Unlike factionalism in the ANC, where so-called comrades generally nail their colours to the mast of their choice of leaders – DA members, until now, have sought the more “sophisticated” option of public embrace and private backstabbing.

“Sophisticated” politicians give an air of discretion; they are good at keeping secrets. They don’t leak information about each other’s nefarious deeds or distribute fake news.

So, what’s changed?

The popular view – and the view the party would probably ultimately prefer you to believe – is that the DA’s poor performance in the 2019 general election and its abysmal performance in subsequent by-elections have occasioned deep introspection.

They plumbed so deep they hit paydirt – the sidelined former leader and Western Cape Premier Helen Zille came bubbling back to the surface.

Now, we are led to believe, the product of all this collective navel-gazing will be debated, in a sophisticated manner, and the direction the party will follow will be determined. Perhaps it will be a new course, perhaps the affirmation of an old or new ideology, perhaps a new leader, perhaps a white leader – who knows; it will all be terribly democratic.

In my view, the narrative that gangs of “classical liberals”, “nationalists”, “social democrats”, members of a “black caucus” or “progressives” are jostling for control of the party in the wake of the poor election results is naïve and fundamentally flawed.

The divisions are not as simple as the labels being bandied about. It is true that the alliance is in disarray – but this has always been the case.

Divisions and factions are multiple, fluid and often transactional. They converge around internal elections, around policy positions, for positions in governments, and they often last only for the period during which there is an arm-wrestle for dominance.

Once a faction’s dominance has been asserted, the ties that bound it loosen and members disperse in separate directions. A bit like musical chairs.

At a local level, this is evident from what we are seeing in Cape Town, where members of the DA loyal to the Deputy leader, JP Smith, recently failed to expel Grant Twigg, the Regional Chair. The DA’s leadership ultimately chose to intervene to prevent a counter-motion against Smith.

Twigg and Smith had been inseparable allies in the battle to remove Patricia De Lille. After De Lille resigned from the DA in October 2018 they went back to musical chairs.

The DA’s veneer of sophistication hides a continuously seething battlefield; it has been so since it was formed as an expedient grouping of political parties with nothing in common besides opposing the ANC.

It has never coherently coalesced around a common set of values, beliefs and policies. This is what led its former head of policy, Gwen Ngwenya, to conclude that the DA does not care much for policy at all.

I resigned from the DA, on 1 November 2018, at the end of a tumultuous two years during which the DA in the City of Cape Town was self-immolating – egged on by an irrational national leadership that was fuelling the fire rather than dousing it. The only achievement that their misguided leadership yielded was to maintain the apartheid spatial status quo of Cape Town. There was nothing ideological about their leadership.

The fight to get rid of De Lille began exactly at the moment we identified public land in the inner city for spatial integration and affordable housing – as promised in the 2016 local government manifesto.

When De Lille said there was a cabal of unreformed racists within the party who were opposed to integration and transformation, her statement was dismissed by Maimane as untrue. At that time, Maimane was aligned with the cabal that was pushing for De Lille to be removed. From previously declaring “Patricia De Lille is my favourite politician in South Africa”, he became hell-bent on getting rid of her.

Now he claims to be the target of a group of unreformed racists opposed to his transformation agenda. A group he denied existed.

Within days of us announcing that a number of well-located public land sites would be made available for affordable housing, I was requested to attend a meeting with a party donor – a property developer.

Geordin Hill-Lewis, a Member of Parliament and previous Chief of Staff to Helen Zille and then Maimane, had arranged the meeting. The donor, neighbour to one of the sites, evidently insisted that I attend too. I was questioned extensively about releasing public land for affordable housing before being excused from the meeting when the question of party funding was discussed.

It soon dawned on us that Hill-Lewis was the key player in the plot to oust De Lille, manipulating Cape Town councillors like a practised chess player.

Members of the DA Cape Town caucus are probably unaware of the behind-the-scenes work I was doing to try to stop the DA haemorrhaging and, at Maimane’s request, negotiate a political settlement with then-Mayor Patricia De Lille.

This secret and unofficial role of go-between revealed to me Maimane was not in charge, he was being managed. Our meetings were always in secret and he was never able to deliver on the promises and proposals he made.

When I prepared the first agreement, based on what Maimane had proposed and agreed to, it was Hill-Lewis who contacted me to arrange the delivery of an amended agreement that wiped out much of what Maimane had proposed and which killed off the negotiations for months.

I believe Hill-Lewis has since been removed as Maimane’s Chief of Staff and is now running Helen Zille’s campaign to be elected Chairperson of the Federal Council.

As I said, the alliances are transactional and fluid – Hill-Lewis was reportedly among those in Zille’s inner-circle who turned on her in 2015 to make way for the DA’s first black leader, Maimane.

Maimane will most definitely not want Zille to return to the alliance’s national leadership – and most definitely not in the all-powerful position of Chairperson of the Federal Council.

The gentlemen with whom Zille are competing – Athol Trollip, Mike Waters and Thomas Walters – have been integral to the current mess the DA finds itself in. It is hard to imagine any of them in the role of saviour chairperson of the Federal Council.

Zille has expressed unhappiness with the manner in which the DA leadership treated De Lille and with the current hypocrisy within the DA, and argues that she is not part of the current leadership mess.

It is disingenuous for Zille to claim to have had nothing to do with the trajectory of the DA. Under her watch, the DA cast aside its suddenly sacred liberalism in search of electoral populism. And, of course, Maimane was handpicked and promoted by her from the moment she met him.

The clarion call for a return to liberalism is simply a proxy for the latest battle for dominance within an alliance that has never matured into a coherent political force.

As support for the party shrinks, it is important to be as high up the totem pole as possible to avoid losing your position. Let’s not be fooled: The old guard wants its power back, and there’s nothing ideological or sophisticated about that. DM