Campaign Diary - Week 6: KZN Tour with Helen Zille: "Take a look at the new DA"

With six weeks remaining until the 18 May Municipal Election, the Democratic Alliance (DA) campaign kicked into a higher gear this week, with the party's national leadership, mayoral candidates and activists fanning out across the country to carry our message of an alternative government for all the people to every corner of South Africa.

KwaZulu-Natal Tour

Helen Zille began her journey on the campaign trail in KwaZulu-Natal, addressing public meetings and visiting communities in areas as diverse as Durban North, Verulam, Mpophomeni and Howick.

At a public meeting held at Howick Prep School - in which some of the audience members were veteran activists who had formed part of the Progressive Federal Party, the Democratic Party and then the DA - Helen Zille asked those in the hall who had been founding members of the PFP, and had embraced the political vision of icons like Helen Suzman at a time when it was difficult and unpopular to do so, to please stand up.

Once they had all been greeted by a warm round of applause, she then asked these members to take a look around the hall "...at the new Democratic Alliance." It was a poignant moment: older, English-speaking men and women who were well into their retirement, mingling with diverse groups of young DA activists from every conceivable background - black, white, Indian and coloured South Africans from all over KwaZulu-Natal - all of them having come together that evening to advance the cause of the open, opportunity society for all, and bring the DA's message of good, transparent government to the people of uMngeni municipality.

The battle against political intolerance

A very different, but equally seminal moment in the campaign took place earlier on the same day, when we visited Mpophomeni, just outside Howick - a community in which, as is the case in so many areas of this hotly contested province, campaigning for a political party other than the ANC was, until very recently, a life-threatening activity. In fact, it is only in the past couple of years that we have managed safely to establish an active branch there without this significantly endangering the lives of our activists.

So it was less than surprising when, at the very start of Helen Zille and KZN Provincial Leader, Sizwe Mchunu's door-to-door visit in Mpophomeni, ANC activists began emerging from side streets in the area in an attempt to discourage us from continuing our activities.

But what started out as a co-ordinated act of intimidation quickly dissipated into a friendlier encounter when activists from both the DA and the ANC decided instead to try to out-sing and out-dance one another.

Although the tension between the two parties was palpable, we were told by local activists that this "dance-off" was a far cry from the violent intimidation which in the past has characterised the ANC's engagement with the DA in the area.

South Africans often separate the celebration of our young democracy from what should be its dividends, including freedom of association and freedom from political intimidation. It is accepted that in certain parts of the country - particularly in KwaZulu-Natal - political parties hold sway by threatening the lives of voters should they switch allegiances.

We may bemoan these circumstances and hold regular debates about the "issue" of political violence, but less time is spent thinking about how fundamentally this strips the value from our democratic dispensation, and robs our people of their most basic rights.

The truth is that, like poverty, political intolerance cheapens our hard-won freedom, and makes a mockery of any attempts to build a true multi-party democracy in South Africa.

And while the persistence, continued growth and increasing diversity of the DA have contributed to a decline in political violence in Mpophomeni, the same cannot be said of Ulundi, KwaNongoma and others in the province, which are regularly referred to as "no-go areas".

The DA will nevertheless continue working hard to entrench a culture of political tolerance and electoral fair play in every corner of South Africa by never succumbing to the notion that any part of this country is a "no-go" area for the party.

Unless we work hard to rid our political landscape of the scourge of political intolerance, the celebration of South Africa's liberation can only ring hollow for millions of voters who are, as a consequence, denied their democratic rights.

Statement issued by Lindiwe Mazibuko MP, DA National Spokesperson, April 10 2011

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