The DA’s election posters in Phoenix have been rightly condemned by political parties, civil society groups and media pundits as everything from tone-deaf to deliberately incendiary.
At best, the placards are dangerously clumsy, claiming moral certainty about complex, bloody events still being untangled, prosecuted and defused by police and activists on the ground.
At worst, they are a cynical dog-whistle aiming to profit off frightened, polarised communities, essentially cashing in on violence that left over 300 people dead in July.
But they are also entirely on brand for a party that is actively and hastily relegating itself to being an inconsequential and isolated group on the periphery of national politics.
When I first saw the picture of the two placards — one reading “The ANC called you racists”, the other “The DA calls you heroes” — I assumed that it was either a photo doctored by political opponents of the DA, or else a bit of deliberate misinformation printed out and tied to a lamppost by someone making a satirical point.
Within hours, however, the DA leadership in the province was defending the campaign, and on Wednesday party leader John Steenhuisen appeared on Newzroom Afrika, looking flustered and profoundly unpresidential, as he tried to explain that his racially polarising placards were the fault of racial polarisation by the ANC.
Many of the criticisms flung at the DA were valid and important.
Some of the shock and outrage, however, revealed persistent self-delusion.
DA voters want a broad coalition to take on the ANC and bring about change. If the DA positions itself as a forever-minority-only party it is going to get klapped.
— Dawie Scholtz
Voters gaslight themselves in a myriad ways, whether they are American evangelicals convincing themselves that Donald Trump is a godly Christian, Leave voters in the UK deciding that Nigel Farage knows what he’s talking about, or EFF disciples telling themselves that a man whose only economic legacy is enabling the bankrupting of Limpopo knows how to run a country.
Often, however, it takes the form not of intensive, focused self-delusion but rather a sort of low-grade disassociation; a general switching off of the senses and faculties for long periods, with the result that voters can arrive at an election in 2021, believing quite honestly that the parties on the ballot are the same ones that appeared in 1994 or 2004.
This is how, for example, ANC voters can believe that voting for Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabal of invertebrates is pretty much the same thing as their parents or grandparents marching with Oliver Tambo or Nelson Mandela.
It’s also how opponents of the ANC can keep being shocked by its sleaze and cynicism. If you have used your eyes and ears, and have seen the ANC die, rot and be ghoulishly reanimated as a crime syndicate, then you cannot be surprised when it behaves like one. If you’re shocked by the ANC, I’m afraid it means you’re not paying attention.
The same now applies to the DA.
The people expressing shock that the DA is abandoning the high road and hunting for small, local wins, have, I suspect, refused to see what has been happening since at least 2019, when the party dumped Mmusi Maimane and abandoned its aspirations of becoming a national government.
Phoenix wasn’t a mistake or an aberration. Those placards were a clear and conscious memorandum of intent. The old DA, whatever its merits or sins, is dead. The new DA is here, and it is telling us what it is, loudly and without pretence.
As for who’s listening, well, perhaps election guru Dawie Scholtz said it best on Twitter: “DA voters want a broad coalition to take on the ANC and bring about change. If the DA positions itself as a forever-minority-only party it is going to get klapped.”
Of course, klaps are relative. The DA still delivers services and transparency better than the ANC, at least in wealthier municipalities. Many people will hold their nose and vote DA simply because the alternatives are too ghastly to imagine.
But the klap is coming. And when it does, it will be entirely self-administered.
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