Know the real DA Over the last few weeks, the Democratic Alliance has been running a peculiar and rather confusing campaign called “Know Your DA”. This campaign, which has gone viral on social networks especially, focuses on educating people about the role that the DA supposedly played in fighting Apartheid. Citing the involvement of former member and anti-Apartheid activist, the late Helen Suzman, the DA uses the campaign to emphasize its role in the anti-Apartheid struggle.This is a confusing approach, for two glaringly obvious reasons. For starters, the role that the DA played in the anti-Apartheid struggle is largely exaggerated in this campaign. Apart from the involvement of Helen Suzman, the DA can barely list a handful of other names that they can claim fought Apartheid under the banner of the Progressive Federal Party that Suzman was a member of during Apartheid. Perhaps the Democratic Alliance crafted this campaign with the hope that South Africans have amnesia; that we have forgotten that the DA was formed as a result of the merger between the Whites-only Progressive Federal Party (which later became the DP) and the National Party, the very custodian of Apartheid. Secondly, and more importantly, the DA’s desire to associate itself with the Apartheid struggle is irritating and somewhat pointless, considering that the African National Congress has used the same strategy to emotionally blackmail South Africans into voting for the ANC on the grounds of it being the “liberation movement”. It is the latter reason that perhaps the DA overlooked in the conception phase of this campaign. What is this obsession with Apartheid about? Over the last decade, the ANC has used its Apartheid struggle credentials to garner support from people when things were not going too well. It has become the trump card that is played when people start questioning the way forward. When people start pointing out the flaws of the ANC, they are very quickly reminded that the ANC fought Apartheid. People have gradually grown tired of all this “We fought Apartheid” talk. You fought Apartheid, so what? The people must now, in their eternal gratitude, overlook your wrongs? Two decades into democracy, a party can’t be still badgering people about its Apartheid struggle credentials. Why then is the DA so hell bent on convincing us that it was instrumental in fighting Apartheid?Do people actually care whether or not the DA fought Apartheid? Are people not more concerned with what the DA, or any party for that matter, is offering right now? I would much rather know what better life a party is promising me as an ordinary South African, than its nostalgia over some flimsy role it may or may have not played in fighting Apartheid. What the DA doesn’t realise is that people of this country are tired of being bragged to about struggle credentials, rather than being served by their government. The ANC has already done a sterling job at using Apartheid nostalgia to try and blind the people to the current rot, so to see the DA fighting so hard to associate itself with the anti-Apartheid struggle is disappointing for those who are tired of that and actually want good policies and the promise of a better South Africa. The DA top brass always emphasizes how different a party to the ANC they are, but this campaign is glaringly similar the ANC’s much loved use of Apartheid to gain an advantage.Maybe people do want to know the DA, but not its barely factual distortion of the history of South Africa. Rather than manipulating the facts of history and investing effort into trying to be a pseudo liberation movement, the DA should focus on getting people to know what to expect from the DA. That is the DA people want to know. Apartheid history is well documented; South Africans know who was involved in the anti-Apartheid struggle and who wasn’t, so there is really no point is this attempt to jump the “We fought Apartheid” bandwagon and giving us a history lesson we don’t need.Word of advice: It is widely known that Helen Suzman ”fought” Apartheid while working for the Apartheid government, and refused to fight the system away from the comfort and pleasures of White advantage, in contrast to the likes of Joe Slovo and other White anti-Apartheid activists who went the whole way. She is not exactly the most celebrated anti-Apartheid activist. It would have been better to find someone else to use as the face of this campaign to begin with. Please take South Africans more seriously and give us a useful campaign.
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 13:35:42 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015