The case for and against the DA

May 7th, 2009 · No Comments · politics

With the election yesterday of Jacob Zuma as president by the South African parliament, the spotlight fell on the opposition parties.

The DA refused to vote. This caused Xolela Mangcu to write in Business Day:

“Was it an attempt to deprive this constitutionally mandated process of legitimacy? What are the implications for the goodwill on which parliamentary democracy must function?

Nonetheless, I would urge Zuma to take to heart the words of one of the songs: “Kudala uzabalaza, Jacob Zuma, khawuphathe ngoxolo.” (You have been struggling for a long time, it’s time for you to bring us peace.) My sentiments exactly. Our country needs healing, and goodwill from the official opposition.”

In the same paper Rhoda Kadalie again rushed in where angels fear to tread.

“Worse, that DA-loathing analyst, Adam Habib, under the guise of scientific analysis, casts his prejudicial pearls all over the media, giving legitimacy to his views by quoting African nationalist William Magoba, who has so predictably claimed that “the DA is looking much like the National Party under De Klerk in 1994”.

Habib continues: “If voting behaviour is substantially influenced by party image, the image of the DA is set to become a liability in the future, simply because it does not have resonance in the African community. The trick in establishing a viable opposition platform is to carry through the asset of the DA into a new formation, without carrying through its image.” The problem with this view is that it continues to stereotype coloureds as non-African, and therefore racist for putting their vote with the DA and whites, who, in his eyes will remain forever unreconstructed and supportive of the DA.

Will Prof Habib please deconstruct what he means by the “image of the DA”? Has he run out of explanations now that the DA attracts more and more blacks? His usual tirade, it seems, is now replaced with “image analysis”. Devoid of any cogent understanding of the politics of liberation and its hold over the masses even if it means self-destruction, Habib directs his venom at a party that has made great strides in this new democracy. This pseudo-academic chicanery should stop, especially from those who head our universities.”

Pieter Mulder of the Vryheids Front did have some goodwill for the new president and reminded him of the words of boxing great Mohammed Ali:

Ali said: “In your pursuit of success there will be hundreds of set-backs. Remember, a heavyweight match is 15 rounds. If you lose a few rounds, or even get knocked down, it doesn’t matter, as long as you get up and eventually win.

“The same in life.”

He was roundly applauded by the government benches for this, as he was when he followed it up by saying: “According to Jeremy Gordin, in his Zuma biography, he wrote that in the living room of the rondavel of Sizakele Zuma, Zuma’s first wife, there are a number of pictures and other mementos hanging on the wall.

“One framed and decorated with roses reads: ‘I wish a long life to my enemies so that they may all see my successes’. You will understand the significance of that.”