What are we to make of the DA-sponsored Multiparty Charter, whose sole raison d’etre is to remove the ANC from the political power the party won fair and square in a legitimate and democratically electoral process in 1994?
The DA wants power. By hook or by crook. But it knows in size it is pocket-size, a dwarf. But it also knows it has not shed its past racist tendencies; it also knows its federal council, which is its highest internal governance structure, is white-dominated and controlled.
As things stand, and if everything remains the same, people who look like John Steenhuisen in the DA will remain at the helm, and black members will always, by design, remain on the periphery, mainly as voting cattle.
The DA is obsessed with one thing, and one thing only, to unseat the ANC, an organisation that has, with other liberation formations, unshackled the chains of oppression for millions of black people.
Whatever we do and think of the ANC, we dare not miss the point that the ANC and other liberation organisations such as the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania and the Azanian People’s Organisation, played a pivotal role to free black South Africans from oppression and apartheid.
The DA is a small party with slightly more than 20% of the national vote. To democratically win an election, and to form a government, parties require 50% plus 1.
The DA does not have the capacity or the numbers to democratically run the country, and so, like a magician, seeks to resort to a sleight of hand tactic to win.
The Multiparty Charter of South Africa, a brainchild of the DA, has cobbled up an assortment of strange bedfellows which include the IFP, Freedom Front Plus, Action SA, and United Independent Movement), among others, as a strategy to take political power.
But the charter has a curious name among its members. Ever heard of Spectrum National Party? Does this not take you back to the heady apartheid years? We cannot forget that the National Party dehumanised black people and dispossessed them of their land.
The DA not only wants to remove the ANC from power, they think black people have no right to form a government. Having said that, the party of Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo must look at itself in the mirror and ask: would Madiba and Tambo be happy with the unending wrangles that dominate their party, even as millions of South Africans continue to show great affinity towards the ANC? This can only mean the party must seriously retrace its steps back to where the ancestors of this organisation would want it to be.
In the final analysis, we must surmise that the newly formed Steenhuisen-led charter has nothing fresh to offer South Africans. The Verwoerdian spectre looms – the reincarnation of the National Party is a worrying thought.
Democracy demands parties to fight elections not driven by hatred of other parties, but rather by selling policies and strategies to create a better life and equality for all. The new formation spearheaded by Steenhuisen does not hold any aces to achieve that objective.
Follow @SundayWorldZA on Twitter and @sundayworldza on Instagram, or like our Facebook Page, Sunday World, by clicking here for the latest breaking news in South Africa.
