Port Elizabeth - Mmusi Maimane, the DA’s first black leader, says his party is headed to the Union Buildings – and President Jacob Zuma had better watch out.
“When we leave Port Elizabeth, every step we take will be one step closer to the Union Buildings. We must and we will win power in our lifetime. We will be the next government of this beautiful country,” Maimane told 1 425 cheering DA congress delegates in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro after he was announced as leader on Sunday.
Later, the 34-year-old party boss said the DA would hit the ground running with activists.
“Activists will not just be people handing out pamphlets, they will engage people,” Maimane said, adding that he would introduce his own style.
“We have to take our vision to a new level.”
Earlier, he said the DA needed to communicate its message on its own terms.
“Those who say we are a white party are misleading the country,” said Maimane, pointing out that congress delegates were overwhelmingly black DA members. “The DA is no party for racists.”
Central to the campaign to win the hearts and minds of South African is the freedom, fairness and opportunity values charter adopted at congress. It aims to explain the DA as a non-racial party to South Africans to underscore the country’s largest opposition party was not a niche, largely white haven, as critics like the ruling ANC describe it. “The people who share our values cannot be defined by race or by class. They do not live in a particular part of the country,” Maimane told delegates to cheers.
Understood to have had notched up 88.9 percent of Sunday’s votes, Maimane can comfortably claim an overwhelming victory.
Although the DA congress at the weekend was dominated by tributes and thanks to its former leader, Helen Zille, who will stay on in the DA-governed Western Cape until her second, and legally last, term ends with the 2019 elections – Maimane moved swiftly to set himself up as his own man.
“That I am somebody’s proxy can’t be true,” he said. “If you don’t see I’m black, then you don’t see me at all.”
This would not mean a change of direction for the party, which is more comfortable talking about creating opportunities to redress historically disadvantaged people while rejecting race-based quotas.
Maimane reiterated that DA policies remained focused on a system of social security to protect people from extreme poverty, delivery of quality services, quality education and growing the economy to create jobs. These are outlined in the DA value charter, adopted at the weekend.
Maimane’s election as Zille’s successor ended two weeks of bruising leadership campaigning. Even those not in favour of Maimane credited his team with an energetic campaign.
Defeated rival for the top post, Wilmot James, shook Maimane’s hand on stage after the results were announced.
James later said he would put shoulder to the wheel in Parliament, where he stays on as MP, and in a unified party.
Maimane emphasised party unity: “Whether or not you voted for me, let us unite today behind our shared values,” he told delegates.
Maimane appeared to issue a warning to the DA’s so-called black caucus, even if he did not mention by name Makashule Gana, the unsuccessful party chairman contestant closely linked to this group.
“There is no room in this party for those who seek to divide, or those who mobilise on race,” Maimane said, after describing the leadership contestation and tension as healthy engagement in “robust debate”.
Earlier, former DA leader Tony Leon told congress a new leader must adopt a strategy and tactics to move the movement further and to offer help to taxpayers and businesses under siege.
“He must honour the past, but he must not live in the past,” he said.
The new leader must tell the truth, said Leon, and “hoist aloft Nelson Mandela’s banner of a non-racial South Africa”.
Maimane’s decision to stay on as DA parliamentary leader will placate those in the party opposed to Zille’s decision to be in the government, first as Cape Town mayor after her election to top party post in May 2007 and then, two years later, as Western Cape premier.
However, Maimane said on Sunday there had not been any thought given to a possible rejig of his MPs’ portfolios. Merging the teams of national and parliamentary leader is another priority in his in-tray.
However, a decision already taken is that with the weekend DA congress eyes firmly on next year’s local government elections, he will be taking on fundraising to ensure the party has the money for electioneering. “I want to get my hands fully dirty on this issue,” he said.
Political Bureau