Will South Africa Be Okay?. Jan-Jan Joubert
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of his perceptions of the election. While there is little reference to FF Plus policies, much is made of the mistakes of the DA, notably because they assumed their Afrikaner voters were a given. Groenewald also refers to a number of ‘intercept tries’ his party scored – own goals where the DA, through rash, hasty decisions and plain political stupidity, played right into the hands of the FF Plus.
He says whites, and specifically Afrikaners, should be proud of what they are and shouldn’t be discriminated against as minorities, and then he makes the following statement: ‘The rainbow nation is dead.’
Implicit in this is the problematic nature of the rise of the FF Plus, because he doesn’t outline any alternative. In any case, that’s rich coming from him, since it’s not as if the FF Plus has at any point lived up to the ideal of the rainbow nation – in this election, 22 of the 23 representatives they sent to parliament and the provincial legislatures were white.
The sole exception is the former Western Cape premier Peter Marais. Say no more. One can read a full account of everything he got up to the last time he was in a position of power in Prof. Johan C. Moll’s exhaustive study Kaapstad se “Streetgate”: Politieke maneuvers en die Peter Marais-debakel (1999–2002) (Cape Town’s ‘Streetgate’: Political manoeuvres and the Peter Marais debacle), published in book form by the University of the Free State.
For Pieter Groenewald to pronounce on the rainbow nation is like that rascal among ANC politicians Panyaza Lesufi (Gauteng MEC for education, if you’ve had the good fortune of being unaware of his existence up to now) pronouncing on Afrikaans. The rainbow nation ideal is still being actively pursued despite Groenewald and his ilk, just as Afrikaans is still being actively enjoyed and grown despite Lesufi and his ilk. Groenewald’s contribution to the rainbow nation is comparable to Lesufi’s contribution to Afrikaans – the little they grudgingly contribute to it is merely because the Constitution obliges them to. Their behaviour comes across as counterproductive to those of us who believe in Afrikaans and in the rainbow nation – hence also in Afrikaans as a conciliatory language. The two of them should stick to matters they are familiar with, matters to which they have contributed positively in their political careers – of which there are many. Some people are heavily burdened by their historical baggage; as ill-qualified as Lesufi and his people are to judge the wellbeing of Afrikaans and the choice of Afrikaans, so too are Groenewald and his people ill-qualified to judge the wellbeing of the rainbow nation and the decision to pursue it. They can leave it to those of us who choose to live up to the ideal of Afrikaans as an inclusive language and the reconciliatory, non-racial rainbow nation; those of us who try to live out the Constitution instead of employing it as a divisive weapon. In short, it would be great if the likes of Lesufi and Groenewald left us alone, especially on these two topics.
In all honesty, though, it does seem to be the case that the votes by which the FF Plus grew were to a large extent a protest vote against the DA. As noted above, the people from whom one should seek an explanation for this phenomenon are the FF Plus, not the DA. From my conversations with sources in the FF Plus, it appears that there were six reasons in particular that prompted the swing from the DA to the FF Plus among Afrikaner voters.
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, none of those reasons came up when DA sources were asked about explanations for the party’s loss of support.
The first reason was the Ashwin Willemse–Nick Mallett incident. During a live studio broadcast of a rugby discussion between Willemse, Mallett and Naas Botha on SuperSport, Willemse became annoyed with his fellow panellists and walked off the set. It later turned out that his irritation in particular with Mallett’s attitude had been building up for a long time.
The DA leader, Mmusi Maimane, immediately sided with Willemse and labelled the incident as racist. However, a subsequent investigation by Advocate Vincent Maleka found no evidence that racism had been involved. Groenewald and the FF Plus seized the opportunity to show that the DA had made allegations of racism where none existed, and had therefore been unfair to Mallett and Botha.
Groenewald’s view would undoubtedly have resonated with some white voters who – rightly or wrongly – feel they are being unfairly blamed for everything that is wrong in the country because of their race. It could have caused them to believe that the DA was part of that problem, and to doubt whether they shared the DA’s values, as personified by the party’s leader.
The second issue that dented the DA’s image among Afrikaans voters was the Patricia de Lille saga, which raged for nearly a year.
After De Lille had merged her party, the Independent Democrats, with the DA in 2011, she soon became the best-known Afrikaans-speaking leadership figure in the DA. Like any politician, she didn’t see eye to eye with everyone in her new party, but she was a great favourite with the public, and specifically Afrikaans speakers of all races and classes.
As the Western Cape’s provincial leader and as mayor of Cape Town, De Lille led the 2016 municipal election campaign for the party in its Western Cape heartland, which resulted in the DA’s biggest victory ever: close to a two-thirds majority in Cape Town and 62% of the votes in the Western Cape. The DA governed in 29 of the 30 Western Cape municipalities, which included a number of coalitions with other parties.
Directly after the 2016 election, media reports on tension between De Lille and other DA leaders started surfacing. As tends to be the case with internal disputes of this type, the discord first manifested itself slowly and then escalated rapidly. The feuding kept boiling over in public, and did great damage to the DA’s brand as a diverse yet united and professionally run outfit.
Various allegations were levelled at De Lille from within the DA, and some of the issues landed up in court. De Lille won each of the cases. There was great confusion among many DA voters about what exactly she was supposed to have done wrong, whether it was in any way serious enough to warrant the steps taken against her, and whether she had been treated fairly.
When she finally, after squabble upon squabble, agreed to resign as Cape Town mayor after a significant minority of her caucus had repeatedly refused to get rid of her, the DA was left without its most prominent and charismatic Afrikaans leader. No other Afrikaans leader since has enjoyed any comparable prominence or popularity. This acrimonious saga gave rise to a perception among Afrikaans speakers that a fellow Afrikaans speaker had been discriminated against once again, which made voters feel less at home in the DA and prompted them to consider other political homes, such as the FF Plus.
Meanwhile, the FF Plus calmly continued planning its election campaign, with no sign of comparable internal tension. Compared to the DA, the FF Plus began to acquire the kind of stable, harmonious and pro-Afrikaans image many voters found an attractive option.
The third example of a decisive blunder cited by the FF Plus was the DA’s decision to award a glowing score of 7,5 out of 10 to Panyaza Lesufi as Gauteng MEC for education in the party’s annual report card on the performance of the ANC government. If there is one person in the ANC who is an avowed opponent of Afrikaans as language medium in education, and is despised and detested by the vast majority of Afrikaans speakers on account of this stance, it is Lesufi. Heaven knows why the DA rates him so highly.
Incidentally, after the 2019 elections the DA reappointed the same person who had been the impetus behind Lesufi’s high score as the party’s provincial spokesperson on education. If that person, the DA’s MPL Khume Ramulifho, reckons Lesufi is so wonderful, he should perhaps join Lesufi rather than pretend to oppose him.
Within ANC circles, there was undoubtedly a realisation that Lesufi had flouted the constitutional ideals of multilingualism and reconciliation and stirred up racial tension. A few days after Cyril Ramaphosa stated in his presidential address at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria that no one should feel they are being discriminated against on grounds that include language, Lesufi was moved from education to finance.
It had been a long time since a political appointment was greeted with such joy in the Afrikaans community. The news dominated Afrikaans news bulletins, and virtually all Afrikaans cultural organisations welcomed it officially.
And then, two days later, Lesufi was reappointed as the Gauteng MEC for education, for reasons that I suppose