Update: Helen Zille is now the Federal Executive Chair of the DA. Mmusi Maimane has resigned as party leader after facing massive pressure from the "Old Progs" wing of the party to do so. Madam has beaten Mmusi for power over the DA.
A battle is brewing over the top positions within the Democratic Alliance, South Africa's official opposition party. The battle lines are rapidly being drawn between Maimane, the current leader of the party, and Helen Zille, the former leader of the party, who is pushing for Maimane to resign and make way for Alan Winde, the Premier of the Western Cape, who some see as a 'compromise candidate'. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-10-04-00-maimane-proposes-early-da-elections
Incumbent leader of the DA and Opposition Leader Mmusi Maimane became the first black leader of the traditionally white liberal party in 2015. Then just 34 years old, Maimane was a fresh face in the DA, replacing the then 64 year old Helen Zille, party leader and Premier of the Western Cape, the only province controlled by the DA, and the only one of the nine provinces not controlled by the ruling African National Congress (ANC). Maimane's youth, energy, and polished delivery couldn't quite cover for a lack of real gravitas of charisma however, and he has dogged by the perception that he is nothing more than a puppet leader, with Zille and other older white leaders pulling the strings behind the scenes. Maimane also frequently seemed unable to enforce discipline within the party, with Opposition Whip John Steenhuisen and other high ranking white members of the party, Mike Waters and Natasha Mazzone, criticising Maimane for saying that South Africans must confront “white privilege and black poverty” in order to bring about the true meaning of freedom. https://citizen.co.za/news/south-africa/1915948/maimane-under-fire-from-senior-da-leaders-over-his-white-privilege-comments/
These criticisms came despite the fact that the white South African minority are still disproportionally better off economically, and black South Africans are still disproportionally worse off economically. According to a 2016 study by Samson Mbewe and Ingrid Woolard, the average black household held only 4% of the average white household, with the average 'Coloured' (mixed race) household owning 6% and the average Indian / Asian South African household owning 47% of the average white household. Put another way, for every 1 rand a held by the average ‘black’ and ‘Coloured’ household, the average ‘white’ household held R22.84 and R16.00 respectively. http://www.opensaldru.uct.ac.za/bitstream/handle/11090/843/2016_185_Saldruwp.pdf?sequence=1 (page 12)
Economic reality aside, Maimane's tenure over the party has hardly been stellar. In 2018 he oversaw the nasty internal battle that saw Cape Town Mayor Patrica "Tannie Pat" de Lille ousted from her post and expelled from the DA. None to happy about her unceremonious removal, "Tannie Pat" went and formed GOOD, a new center-left political popular with Western Cape Coloured voters. The party secured some 3% of the vote in the Western Cape in the 2019 elections, and about 0.4% nationally, enough to give then 2 of the 400 seats in the National Assembly, and 1 of the 72 seats in the Western Cape Provincial Parliament. https://ewn.co.za/2019/05/10/de-lille-grateful-for-all-good-support-after-bitter-divorce-from-da
However, GOOD's success among Western Cape Coloured voters was far from the DA's only issue in the 2019 elections. The DA hemorrhaged white Afrikaner conservatives, voters who had slowly been drifting into the party from 1999 onward, following the decline and eventual collapse of the New National Party (the successor of the National Party, which won power and implemented Apartheid in 1948, and governed South Africa uninterrupted for 46 years until 1994). Seemingly unhappy with the DA's socially progressive and transformation lip service, white Afrikaner conservatives instead flocked to the Vryheidsfront Plus (VF+) / Freedom Front Plus (FF+). All of that might have been fine, had Maimane been able to deliver new black middle class voters to the party, but he didn't. These voters either stayed home, or voted with the ANC under the fairly pro-business President Cyril Ramaphosa.
And so the DA dropped slightly in support in the 2019 elections, slipping from 22.23% to 20.77%, losing 5 seats in the process to drop down to 84 seats. Despite this fairly minimal drop, it was the first time the party had won a lower percentage of the vote share since 1994, ending the party's winning streak. Since then the party has also lost a slew of municipal by-elections, with the ANC picking up most of these seats.
All this still didn't seem to be enough of a reason to get rid of Maimane however, and the DA's leadership insisted he would remain leader. But then, in late September, it came to light that Maimane had been given a car, a white Toyota Fortuner, by Markus Jooste, a DA donor and the controversial former CEO of Steinhoff, who oversaw the collapse in the retail companies stock after the company was investigated for accounting irregularities. Maimane has called allegations that he is still using the car a "smear campaign". https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/national/2019-09-29-steinhoff-car-comes-back-to-haunt-underfire-maimane/
Maimane doesn't deny using the car initially, claiming he used it as leader of the DA to campaign in the Western Cape, but states that some weeks after the Steinhoff scandal broke he returned the car to Steinhoff. The DA's Finance committee chair Dion Geroge has said that Maimane did return the car, and that, in regards to the allegations that Maimane is not paying full market price for the house he and his family are renting in Cape Town, that Maimane is paying rent each month. Maimane has criticised these attacks, suggesting that those within the DA who are "against diversity" and who want to reclaim the "old DA" are behind these attacks. https://ewn.co.za/2019/10/04/da-clears-maimane-of-wrongdoing-over-steinhoff-car-ct-home
Maimane appears to be referring to the likes of former DA leader Tony Leon, who has encouraged him to step down, as well as former party leader Helen Zille, who has been working with the pro-DA Institute of Race Relations (IRR) since her retirement, but who now intents to stand for the vacant Federal Executive chairperson position. https://mg.co.za/article/2019-10-09-old-and-young-face-off-in-da-battle. One of Zille's colleagues at the IRR, Hermann Pretorius, recently called for Maimane to be replaced as party leader by Western Cape Premier Alan Winde, a call which Zille did not contradict or criticise.
Maimane has defiantly refused to step down however, and a potentially nasty internal battle looks set ahead. On the one side sit Maimane and the DA's black caucus, mostly younger and middle aged middle class black South Africans, who are trying to add some calls for gradually addressing racial inequality and other racial issues to the parties centrist capitalist agenda.
On the other side are Zille, Leon, and the old "Progs", older white liberals who protested against Apartheid, but who were avowedly non-violent and who never sought any radical changes. Favouring "Qualified Franchise" (which would have set educational and wealth qualifications to be able to vote) as late as the 1970s, the Progs were hardly the radical Progressives the Apartheid state made them out to be at the time, and were insistent throughout on their support for capitalism, and against any transformative redistribution of wealth.
Caught in the middle are the likes of Alan Winde, who has [openly] declined to challenge Maimane, yet who even now may be positioning himself as the compromise candidate to try hold the fracturing party together, not by inspiring them, but just by not being utterly intolerable to the black caucus, while being exactly the old Progs want.
Herman Mashaba, the Mayor of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city, seems to be siding with Maimane, likening the IRR's influence on the DA to the Gupta family's well documented influence over the ANC during President Jacob Zuma's tenure, thanks to their corrupt dealings with Zuma. Gabriel Crouse of the IRR, has said that Mashaba’s comparison is unfair because unlike the Guptas they were not "stealing money from poor people and funneling it", but that they were simply "injecting ideas into the public domain". https://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/irr-hits-back-at-herman-mashaba-over-out-of-hand-comments-34567140 Mashaba is a controversial figure himself, popular with some for his "rags to riches" story and Libertarian capitalist ideas, unpopular with others for the same reason. He has recently also refused to apologies following a spate of deadly xenophobic attacks in Johannesburg against immigrants, suggesting that the issue is that the ruling ANC is not enforcing border controls strictly enough, allowing illegal immigrants into the country. https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/xenophobic-violence-mashaba-says-he-has-nothing-to-apologise-for-20190918
So what do you think? Will Maimane hold on and tell Zille and Leon to fuck off? Will Zille and Leon oust Maimane and instate Winde in his place? If so will Winde improve the standing of the party? Or will it just entrench the DA's reputation as the "white" party? Or will someone else come out of nowhere and snatch up the dangling position of party leader from the jaws of opportunity? And if so then who? And will they lead the party to victory, or into the gutter?
Possible contenders:
Incumbent leader Mmusi Maimane - 39 years old leader. Popular among black middle class. Lacking in Charisma.
Premier of the Western Cape Alan Winde - 54 years old. Compromise candidate. Remarkably uninteresting.
Opposition Whip John Steenhuisen - 43 years old. Decent orator. Insufferable git.
Former leader Helen Zille - 68 years old. Experienced and tough. Prone to twitter rants about the upsides of colonialism.
Former leader Tony Leon - 62 years old. Experienced. Out of touch and uninteresting.
Johannesburg Mayor Herman Mashaba - 60 years old. Rags to riches story. Xenophobic.
Former Opposition Leader Lindiwe Mazibuko - 39 years old. Talented Harvard graduate. Hasn't been in active politics since 2014.
Personally I'd quite like to see the party fracture in two, with the black caucus either holding onto power and driving the party to become center-left, with the Old Progs going off to form a new center right party for the white middle class and elite, or with the black caucus leaving to form a new centrist party for the black middle class, while the old Progs 'take back' their old party. South Africa's Proportional Representation system would allow both the hold some seats, and it would be good to watch often DA supporters have to clearly pick a side, rather than expressing vague support for the broad centrist mess of conflicting ideas that the party currently is.
