazibuko the DA has done no more than was necessary. It needs credible black leaders and the delay in achieving this, citing an aversion to “window dressing”, has undoubtedly cost it electorally.

Mazibuko, who will be deservedly proud of her stellar rise in the DA, will know also that tall trees attract woodcutters. Aside from ridiculously high expectations on the part of the DA leadership, of what she can deliver, in her new position as leader of the opposition the abuse that the ANC reserves for any black person who supports the opposition will be ratcheted up. Meanwhile, at her back, there are a sizeable number in her caucus — 31 voted for Trollip — who have their doubts about her, perhaps triggered by niggling memories of a group of previously feted young, black DA leaders who decamped en masse to the ANC.

The political mill looms. It will soon enough tell us whether Mazibuko is ironwood or pine.