The tumultuous political events of the last few weeks have been good for South Africa. Mosiuoa Lekota's criticism of the ANC in a letter to its leadership and the suggestion that he will lead a breakaway party show that we will not go the way of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. More and more South Africans are waking up to the power abuse of the ANC's ruling cabal and saying: enough!
Just as importantly, the racial mudslinging that has dominated our political discourse for so long appears to be subsiding. A new debate is emerging over values, policies and principles. That a politician of Lekota's stature has openly expressed views about the ANC that the DA has long espoused is an encouraging sign that our democracy is maturing.
But every silver lining has a cloud. In an interview with the Sunday Times, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that if an election were held the next day, he would be "sufficiently unhappy [with the ANC] not to vote". In the same breath, he lamented the lack - in his view - of "a viable opposition... one that gives the impression that it could become an alternative government".
An editorial in the same newspaper endorsed Tutu's sentiments, noting that: "There are many South Africans who agree with him". Ironically, this was the same newspaper that a week previously had published an opinion poll that showed the ANC and the DA to be "neck and neck" among people with landline telephones in urban areas. Clearly, there are many South Africans who do believe there is a viable alternative to the ANC and are prepared to vote for it.
It is not often that I disagree with Archbishop Tutu, but his comments earlier this week, it has to be said, were both reckless and misguided. I also cannot agree with the view expressed in a number of newspaper editorials that Tutu, by expressing his intention to opt out of voting, showed leadership. If every South African who is disillusioned with the ANC adopted Tutu's view on voting, we would live in a one party state; a state whose office-bearers become increasingly corrupt and drunk with absolute power. It should also occur to someone as insightful as Archbishop Desmond Tutu that the approach he advocates is precisely what undermines the capacity of opposition parties to become alternative governments.
If he does not vote, Archbishop Tutu will serve to entrench and prolong the very set of conditions - the slide into one-partyism - that he bemoans. As a strong critic of Mugabe's misrule in Zimbabwe, Archbishop Tutu should know that. So it is bizarre that he should adopt an approach to voting that would inevitably lead to the Zanufication of South African politics.
There is, of course, a very clear policy choice for South Africans. It is between the DA's open opportunity-driven society for all and the ANC's closed, patronage-driven society for some. This is a concise summary of the policy options that have either led to progress or decline in countries for centuries. Clear policy alternatives for South Africans have never been more available, or more stark.
The DA has kept alive the idea of political opposition since 1994; we have put the idea into practice; and we have managed to persuade a growing number of voters of the grave danger of concentrating too much power in one centre, and of the importance of holding a ruling party to account. Everything we have warned about for over a decade is now apparent to most South Africans.
Furthermore, we have also managed to win elections, against great odds, and become an alternative government in some significant places, including the City of Cape Town. Where we govern, we are working day and night to reverse the legacy of ANC corruption and cronyism, to implement our policy proposals and show that they make a difference in the lives of all the people (not just the inner circle of the politicians in power). We are making progress step by step.
So why don't we say more about the DA's policies? And why don't we make our policies more accessible to more people? These are questions people ask me every day. They were put to me a week ago by a Sunday Times journalist. Ironically, his own newspaper provided the answer in the same edition that carried the interviews with Archbishop Tutu and me.
The newspaper's satirical columnist "Hogarth" reported that the Sunday Times had received an invitation from the DA to the launch of a video designed to make some of our policies on job-creation more accessible to people who are not economists. The columnist then smugly announced that the newspaper had chosen to give the event a miss.
A few days after Hogarth's column appeared, the DA launched its revised education policy in Parliament. Predictably, the Sunday Times did not send a reporter. The Sunday Times is, of course, free to make its own choices about what it wishes to publish. But it does not do much for the newspaper's already battered credibility to make editorial comments about the lack of available "alternatives" when it resolutely refuses to listen to them. That is the kind of denialism for which newspapers regularly criticise politicians.
The Sunday Times is not alone in this. It is interesting how many political journalists have not taken the trouble to familiarise themselves with the DA's raft of accessible policy documents on every challenge facing South Africa. And it is generally they who assert that there is no viable alternative to the ANC.
This is because their analysis is not based on policies, values or principles at all. It is based solely on the stereotype propagated by the ANC that the DA is a party led by a white person in the interests of whites. Proceeding from that premise, they conclude that the DA is not a viable alternative to the ANC, and it is a waste of time to read or report on our policies.
Yet it is a fact that our leadership is more diverse than the ANC's, which is completely uni-racial. Our membership and support base are far more non-racial than the ANC's. In fact in his most recent political opinion survey, Professor Lawrence Schlemmer has concluded that the DA is the most multi-racial party South Africa has ever had.
The notion that a party is "white" simply because it has a white leader is outmoded and obsolete. If one were to apply this logic to American politics, the Democrats would be classified as a black party, with no prospect of governing simply because Barack Obama is their presidential candidate.
Fortunately, our supporters, members and public representatives - black and white - do not share Archbishop Tutu's views on voting. They know that democracy is about real choice and that the choice in South Africa is not between voting for the ANC and not voting at all. It is between the closed, patronage society of the ANC and the DA's vision of an open, opportunity society.
Our goal is to free South Africans from the shackles of race politics, and to convince people to participate on the basis of values, policies and principles. If we can do this, South Africa will become a consolidated democracy in which substantive policy issues - rather than racial identities - shape political debate, and in which the ruling party can be peacefully dislodged from power at the polls, because their policies have failed the people.
Our task is made harder by opinion makers who resort to facile assertions about the absence of a credible opposition, or who characterise opposition parties on the basis of their leaders' skin colour. It is certainly not helped by those who preach non-participation in the democratic process.
Archbishop Tutu has agreed to meet me to discuss the comments he made to the Sunday Times, and I look forward to putting the case I have made here to him personally. I aim to convince him that if he wants South Africa to be a thriving constitutional democracy, and if he wants to see a revival of the Rainbow Nation (a term he coined), then he must do two things. He must not only reject the ANC in the 2009 election, but he must also familiarise himself with the DA's policies and then make an informed choice on how to vote.
This article by Helen Zille first appeared in SA Today, the weekly online newsletter of the leader of the Democratic Alliance, October 10 2008
