Zille–De Lille marriage may just work

Patricia de Lille, leader of the soon-to-be-defunct Independent Democrats, is the big prize – if not the only one – for the Democratic Alliance (DA) in the merger of the two parties. She is the best reason the merger may work instead of going the way of all such mergers in opposition politics in South Africa over the past 15 years.

De Lille is personally a political brand of substance. This principled and seasoned political fighter almost single-handedly, among other things uncovered the massive corruption that took place in South Africa’s first major post-apartheid arms deal. Doggedly digging at it until the entire rotten can of worms bust open, she was many a politician’s worst nightmare. Her exposure of the corruption directly or indirectly led to Schabir Shaik and Tony Yengeni going to prison, and Jacob Zuma almost not becoming president.

The arms deal scandal was perhaps De Lille's rock-star moment and her critics may say she was a one-hit wonder. But what she is perhaps less known for is her almost folk hero-like popularity among the downtrodden and the have-nots whose causes she has championed tirelessly on a variety of fronts – particularly those of neglected and abused women and children in far-flung rural communities.

In this area, she has personal experience, such as her own teenage pregnancy which she says brought about early maturity and responsibilities, as well as the pain of the rape and murder of her sister.

De Lille has been and remains involved in a great number of areas of civic life, for example children's issues, anti-corruption, HIV/Aids, the Mandela Children’s Fund and more, but her single greatest passion, she says, is to “make the Constitution a living document, and ensure that we claim the rights therein”.

She is fearlessly outspoken. In a previous interview, she told us: “If speaking the truth is controversial, then so be it. I will not say things to appease anyone. Instead, it is speaking truth to power that will set us free.”

De Lille’s political career has come a long way, starting in the trade union movement, then in the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) before much later founding the ID. But she says it is not her personal politics that has changed over the years, but rather the political scenario in South Africa when, in 1994, the struggle was moved from an ideological struggle to a practical constitutional struggle at parliamentary level.

De Lille says she entered politics via the trade union movement, which had assumed the role of the banned liberation movements. It further offered her the unique option of fighting both apartheid and shop-floor issues.

She says she chose the pan-Africanist route – through the National Council of Trade Unions (Nactu) and the PAC – because Robert Sobukwe, the founder leader of the PAC, believed in non-racialism, while the ANC practised multi-racialism. But she eventually left that party “because they were stuck in liberation politics and failed to adapt to the new style of politics. The PAC of today is not the PAC of Sobukwe.”

It is also her mission, De Lille says, to ensure “that the fruits of our new democracy are not only tasted by a few elite leaders, but also by the people that were responsible for bringing down apartheid. We have political freedom, but the struggle continues for economic freedom.”

Growing the economy to provide for the needs of all is one of the greatest challenges, she believes.

And at political level, De Lille says there is a lack of principled leadership which can take forward the vision and the values of the liberation struggle that was fought. Many leaders have either forgotten what the struggle was fought for, or simply do not care, she says.

Meanwhile, most of the failures of previous political mergers and new formations in South African opposition politics may be attributed to the fact that the leaders involved were ego driven instead of cause driven. The best example is the current dog-eat-dog fight for the throne of the ill-fated Congress of the People (Cope).

De Lille, on the other hand, seems quite content to take a back seat to the DA’s rather dominating national leader, Helen Zille. That she certainly is not driven by ego and personal interest is quite clear from Zille’s revelation that De Lille turned down an offer to make her Western Cape premier if her party would have joined forces with the DA in the previous general election. Zille recalls that De Lille said at the time that there was not going to be any deal around getting her a position.

In this respect, the test for the merger will rather revolve around some of the lesser office bearers of the ID and whether they will be happy with the spoils of merging that will come their way. It remains to be seen whether the DA is truly merging with the ID, or whether it is not simply trying to swallow the ID as it tried to do in its disastrous merger with the erstwhile New National Party (NNP) of Marthinus van Schalkwyk, which eventually ran and was swallowed instead by the ANC.

De Lille is fully aware of the dangers, though, and as she said this weekend in her press statement: "Our democracy is unfortunately littered with failed projects of this kind." The test now will be to successfully marry their different memberships, political cultures and different personalities.

The first test, whether this merger finally provides South African voters with something of a viable alternative to the ANC, will be next year’s local government elections.

The DA in its own right has recently been making inroads into the black voter base in the townships, as the results of recent municipal by-elections show. It has been evident from the location and attendance of recent DA political meetings. But the ID has done less well at this level, both in respect of attracting black votes and in respect of winning by-elections.

Apart from the De Lille brand, as a party the ID does not bring much to the table other than perhaps a relatively sound grassroots structure in the Northern Cape, the heartland of its support.

While the DA grew its slice of voter support from 12.37% in 2004 to 16.7% in last year’s general election, the ID lost ground from its 1.73% in 2004 to 0.92% last year.

The ID will not bring much, if anything, by way of black voter support to the DA, while the DA does not need the ID to strengthen its coloured support.

So the only real gain will be De Lille who, it seems, may become the DA’s new leader in the Northern Cape. Other than that, whether this merger will make any real big impact on the South African political scene is doubtful.