The ink had hardly dried on the headlines that Patricia Kopane had become the latest prominent black DA leader to jump ship and speculation was rife as to who would be next.
The news of the party’s former Free State provincial leader’s departure came just weeks after another high-profile DA member, Gauteng MPL Makashule Gana, announced his exit.
Predictably, the two departures have fuelled the narrative of what Sunday World termed, in a recent headline, Blaxit — the mass exodus of black leaders from the DA.
Almost every story on the subject would go on to list the names of well-known political figures who have left the party recently: former MP Phumzile van Damme, Mbali Ntuli who unsuccessfully contested for the party leadership against John Steenhuisen, former Midvaal mayor and DA rising star Bongani Baloyi, Abel Tau in Tshwane ... The list goes on.
Though stated reasons for their departures vary, and they have not all left the DA for the same political home, each resignation is seen as further evidence that the DA is no longer a welcoming home for its black leaders and, presumably, voters.
“The truth,” said Kopane this week, “is that I no longer believe that the DA is the political vehicle that I joined in 2003”. She went on to add she does “not feel that I belong in the DA or that I have the space to make the political contributions to my country”.
What is often never explained in such resignation statements by the departing politicians is the timing of their action. For instance, did Kopane get this sense of alienation only recently or was her mind already made up that she was leaving the party in, say, 2020 when she declined to be re-elected as the DA’s Free State leader?
The DA went through a seismic change in 2019 when its then leader Mmusi Maimane quit and its Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba left to form his own political party. There was clearly a lot of unhappiness within the party ranks — especially among black leaders, judging by what many of them said in private at the time, about the new direction the DA seemed to be taking under new leader John Steenhuisen.
But there were no mass resignations. There should have been if those who were unhappy were driven by principle and high values.
Could it be that many of the disaffected MPs, MPLs and other public representatives decided to stay put to keep their parliamentary and local council seats — and all the benefits and privileges that came with those — knowing quite well that their hearts were no longer with the party?
Are they leaving now because the grass looks much greener on the other side after the November 2021 local government elections than it did in 2018?
Are they leaving now because the grass looks much greener on the other side after the November 2021 local government elections than it did in 2018?
The prospects must have looked pretty bleak then for any MP who might have “no longer felt at home” in the DA soon after Maimane’s abrupt departure. Leaving would have meant resigning from parliament, and there were still four years to go before the next election.
But now not only are the 2024 elections around the corner, new political ventures such as ActionSA and Maimane’s One SA Movement have a realistic chance of securing decent numbers of seats in the next parliament. Options abound for the disaffected politicians.
Realpolitik, some say, dictates that you don’t jump ship — no matter how disagreeable you may find it to be — unless you know you will land in a comfortable position on the other side.
As the voting public, however, the question is whether we can entrust our future to politicians who are willing to eschew principle in return for a parliamentary seat, even when they no longer feel part of the political party they represent.
How different are they, really, from President Cyril Ramaphosa and the other ANC politicians we criticise for staying on in then president Jacob Zuma’s executive even when they found themselves in disagreement with what he and his Gupta friends were doing?
While it is true that the South African political landscape is changing and that, as a result, some will outgrow their political homes and find new ones, we should be suspicious of those who do so only when it is convenient for them.
So when the next prominent leader announces that they too are leaving, the question should be: Why only now?
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