Leon mulls over the Democratic Alliance’s biggest challenge: ‘how to maintain its majority support among minorities, and increase its meagre voter share among the black majority’.
The problem for the Democratic Alliance is not one of policy. There is real substance in its commitment to substituting racial criteria for overcoming historical disadvantage.
The white liberal establishment, both inside and outside the Democratic Alliance, holds on to its race-blindness by distorting the South African idea of “non-racialism”.
Mmusi Maimane’s resignation highlights one of the core problems of democratic South Africa - the assumption that the only way to do anything is the way white men did it in the past.
Race is the fault line. Prominent black DA figures label attempts to remove leader Mmusi Maimane as an attempt by whites to force black members into a subordinate position.
Instead of ignoring his accusers, South Africa’s Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa entertained them, tried to silence them through court, and then revealed a long-past affair of little interest.
Chief Research Specialist in Democracy and Citizenship at the Human Science Research Council and a Research Fellow Centre for African Studies, University of the Free State