Next DA leader has great chance but also faces danger

A long time back, in July 2006, I read an article by Boris Johnson in the Weekly Telegraph. He was then a high-flying journalist and backbench Tory MP.

He wrote on the reluctance of British Prime Minister Tony Blair to leave 10 Downing Street.

Johnson observed:

“It is a necessary fact of political biology that we never know when our time is up. Long after it is obvious that we are goners, we continue to believe that it is ‘our duty’ to hang on, with cuticle-wrenching tenacity to the privileges of our post… All politicians are masters of procrastination, but there is no day they find easier to postpone than the day of their own resignation.”

When I read that piece, I was entering my 13th year of leadership of the Democratic Party (DP) and Democratic Alliance (DA). I saw it as a political epiphany of sorts and proceeded to set in train my own resignation as party leader, which I announced a few months later.

Whether Blair did or did not read it, he was gone by June 2007. The crowning irony, of course, was that when Johnson himself climbed to the top of “the greasy pole”, he ignored his earlier prescription.

Felled by multiple scandals, his own exit as prime minister in July 2022 was far from smooth and easy, and more of the “cuticle-wrenching” sort, which he accused Blair of.

By the standards of Blair, the most successful Labour Prime Minister since World War 2, and Johnson, less so for the Tories, the current crisis engulfing Labour PM Sir Keir Starmer is in a different league.

Due to the scandal around his hand-picked ex-ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, and the never-ending stain of the latter’s friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Starmer’s political obituary (after less than two years at the top) is already being written. Though, after his fighting speech to his MPs on Monday, he earned a likely stay of execution.

South Africa has plenty of political leaders who are masters at procrastinating their own departure. The late president of the Inkatha Freedom Party was first chosen in 1975 and served until 2019; the ACDP leader has been in post since 1994; and the current leader of the UDM has been in office since 1999, as examples.

Since its formation in 2000, South Africa’s DA has had four leaders, and the ANC has had three in the same period. Each, of course, had different attributes and benchmarks for success and multiple critics could and do elaborate on their failures.

A big difference between the first and second parties of SA, on the one hand, and most of their competitors, on the other, is the distinction between a national political organisation versus a personality-led and narrowly based movement. The former can and does manage, and sometimes improves, when the leader leaves, while the latter usually declines or implodes when this happens.

Last year, I wrote that “knowing when to leave and depart the stage is an underrated political skill”. Last week, the DA’s top leadership (John Steenhuisen and Helen Zille) showed this skill and signalled their exits. In April, the party will refresh its leaders.

What does this portend for the fifth leader?

On the electoral gain side, the runes read well. First, the simple act of electing a new party chief motivates voters and remotivates the base. That has been generally true for both the ANC and DA (DP) since 1994.

There are some exceptions, of course: notably the DA reverse in 2019, for the first time nationally, which saw the unhappy exit of then-leader Mmusi Maimane. However, his first electoral test was, in fact, the 2016 local government elections, when the party obtained its highest voting percentage (27%).

Karl Marx wrote, “Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please…”

Marx was an avowed opponent of what is termed the “great person theory of history”, believing historical and class circumstances were the true “motive forces”. But for any DA leader fronting the party in looming local elections, lots of unhappy voters (Marxist and non-Marxist alike) will punish the party – in Johannesburg and in other areas – that forces residents to rely on water tankers and not taps for their daily needs. And that party, of course, is the ANC.

So, even a mediocre opposition leader should benefit from the collapse in confidence in its primary opponent.

But a skilled party leader sees beyond just electoral gains, crucial though these are.

Managing internal factions – and not being captive to any – and choosing the right team, not cronies, and expending political capital (a non-replenishing item) early to achieve a long-term strategy over time are indispensable tickets for success. And that is just the internal stuff.

As Blair once noted, “parties that turn in on themselves – arguing endlessly about internal purity rather than outward solutions – stop speaking to the country and start speaking only to their activists”. That has universal application.

So, offering a compelling national message and communicating it in clear language with authenticity are key. And that is not just sound bites, but is all about “Oh, the vision thing”, as former US president George HW Bush – who lacked it – once complained (and he lost his re-election).

Here the leader must set the tone and know what it is. Sounds simple enough – perhaps just hire a good speechwriter to flesh it out. But as Ryan Coetzee, party strategist of my time, once noted:

“Good staff can make a good leader better, but no one can make a bad leader any good.”

Leaders go from good to great when sound intellect is matched by steady temperament.

Of course, with the spotlight on who will lead the DA (and, next year, the ANC), we fixate on who is up and who is down and who will fall by the wayside.

But leadership questions are as much about positioning as personality.

And the position the DA finds itself in right now is ripe with both opportunity and danger for party and country.

Here, the next DA leader starts with one advantage: they can look afresh at what the DA participation in the GNU has achieved, and how it can be improved or refashioned. They can provide a critical gaze unencumbered by ownership of the trade-offs to date.

However, the new leader will need to be adept at going toe-to-toe with Cyril Ramaphosa, who has outnegotiated many adversaries for over 40 years.

Also, s/he needs to satisfy two apparently contradictory impulses of DA voters.

A stack of polls suggests that DA supporters want the party to remain in the GNU. Indeed, its impressive polling advance among black South Africans suggests that being around the Cabinet table has allowed the party to shrug off the slur of “bring back apartheid”, which ANC propaganda fired at the DA over 25 years. Net win, then.

That said, the polls also indicate that DA voters want the party to sharpen its opposition to the ANC on crucial policies.

So, the new leader must be the pragmatic synthesiser of two apparently antagonistic positions. And a successful synthesis can tap a new voting base and solidify the existing one.

None of these tasks is either simple or easy. But that is the challenge of leadership.

I was recently a guest at the Cape Town Met. I asked the owner I was seated with what instructions he and the trainer gave the jockey in the parade ring before the race.

“Nothing of consequence,” he replied, “since a good jockey doesn’t need instruction, and a bad jockey doesn’t take any.”

Yet, in both horse racing and politics, the one indispensable ingredient is plain luck. So, good luck to the next DA leader – and the right one can make a lot of it for themselves.