There has been a good deal of talk on the significance of Lindiwe Mazibuko’s election to the top job in parliamentary opposition. Much of the celebration concerns what the event signals for the future; the potential for the Democratic Alliance (DA) to attract young black voters. In fact, in the minds of many, it is only an indication, but an important one, of a watershed moment to come. If we are to consider the moment an achievement not contingent on the prospects of the future, then Mazibuko’s election must be significant because of what it tells us about South Africa today, not for what it heralds for the country tomorrow. Mazibuko’s election is indeed a crossing of the Rubicon because of what it says about the DA and its electoral base today.
Any political party that hopes to become, or to remain, a party of governance is precious about its consolidated electoral base. Its policies, activities and leaders often point to the nature and interests of the people that the party is beholden to. Opposition parties consciously and often subconsciously decide to remain in opposition politics by reaching out only to their traditional base and driving the wedge between their supporters and those of the ruling party. An opposition party that thirsts for governing power must engage in a dance to shift fence-sitters, genuinely attract those on the other side and hold the confidence of longstanding supporters. The candidacy and election of a black South African to the DA’s second top job speaks of either an electoral base that increasingly does not identify their interests as linked to racial identity or a party that is unconstrained by the need to placate its traditional electoral base.
It has been posited that the DA owes its support to having preyed on the fears and suspicions of white South Africans — some having lost a political home in the National Party, some wary of the nationalist tendencies of the African National Congress and some not convinced that a liberation movement could successfully become a party of governance. Whatever the note of the piper’s flute that has led the majority of white South Africans to vote for the DA, it has become commonplace to refer to the DA as a white party. But the tenor of the criticism seems not only to be that it is led by white men and women but at times there are hints toward a genuine belief, some might say conspiracy theory, that there is also an agenda. The agenda in summary being the preservation of white affluence and power, driven by racist notions. Thus with this agenda the DA would continue to appoint white men and women to influential positions. Mazibuko’s election flies in the face of such fears.
Because of South Africa’s history there is much still to be said of the impact that the internalisation of racial identity has on voting patterns. There are many South Africans for who the DA is increasingly a viable alternative but who are also desperate for a face they can recognise as their “own”. Today preparation met with opportunity for the DA. A competent individual was available at a time when the imaginations of young South Africans so desperately need to be recaptured. The politics of self-esteem and competence have never had more appealing a face than it does in Mazibuko. She has shown herself to be a world-class political communicator with the right mix of sharp wit and affability.
Mazibuko’s election is significant because it provides new possibilities for analysing the historical agenda and the current status of the DA. The first idea of significance is that the appeal of the DA for white South Africans does not lie in it being a white party. Top leaders threw their weight behind her candidacy with no fear that it would alienate the DA’s traditional electorate. It displayed faith in having an electorate committed to a unified vision for South Africa.
The other possibility is that party leaders and the parliamentary campaign in fact paid little attention to its traditional electoral base. This would suggest a party that does not feel beholden to any one constituency. If this is the case there is reason to take seriously the assertion that the DA is growing a new base, one inclusive of all South Africans.
The DA’s future as the national governing party depends on the election of Mazibuko as being a confluence of both phenomena; the DA as a party serious about being a party for all and a traditional electoral base that embraces this vision. Reason suggests that it is.
For almost 20 years the DA has resisted affirmative action using their “meritocracy” argument to keep beneficiaries of white affirmative action firmly entrenched in the power structure of their party, the economy, the judiciary, in education etc. Now Zille has handpicked an inexperienced Mazibuko with no track record of political leadership to window dress the white dominated DA. What a shameful turnaround from their old “meritocracy” argument, 20 years later nogal!
The election of Mazibuko is similar to US Republican party’s election of presidential candidate, Herman Cain, another idiotic, pitiful Uncle Tom who is ready to serve his corporate masters. I believe Julius Malema has his own pet name for Mazibuko. Anyone for a cuppa?
Let me begin by saying – I’m sure Lindiwe is a wonderful person, and the following has nothing to do with her as an individual. She’s poised well spoken – impeccably educated young woman who will go far I’m sure. However that she, is in anyway an indication of the attraction of young Africans to the DA, is a flawed notion. She was educated at St marry s in Durban ( which is an fantastic school ) – and holds a degree from uct in – a subject designed to not get you a job. My point being – she does not in anyway really represent the young black person to whom the DA, will need to represent if it ever wishes to move from the opposition position. The DA represents young middle class Africans very well, but that is not where the majority of young Africa’s find themselves today.
Amanda, you are a real South African
) Thanks for a most incisive analysis of the DA’s true position in SA politics, and its potential for becoming the next party in governance. Let us all look forward to the Day of the DA! Viva Non-racial Democracy and an Open Opportunity Society, viva!
What victory? Since when did tokenism become victory? Putting black faces in the front line will never benefit anyone. Victory will be only when all aprties in this country adopt policies aimed at correcting the ills of apartheid and implement them if they are in charge. DA does not support any of such policies in parliament and does not implement any of them where they are in charge.The election of Mazibuko will not change that.
Yawn .. no amount of self-praise and Black appointments will rid the DA of its core agenda. On the surface it will undertake ‘cosmetic’ changes in the form of a black face, and yet at its core it remains part of a 300 year old legacy of colonial and apartheid rule that seeks to re-emerge and enforce a further imbalance of power in favour of the old establishment.
The DA can pin all their hopes on Lindiwe, but gues what? We’ve seen this all before and its not gonna work this time!
Well put Amanda. I have been a white DA supporter for 45 years and Lindiwe’s election to the post of Parliamentary Leader is most certainly one of the highlights of those years. I am thrilled and wish her every success in her new role.
i am so very proud of our young lady – Lindiwe Mazibuko – she deserves it – i have heard her a few times on radio – love her attitude – and its about time
we had young blood in parliament – they are our future and the way things are going
on – we are getting no- where – again well done Lindiwe – you are going to be a power to reckon with
I admire your optimism, Amanda, but describing Lindiwe Mazibuko as a ‘world-class political communicator with the right mix of sharp wit and affability’ really is a stretch too far! To be a political communicator one was to have policies to communicate. I know nothing about Mazibuko’s policies and about any change in direction for the DA as she has been conspicuously silent in these areas.
The DA has long been controlled and funded by an old guard of mostly Cape based white liberals who are sharp political entrepreneurs. They know exactly how to bend with the wind and are astute media operators. At the same time they are defenders of white economic privilege and predominance and will not allow any policies to change the economic and ownership structure of our nation.
Does LM have the courage to take on this powerful clique and back policies that will restructure our economy and society, which remains one of the most unequal and divided in the world? Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and see if she can – I wish her good luck! But the fact that we know absolutely nothing about her policies does not auger well for her ability to transform the DA from a party that protects white privilege.
Mazibuko is assigned the role of trail blazer and is likely to be the first of many. As such, she draws attention. I hope that within a short space of time a vote such as this will capure less fuss and attention in the DA and outside it. The ony point of contention is that she’s young for the position and will have to work very hard at an age when the average South African woman would prefer not to. I wish her all the best!
Amanda Ngwenya’s analysis is a mature and wise one that points to a truth deeper than mere polarised race-based traditional SA party-politicking, and yet is is sad to see some commentators here begrudging her analysis and kind of insisting that polarisation should remain.
My feeling is that the DA’s core values stem directly from the old Progressive Party, which was a party that sought strenuously to have ‘race’ as a social and political marker abandoned, in the face of apartheid racial segregation. These are the DA’s core values and Zille herself is steeped in that honest and principled non-racial legacy.
Sadly, the DA has to still tackle racial polarisation, this time not from the old Nats but from the chauvinists in the ANC. But each move the DA makes, renders the ANC’s entrenched obsession with race more obsolete.
Viva Lindiwe Mazibuko! The real DA membership has no interest in race but has a great love for SA and a desire for good governance, principles, vision, and public ethics. The real DA is showing the way ahead and Lindiwe Mazibuko is now one of those at the helm, She is no token, She is a political force to be reckoned with in time to come.
The proof of the pudding lies in the eating. It will now be incumbent on the DA to extend this vote of democracy to branch level as well. People need to not only see, but also feel the changes as being authentic and having meaningful impact on the targetted electorate. Where the DA governs, ensure that those municipalities are squeeky clean (literal and financial) and provide the high level of service delivery that is so lacking in other parts of the counrty. I trust that Mazibuko will have the influence beyond Parliament to make this happen.
@Brigs – I agree with you, but surely it is a sign of progress that voters are starting to align on class rather than race differences?
There is a massive difference between the black middle class created in the last decade and the working class who mainly still live in poverty. In my view, the future of SA rests on the black middle class who have to decide whether to ride the BEE gravy train with the ANC, whose endless grandiose schemes like the NHI along with unparalelled corruption is clearly financially unsustainable and will ruin this country, or throw their lot in with a party which I believe is becoming more widely representative. I really hope Lindiwe appeals to a wider audience than just the well to do – but doubt it. You have to start somewhere though.
@Madoda – what about the ills of ANC apartheid? Huge emigration of skills? Race based taxes like etolls? White school leavers prejudiced, despite being infants when born at the end of apartheid. How is that right?
I know it is easy for me to say as a white, but it is time to quit whining and get cracking. We need jobs. We need corruption stemmed. We need cohesive policies on education and crime. We need a new government and all the best to Lindiwe – I hope she does well – and I am sure I speak for most DA supporters. How many ANC and ANCYL supporters want whites to do well? Those who brought us freedom are no longer those who embrace freedom for South Africa.
And thanks for the well written article.
It’s great day – (I am glad the DA took my advice!)
Poor old HMV (His Master’s Voice) Harris just got a poke in the eye!
How insulting to suggest that Lindiwe Mazibuko is a ‘token’. By the same criteria White ANC members in the ‘front line’ are also ‘tokens’ and it is nothing to do with competance or ability. Shame…. There is not a great deal of ‘track record’ among many in the ANC positions either, but they are presumed to be competant, eh? Just wonder why, if the DA run W.Cape is supposed to be so apartheit motivated etc., so many ‘fugitives’ from ANC provinces are coming to the area. Must be doing something better somewhere?
I presume those who snipe at her appointment don’t believe in an educated Black middle class female meritocracy? Amazing that on these pages there seems such support for Zama Ndlovu (almost amounting to a fan club) would you vote for her? (were she to decide to go into Politics) Or only if she was NOT DA?
Good luck Lindiwe.
@ Madoda So, obviously, you would abolish affirmative action.
Poor Dave…. Spends years whining about the lack of black leadership in the DA and the complains when blacks do get top spots in the DA. Is there no pleasing you?
Will she be able to attract the mass young black vote? They don’t know her, just like they didn’t know Trollip.
I will go as far as saying they don’t care who leads who in parliament, something rather distant to them.
Whilst she got elected, Julius was marching to Pretoria.A very successful march if I may add. Those people following Julius are the same people Lindiwe should speak to. If she can do that she will succeed marginaly, if she can’t, well that’s the end of that then.
How many white leaders of the DA can you push-out until it falls?Would a DA with a majority black leadership still enjoy the support of the oupas and tannies in Weltevreden Park? I seriously wonder?
Phillip Cole u r my man! I could’nt have said it better……
Sipho. I’m a white oom though not from Weltevreden Park but somewhere close. I am elated at Lindiwe’s election because the DA needs leaders like her to realise our dream of a truly non-racist, liberal and accountable government. She has to shed a few pounds though. We don’t need ANC look-alikes in opposition politics.
Given that this is the first article on Thought Leader it might have been useful for either Amanda herself or the M&G to have pointed out that she is the immediate past UCT SRC President and a student leader in the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO). It would have saved us some simple googling to reach the simple and obvious conclusion of this article: “Young black female DA student leader thinks that young black female leaders in the DA are a good idea.”
@Philip Cole….GREAT COMMENT!
@ Sipho……here’s athought. If those oupas and oumas in Weltevreden Park (or anywhere else) do not GENUINELY share the values of the DA then they are welcome to take their vote elsewhere. In fact they should be encouraged to do so
According to the buzz, a substantial majority of DA caucus members voted in favour of Lindiwe Mazibuko. That happened despite intensive pre-election lobbying against her by Dene Smuts and others.
Which means that Mazibuko is the elected, not appointed, DA parliamentary leader.
That’s democracy in action, not tokenism.
Lindiwe wants the job. Let her give it a solid go. What a bunch of pesimistic whiners….
More articulate folk are needed in polictics full stop. So we have progress…yahoooo
The DA stands for non-racialism that means appointing people to positions according to their ability to fill the position, nothing else is relevant. This is a difficult road to follow in a country still populated by many who see a person’s race as being the most important thing about them, even though in reality it isn’t. Sadly that this mis-perception of reality is still very much with us is revealed through some of the comments on this blog. Our progress as a country has been hobbled for centuries by those who put race at the top of their agendas. Post 1994 I and many others hoped that at last we had put that collective millstone behind us. Tragically we were wrong as those who were supposed to have freed us from the racist millstone revealed unquestioning racist tendencies in their own behaviour. But the best future for South Africa and all its people, as it always has done, lies in non-racism so we just have to keep on working toward that.
read Philip Cole comment and analysis nad try to faulter him.
The vicious reactions from the usual suspects tells me the DA have done the right thing..!
Practising anthropologists will be interested to see whether Ms Mazibuko’s genetic makeup also contains, like most members of your ANC government, the Bokassa Cluster.
Will she now also acquire a squad of bodyguards and a 160 km/h blue light convoy? Will she, like Lindiwe Sisulu, use her constituents money for additional jets to transport VVIPs? (Sisulu’s acronym “Very Very Important Persons”).
Well, no. One reason is she cannot access the proceeds of taxation like Sisulu can. We hope there are other reasons as well.
I wish Ms Mazibuko the best and she will have to overcome every sort of racist jibe of the type seen in the snide comments from Musa, Brigs, Kwame, Madoda and Philip Cole. I ignore Dave Harris. It’s a little sad that the DA has had to follow a path of pragmatism rather than principal but that is the SA way. I’m amused at the Philip Cole sneer “The DA has long been controlled and funded by an old guard of mostly Cape based white liberals who are sharp political entrepreneurs”. You know this how? Pray enlighten us. Another Dave Harris! Perhaps you could also enlighten us as to how the DA “protects white privilege”. What privilege? Last time I looked at SA, whites were the target of legalised racial discrimination. Where do you live?
@Kwame,Harris, politic makes strange bedfellas, in the US the party of slavery has elected a black man president and this is the Democratic party. This party was founded by a slave owner name Thomas Jefferson. In 1932 when FDR became the president, he called for a new deal for the blacks and poor in the US and the people followed him. On the other hand the party that freed the black slaves, the Republican party, is not reaching out to the blacks.
This is just politics people, nothing to do with merit. My main concern is her age. She’s 31, just a child with no life experience, there is no way she should be leading a political party. If anything, this shows the DA’s arrival at the ANC’s base level of cadre deployment….
‘Dave Harris’ is a liar and a racist. Far from Ms Mazibuko being ‘inexperienced with no track record of political leadership’, she is a talented, dynamic, intelligent woman who can stand her own in any situation, is articulate, energetic and convincing. As for his racist comment about her being a ‘tea lady’, Dave shows that he is a racist relic from an apartheid cave. He should crawl back to that cave where he belongs.
The DA has still not elected a black to this position. Its caucus judged Mazibuko and her team the best qualified and most “fit for purpose”.
If others choose to see this through Apartheid/ANC eyes, that is their choice.
Great article Amanda, very good insight from your part!
It’s such a pity people can not afford Lindiwe the credit she deserve! She is young, and must still learn lot but everyone need to start somewhere. Lindiwe is a capable young woman and like one person said the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
For a start she is light years ahead of that other imbecile Malema. She will still be in politics years from now while Malema will be long forgotten, and maybe even me the first Mrs President.
Although I do not see the ANC giving that one up without a violent fight. The ANC currently look like the type of despots that will pull Mugabe tricks when Jesus comes and they are eventually outvoted.
@Sipho, some of these comments on this page fear a strong opposition party to the ANC and they should welcome it. COPE has been a failure and this is because the people in the party didn’t know how to run a political party because of a lack of experience. The DA party is well run and the people running the party know how to get their message out to the people. There are many blacks in SA that are listing to what the DA is saying and ready to vote for them.
lets not forget that she was up against an athol who did not know how to simply forward an email…
I dare anybody on this forum who thinks Mazibuko is a token to go just one round against her in the debating chair. She will have you for breakfast and swig Dave Harris down with a sip of his tea.
Furthermore, to those who think that Mazibuko does not represent the voting masses, remember that a leader must rise above the masses he or she represents, educate themselves and be able to hold their own on the world stage. Mandela and Mbeki were both educated men, well spoken and smart statesmen. They were not angry, uneducated youth.
The DA has held true to its principles across generations, sexes and races. The new order of SA politics is dawning and it will be a fight between those like Mazibuko who see democracy, order and merit as the way forward and those like Malema who will rule by instigating mayhem. Lets get down to a two-party state and may the best leader win…
@George – I like your take on the serious matter of pounds shedding, tee hee, heee.
@anton kleinschmidt & Sterling Ferguson – I wish Lindiwe well. I don’t derive any material benefit from the ANC or the government so why would I be scared of being ruled by the DA. But I have noticed though that many institutions that start being lead by whites lose white support as soon as they are black majority lead.
For instance I don’t think there’s wide policy difference between the IFP and the DA, but the IFP is battling to attract meaningful support from the white community.
Strange how everyone is cocksure about the DA’s agenda, and not willing to give them a chance, while we’ve seen the failed agenda of the ANC over and over again.
At least the DA is changing how they’re doing things. The ANC will be the liberation party until we need liberation from them too.
I’m glad that Lindiwe Mazibuko got elected. I don’t care that she’s black, a woman or in the DA. She appears like a competent person and if there’s one thing we need in the public sector it’s more competence.
Next I’d like to see the DA come up with its own policies that are radically different from the ruling party’s agenda. Not just toned down versions, like the youth subsidy fiasco, but better solutions.
The cynic in me tells me it was all stage-managed to get as much publicity mileage as possible. Mr Trollip and Ms Dene Smuts had to pretend to be putting up a fierce contest against Ms Mazibuko sothat when she ultimately wins everyone will stop and start to notice her as a formidable challenger to the ANC. It was more of a wrestling match than a real political contest.
I can only hope the DA won’t allow itself to be sidetracked by side issues like the Daila Lama visa issue, running to court at the slightest provocation, and trying to get Malema arrested. Such issues do not resonate with most of the electorates. Saying what resonate with most people is not populism, it’s intelligent thinking.
Given Philip Cole’s comment about the fact that Amanda Ngwenya; “is the immediate past UCT SRC President and a student leader in the Democratic Alliance Student Organisation (DASO).” This is not a sober analysis of DA present and future politics.
No matter how you look at it Amanda, DA is a white dominated party as ANC is a black dominated party – finish and klaar!
echoing Philip Cole…
I believe such an article written without a Disclaimer regarding the author’s affiliation somewhat hides the fact that this is not really an objective analysis. Amanda is DA through and through…its possible they are chommies with Lindiwe as well
not to take anything away from Lindiwe…only time will tell whether she has any mettle within the DA ranks.
TS
Whatever
Amanda Gwen Ngwenya and Lindiwe Mazibuko are buddies, I should know, I’ve spotted them together several times at some DA heavyweights House.
Lindiwe Mazibuko endorses Gwen as DA Provincial Leader etc etc, Its a biased Plot and the M & G is buying it.
The article is not objective at all, sorry, didnt interest me at all,
Research all facts before publishing, that makes for interesting reading!!!