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=Yapping DA still looks out of place in Africa=

They're fox terriers focused on minority fears, rather than majority interests

 * The Star, Johannesburg, January 26, 2006**


 * By Max du Preez**

The Democratic Alliance is urgently due for an extreme makeover. I have probably heard it a dozen times in recent weeks from ordinary people, and I even heard a township dweller interviewed on television say it this week: "I am an ANC member, but I won't be voting for the ANC in March. I am not going to vote."

What I have not heard is someone saying: "I am an ANC member, but this time I am going to vote for the opposition."

There are far more people deeply dissatisfied with the way local government is being run than there are ANC supporters. In most other democracies, such a situation would see the governing party ousted as the dominant force in local government. Not in South Africa.

That does not seem to point to a healthy democracy. In a sound democracy citizens vote for the party they think will govern best. This certainly applies to national government: there is clearly a majority consensus, including substantial numbers of minority groups, that President Thabo Mbeki's administration is doing a satisfactory - if not good - job.

This is not true of local government. And yet the ANC is certain to dominate local councils after the March elections.

Sure, we can't expect all divisions, suspicions, resentments and loyalties borne from a bitter and violent past to disappear in a few years. As an old woman told a radio interviewer this week: "The ANC is in my blood."

But it is 2006. We have had a democracy for almost 12 years. It is a bad sign that even people who agree 100% with the DA and think it has competent leaders won't even think of voting for them. The overwhelming majority of ANC supporters who are deeply unhappy with the ANC's record in local government won't even consider bringing out a protest vote.

That is certainly an indictment of the opposition parties, but especially of the DA as the biggest and most viable party other than the ANC.

After 12 years, it is still widely seen as a party for whites. It is viewed as an odd union of old-style English-speaking "liberals" and Afrikaners of the former National Party who are still uncomfortable with the new order. It has an image of a bunch of whining middle class whites who rejoice every time the black government errs.

This is not an altogether undeserved image. It has been put on record several times that some Afrikaners prefer the DA to the conservative Freedom Front Plus because it would be much better at "giving the blacks hell".

In their rush to grow as a political force, the DA leadership have welcomed a large number of reactionaries from the former NP in its ranks, some of them even in senior leadership positions. And it is true, in my view, that the DA has given more priority to the problems and fears of minorities than to the interests of the black majority.

It is unforgivable that after more than a decade the DA still has not found an appropriate style of opposing the government in parliament and elsewhere. It still has not shaken the image of a bunch of yapping fox terriers, of a party that would be much more at home in Britain than in Africa.

This is not good enough. I know the ANC is intolerant of any opposition and often opportunistically plays the race card when dealing with the DA. I know the DA has to deal with the suspicions and resentments of many generations. But if it cannot deal with these in some way after 12 years, it doesn't deserve to be the official opposition.

A large part of the problem is obviously that the top leadership of the party is still mainly white. Ironically, this is one difficulty we should have more sympathy with. The ANC has been very successful in accusing black DA supporters of being "un-African", of being disloyal to the country, of "doing the white man's work for him".

It would be extraordinarily hard for a recognised, strong black political leader to join the DA. Just ask Joe Seremane.

A good place to start changing these perceptions and energise the DA would be to get new blood in charge. Tony Leon and his trusted deputies like Douglas Gibson have worked and fought tirelessly under difficult circumstances, but they have now become part of the problem rather than the solution.

Time for the Extreme Makeover. A good start would be for Helen Zille to take over the leadership and prepare the ground for credible black leaders to join. But the DA needs more than just a boob-job and a shot of botox. It needs to reposition itself as a vibrant South African political party that could really be trusted to take over national government from the ANC.


 * From: http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=225&fArticleId=3082723**