Tony Leon remembers Douglas Gibson, who died last Friday, as one of the great builders of our politics.
Long-lived, controversial British politician Enoch Powell memorably said, “All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.”
Powell died in 1998 at the age of 85 and served for 27 years as an MP in the House of Commons. His infamous 1968 “rivers of blood’’ speech warning against immigration was branded racist -“an appeal to racial hatred” one newspaper headlined it. His Conservative leader, Edward Heath, ejected him from the opposition front bench. This effectively ended Powell’s aspirations for the cabinet office when the Tories returned to power two years later, or as a future party leader. (He had previously and unsuccessfully contested Heath for the Conservative top spot in 1965).
A titan of opposition politics
His one-time fringe views have now entered mainstream UK politics, attested by the huge local government wins recorded earlier this month by strident anti-immigrant Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage.
Powell’s less controversial view on how political lives end was top of mind for me when last Friday I absorbed, while in London, the deeply sad news of the death of Douglas Gibson, a titan of opposition politics in South Africa.
President Cyril Ramaphosa offered gracious public tribute to Gibson whom he characterised as “a veteran of our political transition in 1994 [who] will be remembered for his service as a Member of Parliament, chairperson of the then Democratic Party Federal Council, chief whip of the opposition and a senior member of the Democratic Alliance”. Of his post-parliamentary career as SA Ambassador to Thailand, the president noted, “Douglas Gibson flew our flag and brought our two countries together in mutually beneficial ways.”
Does Enoch Powell’s gloomy view that long political lives inevitably end in “failure” apply to the lengthy political career of someone like Douglas Gibson in South Africa?
The president’s adjective “veteran” is certainly correct, possibly a slight understatement. He was first elected to public office as Member of Provincial Council for Benoni way back in 1970. His first contest as an opposition United Party candidate was a loss in the National Party stronghold of Brakpan, five years before, at the extraordinary young age of just 23.
Persistence and deep loyalty
Douglas probably won as many electoral and nomination contests as he lost, but he displayed from the start two iron-clad attributes not often seen these days in our politics: enduring persistence and deep loyalty.
However, another key and abiding attribute of his decades on the public stage was his adaptiveness. He was attached to causes not labels, and so he left the moribund United Party (UP) in 1975 with Harry Schwarz to build a larger and more enlightened opposition force with the Progressives.
I often teased him about his UP origins, asking him, “How on earth could you belong to a party whose slogan was ‘White rule with justice’?” To which he ruefully responded, “Indeed, only half of that slogan turned out to be true.”
Beyond longevity and loyalty, for me, in our own decades together in three liberal parties (PFP, DP and DA), it was Gibson’s optimism of the spirit which was both infectious and so necessary for the years on the hard benches of the opposition in Parliament.
In my new book Being There, in which Gibson makes many appearances, I described our own time together in the early days of democracy in the 1990s, when as leader and chief whip, respectively, we did the hard grind of fundraising against the ANC juggernaut.
“He was a remarkable optimist – in contrast to my often Spenglerian gloom. I once referred to our enduring political partnership as the essence of a manic-depressive duo.” I labelled him “Pollyanna” after the character who exuded cheerfulness and light.
Honey and vinegar
Gibson’s ability to apply doses of either honey or vinegar, as situations required, found full expression in the exhilarating but often unruly days of the new democratic Parliament. He helped fashion its rules and processes and referred to Speaker Frene Ginwala – who was both bright and imperious, as “My Madam’’. He even coaxed a smile, a laugh and a dance turn with famously severe health minister, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma.
But he was also as tough as an old boot, giving no quarter in demanding that the opposition voice get full ventilation in often stifling conditions of one-party supremacy. And he was even tougher on recalcitrant or underperforming caucus colleagues.
My first meaningful encounter with him was not promising but it is revealing. In January 1986 I was a young unknown candidate for a party nomination for a seat on the Johannesburg city council. Gibson was provincial leader and senior member of the candidates committee. I canvassed his support. He told me he could not back me as he was already committed to my opponent. It was his honesty from the get-go which persisted right through to the end of our time together in Parliament in 2007.
He was fifteen years my senior in age and had decades more on the political clock than I had when I became party leader in 1994. Yet he backed me and the party to the hilt, never sparing the truth but always with good cheer, warm friendship and a gift for the hard graft.
To the leader go the spoils – such as they are in opposition. Of his myriad tasks of party management, Gibson once said, “I am here to clean the lavatories.”
Still in the mix
John Steenhuisen, the DA Leader, is the very first of a long line of opposition leaders going right back to 1959 to enter the portals of national power. In this narrow sense Powell was correct, since Gibson had long left Parliament when this happened.
Yet it was the extraordinary result of the 2024 election which enabled the still in place GNU to be formed with Gibson’s party in the cabinet. And as he done in every election for nearly 50 years, he was still in the mix.
Late in the evening of 29 May 2024, election day, I was sitting in the comfort of my lounge at home when the 83-year-old Gibson messaged me from the voting station in Bryanston where he was party agent. I asked him what he was observing. “It’s looking good,” he said, ”but I have been here for 14 hours and it’s freezing. Pam [his devoted and long-suffering wife, who survives him] says I must be completely mad.”
It is such “madness” which build parties, serves causes and shapes democracies. Douglas Gibson was one of the great builders of our politics. As President Ramaphosa noted, he will be well remembered. In the case of Douglas Gibson, Enoch Powell was wrong.
