The central message of the DP in 1999 was uncomplicated: ethnic minority concerns needed to be adequately addressed and it was only by bringing minorities under the political administration of a single party that groups’ interests could be effectively safeguarded. By default, the fragmentation and fracture of opposition parties which the results of the 1994 elections confirmed was a contributing factor to ANC dominance (Southall, 1998). Indeed, at one level, the ‘Fight Back’ slogan can be interpreted as an attempt to counteract any tendency by minority groups to withdraw from politics and, as Lanegran (2001) argues, it worked to attract racial minorities who felt threatened. Additionally, other concerns such as a soaring crime rate, the problematic situation of white farmers and land ownership in Zimbabwe, and the disenchantment many whites felt concerning employment equity undoubtedly made the DP’s (and DA’s) determination to play political hardball with the ANC an electorally attractive option.
The gains that the DA has made since 1999 can be viewed as a mark of the party’s success in marketing itself to a sizeable portion of the country’s minority groups. But simply appealing to minority groups can be conceived of as being strategically self-limiting as no party can afford to alienate majority African support. In the next two sections we will explore how the DA has gone about altering its image to the intended end that all South Africans will be able to identify with it yet how certain realities make the achievement of further electoral progress difficult.
POLITICAL OPPOSITION, RACIAL IDENTITY AND OBSTACLES TO ELECTORAL PROGRESS
Regardless of the ANC’s massive support base, the DA argues consistently and robustly that South African democracy is dependent upon one crucial factor, namely a strong and committed political opposition. Before handing over the reins of power to Helen Zille in 2007, Tony Leon (2006) referred to the political objectives he and a few others had set out to achieve: ‘In 1994 I set out – with a handful of colleagues – with a mission and a purpose: to establish and entrench the concept of opposition as a legitimate and absolutely essential cornerstone of our new democracy.’ While the DA cannot be faulted for its efforts to fashion a sturdy opposition, its attempt to make inroads into the African community – the country’s richest electoral resource – remains hampered by the fact that race and ethnicity significantly influence voter preferences.
A consistent theme running through DA literature is the political profit enjoyed by the ANC from racially angled policies such as affirmative action. Nevertheless, the DA exhibits confidence that the black/ANC relationship can be challenged.
In the light of the correlation between race and voter allegiance, and a fractured but unbroken ANC, effective oppositional politics in contemporary South Africa requires an openness to building coalitions. The DA-led multiparty coalition governments in the Western Cape and in the Cape Town municipality have generally worked well and demonstrate what can be achieved when smaller parties unite on the basis of a shared minority status.
These experiences will no doubt help bolster the party further. Although the party won the Western Cape in the 2009 provincial elections with 51.46 per cent of the vote, it cannot afford to take electoral support for granted – not least because this province was once a post-apartheid stronghold for the NP. In 1994, the NP won twenty-three seats in the Western Cape before slipping to the point of embarrassment when, as the NNP, it won only five seats. The unpredictability of the province largely derives from parties vying for the non-African vote in the most multicultural and ethnically plural part of the country. The DP went from three seats in 1994 to five in 1999, to twelve as the DA in 2004. The 2009 provincial elections then saw the DA grow yet further to capture twenty-two seats. This was a considerable achievement in only fourteen years (albeit assisted by divisions along African/coloured lines within the provincial ANC) and leaves the Western Cape as the only province that currently is not under the control of the ANC.
The significant concentration of electoral support for the DA in the Western Cape has both positive and negative aspects for the party’s prospects. On a positive note, the province allows the DA’s performance, in relation to its delivery of services to the people of the province, to be assessed. However, should the politics of racial identity continue to determine how South Africans vote then what happens in the Western Cape might count for little.
As mentioned above, the DA has not drawn the same level of support in the Northern as it has in the Western Cape. The 2009 provincial result for the DA in the Northern Cape indicates that coloured voters in this province were not as convinced as their Western Cape counterparts by the DA’s campaign. As leading party strategist, Jonathan Moakes, has pointed out:
… the DA has traditionally been more present among coloured voters in the Western Cape than in the Northern Cape. The party has more of a base in the Western Cape from which to start. Furthermore, the platform of being in government in the Western Cape is very significant with voters experiencing DA delivery in very tangible terms. Voters in the Northern Cape have not had that experience yet (Noakes to Southern, private communication, 3 August 2010).
From a strategic perspective, the significance of the Western Cape to the DA’s preparation for the next national elections lies in the potential example it can set of good provincial government, but when we compare the vastly different position the DA is presently in from the position it occupied both nationally and provincially following the 1994 elections, it becomes clear that the party has been able to sell its message to an increasing number of South Africans. As mentioned above, Davis (2004) explains the DP’s success between 1994 and 1999 as resulting from the party’s capitalising on a sense of alienation felt by non-black groups in general. But the DP came under serious criticism from the ANC for its allegedly negative approach to opposition politics. As the 2004 elections drew near the ANC’s take on their opponents was that they were nation wreckers, bent on polarising South African society along racial lines. As argued by Mbeki (2004):
White minority power in our country, in all its forms and manifestations, was necessarily always founded on the division and polarisation of our people and the denial of our common nationhood, sharing one destiny … This approach finds expression today in the view advanced by some opposition parties that the litmus test defining whether we have a genuine democracy or not is the strength of the Opposition, and therefore the division of our country into permanently antagonistic camps. The principal task of this Opposition is then defined as opposing everything the government does, with no concern about participating in the effort to address the fundamental challenge our country faces to eradicate the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
Mbeki equated political opposition with racial opposition. Given the history of South Africa, the ANC could not attack its political opposition in a more menacing fashion. From a strategic perspective, it was profitable to convey a message which tethered ‘white’ opposition parties to a racist past because to do so would dissuade voters from conducting a deeper inquiry into the actual policies advocated by the opposition. Mbeki’s statement, however, displays a flawed logic regarding the electoral benefits of racial polarisation. The DA is far from being backward in calculating the political costs of racial division. So long as black politics remains a contest among a few ‘black’ parties (especially if the ANC does not experience serious fractures) to follow a line that promotes race entrenchment would spell electoral marginalisation and minority political status in perpetuity for the DA; whites and other non-African groups are simply too small in number for other possibilities to be countenanced. On the other hand, where a large racial majority exists, to kindle race consciousness with its inevitably attendant racial political loyalty would work to the advantage of the ANC.
In essence, a refusal by the DA to bridge the racial divide would be politically unstrategic and the party is