Why the DA can never have struggle credentials

When the Democratic Alliance recently launched its ‘Know Your DA’ campaign, I was reminded of a very apt observation made by a young Steve Biko, over 40 years ago, when he warned that ‘The biggest mistake the black world ever made was to assume that whoever opposed apartheid was an ally’. Biko’s observation is as relevant today as it was in the 1970s.

Through its ‘Know Your DA’ campaign, the DA desperately seeks to convince South Africans, especially young blacks, that just like the liberation movement (AZAPO, PAC and ANC), it too, ‘fought against apartheid’. To substantiate its claim, this campaign highlights the role of individuals, who were either part of the DA’s predecessor organisations or sections of the liberation movement. This campaign is riddled with logical and historical inconsistencies.

First, the DA, as a party, came into being post-1994, and it is strange, if not preposterous, for it to claim that, as a party, it too, ‘fought against Apartheid’. The DA's predecessors like the Progressive Party, the Progressive Reform Party, the Progressive Federal Party and the Democratic Party (together with their leaders), were never banned and never had to endure the racist brutality of police harassment, detention without trial, torture, assassination attempts, long prison sentences, forced exile and ultimately death. So, when and how did the DA obtain its struggle credentials?

Second, because all revolutions produce their fare share of sell-outs, it is possible that the DA may have, within its ranks, individuals that were once part of the liberation movement. This, in itself, doesn't mean the DA was part of the liberation movement. It is also strange that the DA's campaign conveniently neglects to embrace its apartheid heritage.

For instance, the DA is a product of a merger with a number of elements, including the National Party. Now if the DA is an organisation with integrity, why doesn’t it also celebrate and embrace the grotesque heritage of its former National Party leaders?

Third, and perhaps most critically, the black liberation struggle in South Africa was not ‘a struggle against apartheid’, but a struggle for national self-determination by blacks, which was premised on the reconquest of land and aimed at ushering in a political, economic and social order wherein blacks were in charge of their own destiny. This order is yet to be realised. Therefore to make apartheid (like the DA does) the point of departure or central point of the black liberation struggle is not just a desperate act of historical revisionism, but also tactic of misdirecting the struggle away from the real issues of land reconquest, white racism and national self-determination.

Fourth, coming to the tale of the two Hellens, which is central to the DA’s struggle credentials myth. Hellen Suzman's photo shoots with Madiba, her dreary speeches in the apartheid parliament and visits to black freedom fighters in jail don't make her a freedom fighter. Hellen Zillle's role in ‘revealing’ some details in Biko's murder as a journalist was nothing spectacular. She was doing what any young ambitious white journalist would do - chase the scoop to enhance the ratings of a liberal white paper. This doesn't make Zille a freedom fighter or Biko's comrade.

There is a fundamental difference between an ‘anti-apartheid activist’ and ‘Freedom Fighter’. The former sought to reform the system while the latter sought to destroy it. In fact, both Suzman and Zille were able to engage in these reformist acts because they, like all whites, were beneficiaries of a ruthlessly anti-black system, which allowed them to speak against it while also benefiting from it. Therefore, Suzman and Zille’s ‘opposition to apartheid’ remains inconsequential in so far as the fundamentals of black liberation are concerned.

In historic and philosophical terms, the DA’s ideology of liberalism has nothing to do with the plight of the poor or blacks, but everything to do with protecting the property and civil liberties of the privileged sections of society (the majority of whom are whites). Right thinking blacks should therefore dismiss the DA's existence as nothing else but a sophisticated old liberal trick, which is aimed at maintaining white privilege.

The DA desperately needs struggle credentials because they realise that, in order to advance the agenda of white capital in South Africa, they need to legitimatise themselves in the eyes of backs by dressing in the regalia of the liberation struggle. Their strategy involves using certificated but user friendly young blacks like Lindiwe Mazibuko and Maimane Mmusi.

Therefore, even though the DA is desperately trying to fool blacks into buying into its ‘Equal Opportunity Society’ illusion, if they were to become the ruling party, they would never address the fundamentals of economic ownership, land redistribution and white racism, which are at the heart of what defines black life in South Africa, 19 years into democracy. The DA and its predecessors were not formed with blacks in mind and it is utter foolishness to believe they care about blacks today.

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