The following speech was delivered by Dr. Wilmot James, following his election as DA Federal Chairperson. He succeeds Joe Seremane:

To Joe Seremane, my predecessor and mentor in courage and grace, determination and urbanity, trustworthiness and politeness, for showing me how to disagree without being disagreeable.

To my colleagues for thinking that I am a worthy incumbent of the party's Chairpersonship, thank you very much.

I am of a surprising candidate, at least to some. I come from a political environment steeped in the traditions of the Non-European Unity Movement. Before joining the Democratic Alliance (DA) in August 2008, I took out membership of only one other organization, the black consciousness South African Student Organisation (SASO).

Let me therefore explain: the DA today is the only political party that has a critical mass of individuals that think and worry about justice, the thread that runs through my personal political background, diverse as it is.

I have had my fair share of injustice. My family was removed not once but twice under the group areas system. I spent an eminently forgettable 4 days in the Bellville Police Station in early August 1976 and three thankfully brief weeks at Victor Verster Prison in preventative security detention. My generation knows first-hand what it meant to have little rule of law, unconstrained government and pliant judges lacking in backbone. Our current national government is returning to some of those past very bad habits.

We are rightly obsessed about having quality education. We live by the maxim that young people are entitled to be taught the most modern view of our place in the universe. Quality education requires unrelenting, consistent and cumulative attention to the detail of planning. Education is essential for a people's self-confidence. The ANC has wasted 16 years fiddling with our nation's future with its misguided experimentation.

We have with a clear philosophy: open opportunities for all. It is a fancy way of saying that everyone should have a fighting chance in life. Standing in the way of opportunities is all manner of group thinking, including nationalism, ethnic chauvinism, sexism and racism. We celebrate diversity as an asset and not as a barrier to the advancement of some and not others. Group selfishness suffocates individual talent, impoverishes our culture, limits our growth and retards progress.

The ANC is without moorings and has no direction for our country. Many worked on reforming the ANC - some still do. It is waste of time. The only way in which our country can breathe again - as we did during the World Cup - is if another political party replaces the ANC as government.

The DA can do that. We are only ones who can. It will take time and we are in it for the long haul. It will be tough but exciting, as there are many opportunities coming up to test our resolve. We are not naïve. Anyone who thinks this will be easy and quick, think again.  Grit your teeth my friends.

Changes in the party are needed. A ground level political programme for branch members needs to be worked out. We need to fashion a real home for everybody. We need to immerse ourselves in helping to solve problems of everyday life. We must gear our party administration to make this possible. With a new slate of leaders fashioned in the full and rich diversity of our country we must reach out to voters on scale.

Staying ahead of the game is vital: think about how quickly once innovative products in sound delivery were replaced in quick succession. The cassette tape replaced the 8-track, only to be replaced in turn by the compact disc, which was itself undercut by the iPOD and MP3 players. We could well be the compact disc that replaced the ANC cassette (which replaced the National Party 8-track) and we should be sufficiently swift on our feet to become the iPOD of modern South Africa politics.

Now that we govern we are no longer simply a party that leads the opposition. Our political lives have therefore become much more nuanced. A party capable of governing and leading with its own ideas and programme of action, having clearly recognizable, easily identifiable measures, create the enabling environment upon which citizens may erect and scaffold a quality of life never imagined before, a degree of freedom and measure of civic peace that have eluded us until now.

Issued by the Democratic Alliance, July 25 2010

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