With a general election about six months away, it’s late in the day to form a new political movement and register a new political party. But that’s what former FirstRand chair and former Aveng and Primedia CEO Roger Jardine plans to do today.
Jardine could have chaired FirstRand until April 2027 so he is walking away from a good gig. And for what? To go straight into a rough election campaign that will demand he puts on some lipstick and pulls his skirt way up in what will be a relentless and uncouth public brawl.
Why would anyone do that to themselves? I don’t know Jardine but he grew up in or close to Eldorado Park in Johannesburg, a rough neighbourhood these days. His dad was prominent in the United Democratic Front, the movement that finally depleted apartheid’s resolve. And, like any reasonable South African, he must be thoroughly disillusioned by what has happened to our country.
In the hands of a once-revered ANC we have become a debt-ridden, corrupt, ignorant and economically fragile also-ran. We could have been a contender. Jardine, who I believe is going to call his movement Change Starts Now, must think we still can be one.
And so must the small group of financiers behind him, though their war chest is probably a lot smaller than the R1bn often reported. They want to get him into position to become the next president of South Africa. But how is it to be done? He cannot simply be parachuted into parliament, and only an MP can be elected president.
The wise FF+ chief whip Corné Mulder remembers Louis Luyt starting a new party, the Federal Alliance, and contesting the 1999 election. With just over 0.5% of the vote, he won two seats and got practically no speaking time.
The only way with so little time left would be for Jardine to align himself with the multiparty charter (MPC), the love-child of DA leader John Steenhuisen’s call in April for a “moonshot pact” — an agreement between opposition parties to fight the elections as separate entities that would form a coalition government if the ANC fell below 50%.
There are two problems with this. First, current polling may have the ANC failing to win a simple majority today, but six months is a lifetime in politics. In 2019 the actual ANC vote was considerably higher than polling indicated in late 2018. Second, when news of Jardine’s contact with the DA was reported in this newspaper last weekend, MPC members put out a miffed statement suggesting they would have nothing to do with a candidate imposed on them.
They insist on fighting the elections as individual parties and they are suspicious of the role of business in liberal politics. Some recall Harry Oppenheimer’s hand in persuading a senior Anglo American colleague, Zach de Beer, to become leader of the Progressive Federal Party, a forebear to the DA.
And while Jardine may well register a party there is absolutely no chance, given the funding behind him, that he would oppose the DA in an election. So the idea must be to somehow gain a side-entry into the DA, to reform it and reposition it.
Put him up against Cyril Ramaphosa. You’d think, given the state of the country, this would be as close to clubbing seals as you’d want to get
But the response of the smaller parties in the MPC means they may spend the next six months fighting each other. And while Mulder is right to suggest business needs to cross its own Rubicon and trust the collective political wisdom of existing parties, it is probably fair to suggest the opposition also has a Rubicon to cross; to stop fighting over broadly the same votes.
The moment now may demand much bigger of them. Imagine the resources that would flow if the parties agreed, now, before the elections, to welcome Jardine into the MPC and to nominate him informally as their joint presidential candidate and to create, now, a joint logo to use on all their campaign material so that it would appear next to each party leader’s picture on the final ballot paper.
I know we don’t have a presidential system here but that doesn’t mean we can’t run a presidential campaign. Put Jardine on all the posters. From the get-go put him up against Cyril Ramaphosa. You’d think, given the state of the country, the ANC’s experienced election machine notwithstanding, this would be as close to clubbing seals as you’d humanely want to get.
But look, this is just me. And I’ve been wrong before.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.