Ten facts about the Democratic Alliance

Here are ten facts about the Democratic Alliance (DA) most people do not know. In this part I list facts 1 to 5. The next post shall have facts 6 to 10. 

1.           The DA is a rightwing party 

It’s unclear when or how it started but the DA’s shift to the right was under the influence of party leader Helen Zille and her appointee, parliamentary leader and part-time pastor Mmusi Maimane. In 2015 already, member of parliament and academic Prof. Wilmot James was concerned about the party’s creeping conservatism. Around then former leader Tony Leon, who’d handed a growing, centre-liberal opposition to Zille, reportedly said there were no liberals left in the DA. Zille’s remarks about race and colonialism cemented the perception, if not fact, she and the party were rightwing.

DA, Zille and then parliamentary leader (now party leader) John Steenhuisen personally were associated with rightwing groups and individuals. The far-right Institute of Race Relations (IRR), its CEO Frans Cronje, members John Kane-Berman and David Bullard and conservative intellectuals like RW Johnson and Politicsweb’s publisher/editor James Myburgh are Zille and DA supporters. They fulsomely praise her and DA especially for its governance in the Western Cape.

Columnist David Bullard, who has a reputation as racial muckraker, was Steenhuisen’s personal guest at the opening of Parliament in 2019. Steenhuisen gave Bullard a gift of Cuban cigars and he reciprocated by treating him and DA guests to dinner.

Two years ago Bullard tweeted offensive, racist comments about blacks, which was part of his ongoing animus against blacks and ANC. He was a columnist on IRR’s online propaganda platform Daily Friend and Politicsweb. Myburgh refused to fire him, stating he’d merely expressed an opinion and free speech. Bullard was unrepentant and Politicsweb’s extremist readers supported him.

Zille, Steenhuisen and DA were silent about the affair. Note a couple years earlier the DA gave Zille a slap on the wrist for her perceived colonialism and apartheid nostalgia.

At Zille’s and Steenhuisen’s invitation, IRR was the DA’s 2019 general election consultants and Bullard appeared at a consultative meeting. After the election and Zille’s two terms as Western Cape premier, she was an IRR fellow until she contested and won the DA executive committee chair. The IRR is affiliated to international rightwing lobby groups. 

2.          The DA are pandemic denialists

South Africa awoke to the Covid-19 pandemic early in 2020 despite it having already spread throughout the world. The ANC government and society were complacent and unconcerned and reacted too late. But once it did, conservative groups and individuals like the ad hoc group Pandemic Data Analysis (PANDA), IRR, Politicsweb’s editor Myburgh and contributors, affiliate online platform BizNews, Allan Gray CEO Andrew Lapping and a variety of business leaders denied and downplayed the threat. Among them was DA, John Steenhuisen and Western Cape premier Alan Winde.

According to WHO, pandemic denialism is denying the pandemic is real and denying or rejecting measures needed to combat it including lockdowns. The rightwing view – to be fair, it’s also the view of business – is economy and profits come before people and lockdowns would “kill more people than the pandemic [sic]”, etc.

With Covid at its height, contrary to expert advice, Steenhuisen, Winde, DA, Myburgh, IRR and other conservatives called for the end to restrictions and to let herd immunity, which is not applicable with a very infectious virus, take effect. So far in South Africa Covid has officially killed over 100 000 but the real figure, based on mortality in the period, is double that; PANDA stated there would be only 20 000 deaths at the most.  Had belated restrictions not been imposed, deaths would have been far higher.

In 2019 Steenhuisen criticised government for imposing restrictions on cattle movement after a foot and mouth outbreak in Limpopo. He said there should be none after making a whistle stop tour of the region and without consulting infectious diseases experts or the farmers’ association which approved the restrictions. Steenhuisen is not a doctor or scientist. He only has a school leaving certificate.

 3.          The DA as climate change denialists 

Conservatives worldwide, among them big business and politicians, believe climate change is a hoax, or a hoax perpetrated by the left; that it’s unproven despite 99 percent of published scientists and scientific organisations believing the evidence to be conclusive, or that it’s part of the Earth’s natural cycle.

However, there are cynics among the right who believe it but for reasons of profit and politics claim they don’t. Like pandemic deniaists did when they jumped queues for vaccinations and Covid-free lockdowns, they have the means and will to secure themselves should the worst happen.

The DA’s political consultants and friends, the IRR and their staff and contributors (Daily Friend, Politicsweb, John Kane-Berman, Ivo Vegter and others), belabour climate change is fake. They preach to their converted and present conspiracies as they did about Covid. They misrepresent and ignore the science then change their approach, or claim they’re not experts and are merely expressing an opinion, when their arguments are shown for the lies they are.

So while the DA officially might hold the universal view climate change is real and caused by human activity, most members’, particularly whites’, personal views would probably accord with conservatives.  

4.          The DA are anti-environment 

The right and extreme leftwing view the environment as a resource to be used. The moderate right         to centre pay lip service to conservation and sustainable development, either looking the other way         or taking the expedient short-term view of resource exploitation.

As a rightwing party, the DA, while paying lip service to environmental conservation, believe it is        second to development and industry and must “pay its way”.

The Western Cape and City of Cape Town DA administrations have a “red-carpet approach to                 development”. Their close, personal association with developers is well-known (reportedly                     developers are party donors). They say development is for the “greater good”. This means good             for developers and city revenues only at the expense of the natural and cultural environments and         citizens. They ignore objections to development, the controversial River Club being the latest high         profile example.

Developers brazenly offer bribes called “development contributions” for the city to approve and            ignore negative consequences, which is a violation of corruption laws.

The Western Cape’s biodiversity too comes second to and is sacrificed for commercial agricultural         interests (see below).

Regarding animals, the DA’s policy is they are “problems” when they come into conflict with                humans and development. This is how the DA-run Cape Town and Western Cape see baboons,             whose habitat along Cape Town’s mountain chain is being eroded by DA-approved urban                     expansion, and the province’s predators including threatened species.

The DA also regard domestic animals – cats and dogs – as “problems”. Their policy and by-law             favours euthanizing strays rather than adoption.

In 2018 the DA was the only party to vote against the Performing Animals Bill. The DA’s                    agriculture representative claimed it was because the bill “did not go far enough” to protect                    animals. That made no sense because, as the ANC said, it was an important step forward. Even            incomplete protection was better than none. The real reason, though, was likely the DA was l               lobbied by the commercial interests, which are major donors, to reject it. The bill passed into law        without them.

 5.     DA serve their backers’ interests – regulatory capture

 In 2011 Premier Helen Zille’s Western Cape administration pressurised and colluded with the independent provincial CapeNature agency to change policy that benefitted farmers who refused to modify cruel and ineffective husbandry methods at the expense of indigenous predators including the threatened Cape leopard. They lied to the public about it.  Their conduct was irregular, unlawful and corrupt; it was regulatory capture.

The DA’s closeness to farming goes beyond wanting to secure this important economic sector. In 2012 at a closed “public” meeting Zille was adamant farmers and farming must be protected. (At a public meeting in 2010 farmers threatened to “take the law into their own hands”. Despite the threat of criminal activity and implied personal threat to Zille and her staff, she and her government acquiesced to demands.)

 DA members including in the Western Cape cabinet are opportunistic refugees from the extinct National Party. They suffered no political or social consequences from once belonging to the party that invented and carried out apartheid. They have personal or family ties to the province’s farming community (Anton Bredell and now retired Theuns Botha). Agriculture is a significant donor of the DA. 

The DA’s protection of farmers included the Western Cape government (WCG) threatening legal action against a non-profit organisation that reported in a study Western Cape farmers treated workers poorly.

 The agri-industry is the DA’s Guptas.

Facts 6 to 10 appears in the next post.