23 Oct 2012 | Tony Leon | Original Publication: BDlive
When former president Thabo Mbeki decided the destruction of the DA was
a political priority, he appointed Mosiuoa Lekota as his hit man, writes Tony
Leon
WHEREVER in the world
former Sasol and Anglo American CEOs Pieter Cox and Tony Trahar are these days,
last week’s speech by erstwhile president Thabo Mbeki must have caused them to
smile at the irony of it all.
In 2003, both men were at
the receiving end of Mbeki’s invective when they said, respectively, that black
economic empowerment was a "risk factor" and that the risk factor for
South Africa was "starting to diminish, although I am not saying it has
gone".
Mbeki accused Sasol of
"bad-mouthing South Africa" and suggested that Trahar’s stance
amounted to Anglo suggesting that "democratic South Africa presents the
business world … with a higher political risk than apartheid South
Africa".
What a difference nine
years and loss of office makes. In his African National Congress (ANC)
centenary lecture last week, Mbeki joined the doomsday chorus in far more
direct and stark terms than these corporate titans ever did. He spoke of South
Africa being afloat on a sea of troubles, characterised by "a dangerous
and unacceptable situation of directionless and unguided national drift".
Mbeki is hardly alone as
a latter-day canary-in-the-coal-mine warning of the noxious gases that threaten
to engulf the country. The Economist, which recently upgraded Africa from
"hopeless" to "hopeful", decided, also last week and after
two sovereign credit downgrades, that South Africa was sliding downward toward
"sad country" status. Embedded in the article is a central truth:
South Africa — at the most recent general election, the spread between the
governing party and the official opposition was more than 40 points — is
"a de facto one-party state".
I recently noted that it
is difficult to establish a real and competitive democracy (and the first
adjective is conditioned by the second) on the back of such a huge deficit,
especially since our much admired constitution is noticeably weak in its checks
and curbs on a super-majority government. Thus the motivating spirit and finer
detail of the constitution can be ignored and bypassed by the government for
the simplest of reasons: because they can be.
In this context, the
recent call by Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille for a realigned and
larger opposition is both politically and constitutionally necessary. But as
someone who still bears the scars from the last large-scale opposition merger a
decade ago, I can attest that it will not be easy.
The only party with which
the DA appears to be engaged in serious discussion toward this end is the much
diminished Congress of the People, which, because of the 2009 election results
and despite its self-destructiveness since then, remains the second-largest
opposition force in Parliament, led by Mosiuoa Lekota.
There is deep irony at
play here too. Mbeki decided the destruction of the DA was a political
priority, he appointed as his hit man the national chairman of the ANC —
Lekota. Thus it was that Lekota, with the carrot of floor-crossing and the
promise of the Western Cape premiership, tempted Marthinus van Schalkwyk to
lead his New National Party rump out of the DA and into the fatal embrace of
the ANC.
Four years later, when
parliamentary floor-crossing, which probably did more injury to democratic
deepening than many other constitutional predations before or since, was at its
height, the same Lekota set about personally luring DA members across the
parliamentary aisle. In one case, he even offered DA MP Rafeek Shah a
"deputy ministry". When I exposed the offer, which Shah informed me
of and commendably declined, Lekota telephoned me to tell me "it was only
a joke". Presumably, these days Lekota is more seriously engaged in
helping to broaden an opposition he once so assiduously attempted to destroy.
From the’s DA
perspective, demographics represents political destiny. In last year’s municipal
elections, the party’s improved performance in reaching about 24% of the vote
was hailed as scaling new electoral heights and proof that the party had, at
last, established a small base among black voters. Actually, only the latter
but crucially important fact was new. In 2000, shortly after the formation of
the DA, the party notched up more than 23% of the national municipal vote. The
reason for the standstill in its total over the past decade has not been
because of a failure to obtain black votes but because of the rapid decline,
demographically, in its core minority — especially its white — base.
Increasing its size
remains the vital and unfinished task for opposition leadership. This is a
proposition about numbers. But there is another equally compelling dilemma: how
to do so and retain ideological and policy coherence and not reduce the clear
blue water that separates, or should divide, the opposition and the government.
On squaring this circle,
not just the fortunes of the opposition but the constitutional good health of
the country depends.
• Follow Leon on Twitter:
@TonyLeonSA
No comments:
Post a Comment