‘Apartheid’ campaign scrapped
DA rejects internal proposal
THE DA has scuttled an idea floated by its Western Cape leader, Ivan Meyer, to equate the ANC to the apartheid Nationalist government, saying the proposal had “no standing” in the party and would not be part of any election campaign.
“We are perplexed as to why this is a story in a newspaper,” said the party’s communications executive director, Gavin Davis.
He said the proposal had been made in a presentation to an internal Western Cape DA meeting and “that is all”.
While each provincial election campaign would have a “unique character” informed by the context of the province, they would “complement the national campaign architecture”.
Davis was responding to a report in the Sunday Argus that the “draft electioneering proposals” had included an image of the ANC logo with the party’s black, green and gold colours replaced by the orange, white and blue of the old South African flag.
Another idea was to juxtapose photographs of police shooting miners at Marikana last year with those of the Sharpeville massacre, when apartheid police killed 69 protesters in 1960.
Other DA provincial leaders distanced themselves from the proposals.
Meyer’s spokeswoman, Liza Albrecht, said yesterday while she was not privy to the proposals, they were “by no means” part of the official strategy.
Meyer had pitched them at an internal meeting and they were still under consideration.
The party’s official provincial campaign would be launched on May 25, after further consultation.
Meanwhile, DA leader Helen Zille upped the ante in the party’s battle for the historical moral high ground, saying the ANC had not always been “the only, or even the most important” opponent of apartheid and segregation, and claimed ANC leader Albert Luthuli had shared the party’s values.
This was “Part 2” of the “Know Your DA campaign” in which the party has sought to highlight its role in opposing apartheid.
The campaign pamphlet, featuring a picture of Helen Suzman and Nelson Mandela embracing, has infuriated the ANC, which accused the opposition party of “desperate propaganda” in trying to appropriate Mandela.
Zille said in her SA Today newsletter yesterday she frequently encountered would-be supporters who asked if the DA wanted to bring back apartheid.
“It is at times like these that I realise the extent to which we have allowed our opponents to define us and impose their version of our history on South Africa’s political narrative,” Zille said.
This was the motive for the campaign.
The ANC wanted to “own” the struggle against apartheid and was “quick to downplay, deny, and even appropriate the contributions of those outside its fold”.
“South Africans need to know that the ANC did not always provide the only, or even the most important, opposition to segregation and apartheid. It was eclipsed by the Industrial and Commercial Union in the 1920s; the All African Convention in the mid-1930s; the Pan Africanist Congress in the early 1960s; the Black Consciousness Movement in the 1970s; and the United Democratic Front (UDF) in the 1980s,” Zille said.
Current DA leaders like
liberal Patricia de Lille, Joe Seremane and Wilmot James had been members of some of these organisations and this was part of the DA story.
The “golden thread” around which the party’s “tapestry” had been woven was the vision of “an open opportunity society for all”.
These liberal values stretched back 200 years to early campaigners for racial equality. They even had a “long, strong and honourable history within the ANC”.
Then ANC president Luthuli had expressed the same values when he said: “I personally believe that here in South Africa, with all our diversities of colour and race, we will show the world a new pattern of democracy… We can build a homogenous South Africa on the basis not of colour, but of human values.”
ANC spokesman, Jackson Mthembu, said the DA was “shifting” to Luthuli after failing to appropriate Mandela.
This ignored the fact that Luthuli had been ANC president when it took the decision to launch the armed struggle, something Suzman had opposed.
The ANC had never denied the role of the organisations mentioned by Zille, though it had provided leadership of the struggle.
Though there were aspects of liberalism that found expression in the ANC, attempts to “divorce” Mandela and Luthuli from the entirety of the ANC, including the armed struggle, were selective.
If the DA wanted to adopt them, it would also have to claim the armed struggle.
People in the townships would not be fooled, he said.
Davis said it was “complete nonsense” that the participation of DA forerunner the Progressive Party in the apartheid parliament had served to lend it democratic legitimacy.
“Helen Suzman and others used that platform to tell the world the truth about apartheid. In doing so, they helped destroy the legitimacy of the apartheid government,” he said.