South Africa

Politics, South Africa

Eyes on the Prize: DA leadership centralises control, prepares for slouching towards 2019

Eyes on the Prize: DA leadership centralises control, prepares for slouching towards 2019

It is the year of magical thinking, the destination all those who have sniffed the rot in the good ship ANC and victory in the game-changing August 2016 elections have firmly in their sights – 2019. The Democratic Alliance, buoyed by electoral gains and the audacious delivery by voters of three key metros – Nelson Mandela Bay, Johannesburg and Tshwane – has emerged from a two-day sitting of its Federal Executive in Cape Town at the weekend with leadership laying down the law for every DA-controlled government, leaving little room for misunderstanding. By MARIANNE THAMM.

Interestingly, it is Patricia de Lille, mayor of a metro long since lost by the ANC, who was the first to feel the DA’s new heat from above. Less than a month after appointing Loyiso Nkhola, co-founder of the Seskhona People’s Rights Movement and the province’s primary “poo flinger”, to a highly-paid support position to the mayoral committee member tasked with delivering utility services, DA leader Mmusi Maimane has instructed De Lille to dismiss Nkhola.

De Lille’s appointment of the former ANC councillor seemed an inspired if not unusual decision. Who better than Nkhola to advise the city on matters of sanitation and utilities, a key and ongoing flashpoint? Nkhola had also, after all, shortly before the election reportedly delivered around 500 members of the Seskhona People’s Rights Movement to the DA. It was a crushing blow to the ANC in the region who could always count on Seskhona when it needed to rustle up a crowd.

In what amounted to political payback, De Lille in September appointed Nkhola to the R701,000 a year position of assisting Mayco member Ernest Sonnenberg. Maimane saw right through it and has requested De Lille not to renew Nkhola’s contract after December. The DA leader said that because the appointment had been a political as opposed to an administrative one, the party leadership was entitled to exercise oversight.

If anyone was thinking of testing Maimane and the party’s leadership’s boundaries they will now think twice. De Lille clearly quickly understood the consequences of executing a decision without consulting leadership.

For every DA member who now finds themselves in a municipality or metro governed by the party, this is a taste of things to come as Maimane and the DA top leadership have begun to centralise control with a keen eye on the 2019 general election. After August the DA has extended its national footprint and must now be seen to be governing as it promised.

After a two-day FedEx sitting in Cape Town, Maimane said he was pleased to announce that a resolution had been adopted seeking to “ensure that every DA-controlled government is accountable to the Federal Executive for its performance, implementation of the Party’s manifesto and adherence to the Party’s values”.

This included providing FedEx with “regular and detailed reports on the state of administration which must include the extent to which the manifesto of the Party is being implemented”.

In other words; no loose cannons, bullshitters, self-starters or layabouts allowed.

The Mayors, Speakers, and Chief Whips of every DA-controlled government will attend meetings arranged by the party to co-ordinate efforts and to exchange best practice. The party has given a clear mandate to all our mayors to ensure our election mandate of cutting corruption, creating jobs and delivering better services is the blueprint for all our governments – and is the golden thread that runs through all municipal budgets and Integrated Development Plans (IDP),” Maimane announced after the FedEx sitting.

Maimane described the August LGE as a “watershed moment” in South Africa’s democratic era and that while before it was unthinkable that the ANC could be removed from national government as early as 2019, “it is now conceivable”.

This is a point of view somewhat supported by political analyst, author and founder member of the Council for the Advancement of the Constitution (CASAC), Richard Calland, in his just-published book Make or Break – How the next three years will shape South Africa’s next three decades (Zebra Press).

Calland writes that despite attempts by the ANC leadership and President Zuma “to remind core voters of the party’s liberation credentials and history”, the opposition appeared to have broken the mould of race-aligned voting in South Africa.

The ANC’s scare tactics – labelling the DA as “snakes” and “children of the National Party” – were rejected by voters, writes Calland, “suggesting that South Africa, finally, is breaking free of the post-apartheid paradigm in which the ANC enjoyed a monopoly on political legitimacy and power”.

Julius Malema’s EFF too has its eyes on 2019, preferring not to form coalitions with either the DA or the ANC but supporting the DA and the IFP in hung metros. Malema’s aim is to consolidate the party’s brand and work towards “unseating” the ANC as the dominant political force in South Africa in 2019.

What the DA understands is that a contributing factor to gains in Nelson Mandela Bay and Gauteng has to do with disappointed ANC supporters withholding their vote and the party will now have an opportunity to showcase how it governs in 14 new municipalities including the three metros it claimed.

The party’s leadership is making it clear to members and those who occupy positions in these municipalities that the work has just begun. The title of the FedEx meeting at the weekend was “Road to 2019”, which the DA says will be a “permanent campaign beginning now and running for the next roughly 1,000 days up to the 2019 national election”.

When the date arrives the DA would like to force the ANC below 50% nationally and hopes to be “part of a national government”. One of the key thrusts of the “Road to 2019” campaign is to become “an activist driven party” with DA members who are embedded in their communities needing to “ramp up on-the-ground presence”. This has been a key feature of the DA, particularly under former leader Helen Zille.

The EFF too recognises ground-up activism as a key to gaining the confidence and support of communities wary of politicians and their serial betrayals. On voting day in Khayelitsha EFF volunteers were spotted in a school quad keeping children occupied while their parents were freed to go and vote.

This type of activism has long been snuffed out in the ANC, a party ruined by unchecked factional battles and sclerotic with patronage. The spirit of activism that once animated the UDF and early iterations of the ANC is now a distant memory.

Another key DA FedEx resolution is the development of a “country recovery plan” as well as a comprehensive policy review and update “to ensure that our policies reflect the latest in global evidence-based best practice”.

Maimane said the party’s policy would remain focused on economic growth and rooting out corruption.

Should a new government be formed post-election 2019, we need to be able to hit the ground running with a clear, sensible plan that delivers the right outcomes,” said Maimane.

The party will also focus, he added, on “overall diversification”, a “primary strategic objective” ahead of 2019.

In the coming months, the party will finalise a diversity plan that will require DA structures – from branch level to national level – to set targets for the recruitment and development of excellent black candidates for public office. These targets, and the progress made towards achieving them, will be reviewed regularly by FedEx,” said Maimane.

The plan is a continuation of the trajectory mapped out under Helen Zille’s leadership and which to a large extent enabled Maimane to leapfrog to the top position.

Maimane emerged from the FedEx sitting – issuing a statement alongside the DA’s chairman James Selfe and party spokesperson Refiloe Nt’sekhe – a man firmly in control and buoyed by his party’s election gains.

He noted that since taking over new councils the DA had uncovered a “truly staggering display of waste and corruption. It is clear that most ANC councils were being used as bloated employment agencies for ANC cronies, wasting money meant for service delivery for the poor. In the coming weeks, we will set out in detail some of what we have found, and how we are dealing with it”.

He said that many of the new councils the DA now led were in dire financial situations and it would be “complex and difficult” to turn these councils around and “sweep away years of ANC neglect and corruption”.

We have never been in such an opportune position to govern honestly, govern well, and prove to the people of South Africa that come 2019, the DA is the party to move South Africa forward again.”

Maimane said that the DA was considering in DA-controlled municipalities and metros its ongoing participation in the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) which derives its mandate from the Constitution and purports to be the “voice and sole representative of local government”. Maimane said that SALGA was failing its mandate and was not providing “value for money”.

DA representatives will therefore move substantive motions that are aimed at ensuring that SALGA fulfils its mandate in a non-partisan and effective manner. The DA will not allow it to be abused by the ANC and for ratepayers’ money to be wasted on simply talk shops,” Maimane warned.

The FedEx also resolved to continue the party’s “strategic litigation” including consulting legal counsel with regard to the “irrationally appointed” SABC COO Hlaudi Motsoeneng, supported by the SABC board, who have so far refused to abide by several court rulings.

The party was “mindful” that it was not ideal to approach the courts “but when all alternative relief is met with unwillingness we are left with no choice but to approach our judiciary to stave off the rank state capture currently under way at the behest of President Zuma.”

Maimane said that the DA was no longer “just an opposition or a regional party” and that it now had a national footprint.

Where we govern we must deliver and where we do not govern we must present a strong opposition and credible alternative policies,” concluded Maimane.

While the air is thick with portent for 2019, three years is a lifetime in politics. The game might change only if the ANC is able to undo the considerable collateral damage that will be left at the end of the disastrous Zuma tenure. For now, anything is possible, as Maimane well knows. DM

Photo: Leader of the oppositional Democratic Alliance (DA) party, Mmusi Maimane ©, walks at the launch of the party’s election manifesto in Johannesburg, South Africa, 23 April 2016. EPA/KEVIN SUTHERLAND

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