It is also not true that Maimane has been liberalism’s best ever black representative – there have been a number of very able black liberals such as Jordan Ngubane, Albert Luthuli or, more recently, Gwen Ngwenya. Indeed, the problem about Maimane was precisely that he wasn’t much of a liberal.
He had voted ANC in 1999 and 2004 and was quite happy with Mbeki, despite the fact that the latter’s Aids denialism cost the lives of some 365,000 black people. In 2009 he voted for COPE.
So it wasn’t until 2014 that he voted DA nationally. Three weeks later he became the party’s parliamentary leader, a quite absurd promotion. He was an incongruous leader, vocally rejecting the theory of evolution and thus the whole Enlightenment tradition, arguing for demographic representivity and for making race central to the DA’s notion of social justice. Given this and the DA’s espousal of affirmative action and BEE, it is hardly surprising that the party attracted the sobriquet of “ANC lite”.
This was, of course, in line with the DA’s naive pursuit of identity politics which saw the party repeatedly confer power and responsibility on people with either no, or very shallow, roots in the party – Lindiwe Mazibuko, Mamphela Ramphaele, Patricia de Lille, Herman Mashaba and other iterations at provincial level. Some black voices have been raised saying that the DA set these leaders up to fail.
This is very largely accurate for politics is like any other career, requiring a good deal of hard work, perseverance, learning from toil at the coal face and from an unending study of history, political biography and economics. If people – of whatever race - are jumped virtually from nowhere into leadership positions without any of this behind them, they are virtually certain to fail.
Amazingly, the DA leadership went so overboard for identity politics that it assumed all this lacking experience and knowledge could be compensated for simply by having the “right” skin colour. Contrary to what Harvey says, the DA was utterly steeped in the politics of race.
In all the cases above this led not just to disaster but on every occasion that disaster duly occurred the nominee in question turned round and, with considerable bitterness, played the race card against the party which had given them their political career. Maimane, in his resignation speech, did this yet again, as had Mashaba, de Lille and Mazibuko. Such behaviour would have been unthinkable if he and the others named above had been truly committed to the liberal project or had been in the party long enough to grow deep roots in it. And that is really the key.
The DA certainly wants and needs black, Coloured and Indian leaders but it has to grow them organically, allowing them to win their spurs over a period of time just like their white compatriots. Accelerated promotion is a road to disaster.
Maimane’s resignation was in every way a curious affair. How could he not know that to appear next to Mashaba as he denounced the DA, not only calling Mashaba a “hero” but holding his fist aloft like a boxing champion – would at best seem inept, at worst treacherous?
Similarly, whenever the issue of his Steinhoff car and his rented house came up, Maimane insisted that this was all an attempted smear by his enemies. Yet he never attempted any answer to the questions of “why did you say the house belonged to you when it didn’t?” and “why did you keep driving that car for many months after its potentially fraudulent source was revealed?”
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