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 Has Tony Leon reached his sell-by date?
    Ashley Smith
    April 17 2004 at 10:13AM 		Get IOL on your
mobile at m.iol.co.za

Like a poker player who pushes all his chips into the centre of the table - betting everything on the outcome of one hand - the Democratic Alliance may have raised the stakes too high in the run-up to Election 2004.

It may be that it will be difficult for their leader just to walk away without facing the music being fiddled in the aftermath of a pretty ordinary showing, despite the pre-election hype.

Through much of Thursday the DA's initially flatteringly high national vote tally ran down like a cheap clock, settling at 12 percent to 13 percent.

The Democratic Party won 9,5 percent of the national vote in 1999.
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The Coalition For Change is lagging far behind the old Nats and the old IFP
And the egg on their faces was exacerbated by the pre-election predictions.

After all, it was Tony Leon who said the Coalition For Change - the DA and the Inkatha Freedom Party - would win 30 percent of the vote, enabling them to seriously challenge the ANC. (His political wunderkind, Ryan Coetzee, changed this "prediction" to between 25 percent and 30 percent a day or two before the election).

It was, after all, Leon who said they would rule two provinces in coalition - the Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal - and that they would hold the balance of power in the Northern Cape.

The reality is that with Leon as leader of the opposition, the ANC under President Thabo Mbeki is stronger than ever.

The Western Cape is lost to the DA and although the party is the official opposition in several of the nine provinces, they remain exactly that - a small opposition.

Mbeki shaded Leon during election campaigning and political analysts have described the DA leader as looking "awkward" when it came to dealing with ordinary people during the campaign.

The DA may have managed to herd former New National Party supporters into its ranks, but made little or no inroads into the ANC's support base in Election 2004.

What is sure to follow is introspection and a growing feeling that Leon has reached his sell-by date.

The party may decide that new blood and, in fact, new blood encased in a black skin, may be the tonic they need.

It has become obvious that under Leon's leadership no significant black support will come to the DA, except those being marshalled because of the predictable demise of the NNP and other opposition parties.

On the face of it, it appears that the DA is doing no more than swallow up other minority-based parties. At the height of their powers in 1994, the then National Party won 20 percent of the national vote and the Inkatha Freedom Party 11 percent.

In 2004, the IFP and DA have less than 20 percent of the vote and the opposition seems more fragmented than ever.

Honestly speaking, the Coalition For Change is lagging far behind the old Nats and the old IFP when it comes to popular support.

But Election 2004 will also be remembered for the DA's "all-or-nothing" approach to the pre-election poker game and than how it chose to vilify every single opposition party including new kids on the block, the Independent Democrats.

Leon had apparently been warned not to attack Independent Democrats leader Patricia De Lille, but had decided not to heed that advice on the basis that he could control the fall-out.

With the ID, the DA went for the jugular for obvious reasons - De Lille has great appeal for so-called liberal voters, who have been turned off by Leon's alleged mating dance with conservative political elements.

The DA even accused the Freedom Front-Plus of splitting the opposition vote.

But it was the NNP's decision to work with the ANC that pushed the DA to new heights of insult and sarcasm.

Leon chose to call one of the key architects of the new South Africa, former President FW de Klerk, a "double-crosser" when the Nobel Peace laureate endorsed the ANC-NNP relationship early in the election campaign.

Then the DA chief whip in the National Assembly, Douglas Gibson, reacted to an NNP statement asking how Leon could attack an icon like De Klerk by saying Leon was in fact the Afrikaner people's icon.

For NNP leader Marthinus van Schalkwyk, the DA had nothing but utter contempt, saying that he (Van Schalkwyk) was all about giving power to the ANC in the Western Cape.

Ironically, the then Democratic Party, under Leon, had little problem with the NNP handing them power in the Western Cape after the 1999 election, when the NNP won 39 percent of the vote, the DP 11 percent and the ANC 42 percent.

In 1999 the DP and the NNP formed the provincial government, leaving the choice of hundreds of thousands of Western Cape residents, the ANC, without one seat in the provincial cabinet.

Post-election 2004 it will not be surprising that in national parliament Leon and his party may find few friends in the ranks of other opposition parties.

It wasn't even as if the DA leader can turn around today and say it was all in the name of politicking - there were personal attacks, so vicious in nature that rightfully other opposition parties will think twice about kindling a friendship.

Within the ranks of the ruling ANC government, it will be easy to paint the DA into a "racist, reactionary" corner.

Leon once again showed scant respect for Mbeki's person or office and it is no secret that the feeling is mutual from Mbeki's side.

What a disappointment for those who voted for the DA that their leader is not even welcome to converse with the president of their country.

On the other hand, Van Schalkwyk's NNP has access to players who are in the inner circle of the ANC executive committee and ID leader Patricia De Lille's kind of opposition is one in which she does not cast a blanket negativity across the ANC.

Even the Freedom Front-Plus is welcome to engage Mbeki's ANC in dialogue.

To add insult to injury, the DA's partner in the Coalition For Change, Mangosuthu Buthelezi's IFP have left the door open for negotiations with the ANC about a coalition government in KwaZulu-Natal.

So, it appears the DA, under Leon at least, is set to be further and further isolated from the mainstream, where decisions affecting all of us are made.

There is perhaps no better time than now for the DA to reflect on its appeal to black voters while it still has a white leader.

Internally the DA is now at a crossroads.

So many party elements which were held together simply by an anti-ANC glue will now jostle for power within the DA.

Getting stronger and stronger is the former Nat lobby and Leon may yet rue the day old PW Botha organisers like Frik van Deventer, Sakkie Pretorius and Ryno King defected to the DA in 2003.

In the Western Cape, the biggest caucus of the DA countrywide, the old Nats like Gerald Morkel and provincial leader Theuns Botha may yet take the view that a black face (and not an air-brushed one as was seen in posters in Gauteng) must be on the next DA posters to hang on lamp posts ahead of elections.

So what is Leon likely to do?

He cannot again create an electoral "peak" like in 2000 when the DA got 21% of the tallied vote nationally during the local government elections.

So how does Leon create an artificial "peak" for his career as a platform for retirement from opposition politics?

He stands back, admits that a large opposition like the one he envisages needs a black leader, and "for the sake of multi-party democracy etc" stands down for someone else.

In the short term that may create the moral high ground "peak" for Leon personally - enabling him to make a graceful exit.

However, this is expected to add nothing to the growth of a new opposition with significant support.

At the end of the day, that opposition will emerge to the left of the ANC and Leon's DA will suffocate in a space where the oxygen is becoming less and less.

    • This article was originally published on page 15 of Saturday Argus on April 17, 2004
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