Ethnodemocracy Pt 3: Splintering minorities

Why you should never turn your back on your base

As the previous posts in this series have shown (pt.1; pt. 2), the DA’s base is splintering. Much of this has to do with the Coalition Effect, but equally, the voters have a greater number of alternatives from which to choose. Dissatisfaction with ANC government has reached a fever pitch, as people fear the total collapse of the country, and the DA’s failure to offer any meaningful challenge or tangible solutions has made a lot of people nervous enough to gamble with alternatives.

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Ebony ceiling, again

The DA’s real woes began with the advent of Mmusi Maimane. Noticing that the party had negligible black support, certain managerial elites in the party, namely Ryan Coetzee and Tony Leon, aimed to transform the party base into a real universal platform to rival the ANC.

This didn’t go all that well, as their after-action report indicates:

As a result of what they initially observed, they thought cornering the black vote would be essential. Instead, it proved to be fruitless, since the ANC were offering more largess and more credible ethnic loyalty than the DA ever could, and most black people saw Maimane as a puppet, or as the Americanised black middle-class put it, a house negro.

As a result, the party both failed to gain a new base, and pissed off their existing one. The lean towards accommodating BEE policies and championing more agressive wealth redistribution got them the reputation for being “ANC-lite”. But the voters saw little alternative at first.

But the arrival of Cape independence, largely put on the map by Phil Craig at the CIAG, and Des Palm at CapeXit, has changed the scope of the sort of solutions the public are willing to entertain.

Several radical left-liberal policies, such as the WC Education Department reforms to include transgenderism in the curriculum, as well as foisting anti-white blood libel on students in the form of CRT lectures for highschoolers, has alienated the conservative base.

Arrogance, indifference, nepotism and common/garden corruption has also alienated regular folk, particularly Afrikaners and Coloureds, who have started to shop around for alternatives, usually a combination of local parties (municipal-level) and ethnocentric parties (VF+, CCC, PA, GOOD). The ACDP has also expanded their Christian base, as has Al-Jamaah their Muslim following.

The trouble with this, is that no common messaging exists that can reverse the decline of national-minority-ethnic support in the Cape; the only such brand with this potential is Cape independence, but many voters are still too afraid of the ANC taking over to try any alternative party, so the splintering remains at the edges.

Yet clipping the edges of a coin are enough to devalue the specie. In Gauteng, it is Action SA who is debasing their currency, drawing black liberals and disgruntled Anglos into a surprisingly effective (yet clumsy) political machine, tackling issues the Liberal DA wouldn’t touch, like illegal immigration.

The DA has only a 53% majority in the Cape, down from around 2/3rd at their height. The next election could see them forced into a coalition government, of a sort their leadership would abhor.

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Talking right

The last year or so has seen a rapid shift to more conservative signalling, and greater political activity. The DA have placed an active and talented young mayor in charge of Cape Town, who for once is using his legal advisors as weapons of efficiency, rather than as risk avoidance councillors.

As a consequence, the city is seeing greater efforts to gain control of policing, transport and other services, and with the appointment of serious conservationists, have finally gotten round to dealing with the issue of sewage polluting the bay ecosystem.

Alan Winde has pushed for electrical projects, to wean the province off of dependence on Eskom, which is welcome, but rather late in the day, and unlikely to resolve existing issues soon.

The national party have also gotten serious about nonracialism, and have even grown some apparent testicles where opposing BEE and affirmative action are concerned, going as far as to encourage people to disregard the relevant laws. Commentary focuses on how quotas have completely banned some minorities entirely from employment in several provinces:

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Cape of Hard Cope

But much of this is an effort to contain the Cape independence movement.

Around 2/3rds of their base support secession, but the leadership is radically opposed to it - this creates a conundrum, because they can neither openly oppose efforts for increasing autonomy, nor can they wholeheartedly embrace them without losing a great deal of their ethnic base at a national level through secession.

This is why they have finally made moves to appear like they care about their manifesto.

Nonracialism and federalism have been on the manifesto for decades, but have mostly remained items they promise they’ll maybe begin thinking about trying to implement only when they get a national majority (“trust us”). Now they have to prove independence isn't necessary by "doing something".

After trying to woo black voters by offering them token black leadership, BEE-lite and massive handouts, they realised that not only do black people not care, these policies were now eating away at their base. Also they got too comfortable, and service quality declined somewhat.

But being obviously better than the ANC, having no real Coloured competition, and comfortable with the liberal stigma against Afrikaners (think VF+), they have defaulted to arrogant dismissal of criticism. But with the PA and VF+ eating their base, they had to pivot.

Trouble with this pivot is that how it has played out lacks conviction, and most of it is for show. The latest federalism bill was written to try and neutralise arguments for the Peoples Bill, which would have exploited existing treaty conditions to extract powers of govt.

The DA bill (WC Provincial Powers Bill) is a polite request from the national govt for more powers, but with no teeth or means to extract those powers. It provides an excuse for not voting for the question of national identity that the Peoples Bill raise, but those questionsare the price:

In order to take advantage of the several treaties signed by the ANC government in the 1990s which pertain to recognition of autonomy for subnational peoples, the Western Cape must declare themselves a separate people. But the DA, being firm liberal-universalists, detest this idea.

They claim the Cape is too diverse - of course, South Africa is much more diverse, and has much less in common, than the Cape, and so their argument sort of falls flat under the lightest of scrutiny.

Worst part is, their latest effort at containment doesn't actually avoid what it aims to avoid. By pushing on greater autonomy, even fruitlessly, the DA are providing a greater momentum to demands for independence, and making it look more likely, building confidence in the idea.

They could end up in a situation where they have delayed the necessary groundwork for independence, while stoking support for it. This is a recipe for deeper social divisions, and also for electoral threats from the (until now) rather fractured independence movement.

The WC Provincial Powers Bill is actually a great bit of legislation, provided it is passed in combination with the Peoples Bill - The PB grants the legal authority to claim back the powers the WCPPB can only politely ask for. But WCPPB makes seeking new powers mandatory.

That is why the CIAG actually supports the bill: On their own, each bill does rather little, but together, they are essentially a self-perpetuating chemical process that will leach power from Pretoria like aqua regia.

Both bills will be tabled shortly, the DA pushing the one, and the VF+ pushing the other. The Provincial Parliament would be well-advised to vote yes to both.

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Caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

The main threat coming for them is that behind the scenes, the independence movement, which has been split in several directions, is beginning to get behind a common strategy. This could mean a massive change.

The DA stands a chance of losing their majority in the province in 2024, and who gets the coalition position depends on a few things. The DA cant make it work with Gayton Mackenzie - he's far too shrewd, too conservative, and too corrupt.

He supports all the things the Coloured population crave - law and order (including the death penalty), massive infrastructural investment, conservative religious values, and ethnic self-confidence. Having had no meaningful political representation since the unification of South Africa, Coloured people are slow to trust, but eager to express themselves.

The PA has managed to become a powerful kingmaker in many hung districts, and even taken over Beaufort West, with mixed results.

If the the independence movement (CIAG, CIP, VF+, CCC, CapeXit, Langeberg Unemployed Forum) unites, they could easily take 10% of the vote. They have organisations for each major ethnic base, and with 800k supporters on their database, CapeXit becomes a tailored PR machine. This consolidation was impossible before, because there was beef between a few of them over petty issues, but there has been serious negotiation recently for forming a common strategy.

If the 2024 elections go as I predict, the DA will have to choose between holding a referendum, and governing with Gayton MacKenzie.

Alternatively, they could unite with the ANC and shut all opposition and criticism out to turn SA into an effective one-party state, where no accountability will ever be possible, and the only outlet for frustrations will be violence.