ANC veteran Joel Netshitenzhe has dismissed the DA’s moonshot pact to oust the governing party after next year’s national and provincial elections as an attempt to prevent the official opposition from losing more votes.
According to Netshitenzhe, who is the executive director of the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection, the DA has had mixed fortunes in recent polls and in 2021 its overall support decreased by about five percentage points compared with 2016, while in the Western Cape, where it governs, it declined by about nine percentage points.
“It can be argued that the moonshot pact is a creative solution to the existential crisis the DA has had to manage in recent years: how to approach issues of racial redress, haemorrhaging support among white Afrikaner and coloured communities, and the departure of senior black leaders,” he explained in the latest edition of the weekly newsletter ANC Today.
Several black leaders have left the DA over the past few years including Mmusi Maimane, Lindiwe Mazibuko, Herman Mashaba, Mbali Ntuli, Makashule Gana and Bongani Baloyi.
Netshitenzhe said the DA’s crisis boils down to how the party defines liberalism in a society as unequal as South Africa, especially with its racial fault lines.
“Faced with this dilemma, the DA seems to have settled on defending its right flank and fishing from a smaller pond by consolidating white support, which had remained solid at 90% in this community.
“The coalition pact allows it to have its cake and eat it, by pursuing this approach while drawing partners to pad vulnerable flanks and sue for national office,” he said.
Netshitenzhe said that besides the DA’s mobilisation in the white community and among supportive media analysts, all manner of “apolitical” platforms such as country clubs and golf estate community forums are being marshalled to ensure the success of its moonshot pact.
He said there was concern about the official opposition’s socio-economic policies as they are attached to the promotion of wholesale privatisation of state assets, antipathy towards black economic empowerment and maybe in favour of cheap labour through an overly flexible labour market despite the country’s challenges of poverty and inequality, which were defined largely by race and gender.
“On the whole, the DA seems to believe in an unbridled free market, with increased social grants and cash transfers thrown in as a sop.
“Insulting references to ‘tribal chiefs’, ‘tribal boundaries’ and ‘tribal subjects’ in sections of its policy documents do underline, to borrow a phrase, the party’s attitude of mind,” Netshitenzhe said.
Next month, the DA along with the IFP, FF+, ActionSA, National Freedom Party, United Independent Movement and Spectrum National Party will hold their national convention which is planning “a government without the ANC, the EFF and their proxies” after the 2024 elections.
DA leader John Steenhuisen said the party’s internal polling showed that the opposition parties that have come together in the moonshot pact already have 48% of the vote in Gauteng.
He said the moonshot pact parties already have 35% of the national vote and 52% of the vote in KwaZulu-Natal.