DA’s young Brink takes Tshwane reins

Finally, Pretoria has a mayor. After all the juvenile politics that preceded it, the election of former DA MP Cilliers Brink this week will come as a relief to residents, including the entire diplomatic corps in SA, who must have begun to think they were living in a depraved municipal version of the space-time continuum.

The DA has been running the country’s political capital since 2016 as the leader of a series of coalitions, but it has not done a good job. The city is a mess. Its last mayor was filmed instructing officials to award a multibillion-rand power contract without a tender. The ANC and EFF almost managed to wedge their own patsy in the mayor’s office a few weeks ago.

Brink will have his work cut out, especially in a chamber where votes are bought and sold, but he has a working majority. He is also straight out of the centre of the DA, just 35 years old and is not only a leader for the future but a Pretoria boy to boot.

I don’t know much about Pretoria, though every time I go there the hair on the back of my neck rises because it still reeks of the SA I grew up in under the National Party and apartheid. The Unisa building still, to me, epitomises the ethnic triumphalism of the time.

No doubt though, Brink will have time this weekend to attend the DA federal congress just down the road at Gallagher Estate in Midrand. There are leadership elections.

Sort of. No-one is opposing Helen

Zille’s bid for another term as DA federal chair, its CEO, and federal leader John Steenhuisen faces only a weak challenge from former Johannesburg mayor Mpho Phalatse.

That both will easily hold onto their old offices is a pity. Zille is arguably the best political organiser in the country. Running a political party here is enormously complex and her experience is vital in the DA. But she has also become something of a political burden as her personal politics have clearly moved rightwards.

Steenhuisen is harder to characterise. A fill-in after Mmusi Maimane resigned in the wake of poor results in 2019, he was subsequently confirmed in the job but has never been as good a party leader as he was its chief whip. The DA needs a statesman or woman, a visionary, at its head.

But to get that done the old guard needs to stand aside and, like all politicians everywhere, now is not quite the right time. Instead, the DA has been losing young leaders and is lost in a policy wilderness. If there were no incompetent, corrupt ANC bouncing up in front of it like a crazed punch bag, the DA would have to reinvent itself.

Which is what it should do anyway this very weekend. I hope delegates insist their leader stands before them and tells them exactly what he would do on Monday if he were running the country. Accept only a straight answer. The party’s current economic “policy”, for want of a better word, is literally the text of the UN’s 17 sustainable development goals.

They’re all very worthy but that there are 17 of them is the problem. We suffer now from a government that has convinced itself that it needs to solve every problem at the same time, and the result is that nothing gets solved. The DA needs to get serious.

Pick one thing and fix it in your first five years. Delegates should make their leaders choose. It’s a test. Pick a priority above all others. What would it be? No DA leader should be able to speak without complete mastery of the core principles of a liberal market economy, even a German-style social-market economy the DA said it supported three years ago when it adopted the UN goals.

We are so deep in the poop here you can see why politicians try to omni-promise their way to power. But for the DA the choice should be easy. Whoever occupies the political centre in SA wins, but the DA is quietly walking away from the centre, fighting for FF+ votes here, picking fights with the woke left there. Why fight on the fringes?

It leaves the ANC effortlessly occupying the middle, where the votes are. There the ANC sells a

THE FORMER MP STRAIGHT OUT OF THE CENTRE OF THE PARTY IS JUST 35 YEARS OLD, AND NOT ONLY A LEADER FOR THE FUTURE BUT A TSHWANE BOY TO BOOT

ZILLE HAS ALSO BECOME SOMETHING OF A POLITICAL BURDEN AS HER PERSONAL POLITICS HAVE CLEARLY MOVED RIGHTWARDS.

twisted socialism. To combat it the DA needs to show the poor how capital can erase poverty, how enterprise can put food on the table, and how centralised regulation and control suffocates you in your shack every bit as much as it does a wealthy man in his mansion.

The argument to win is economic, not moral. Assume the poor are listening. Take the ANC on at its core promise — that it can deliver a better life. Fight for the market economy against the ANC’s state-centred catastrophe. Show people how they can take control of their own lives.

The UN sustainable development goals won’t help you do that. What’s needed is a DA that sells a fresh economic alternative to ANC policies that have brought us to the very edge of ruin. Corruption isn’t the main problem here; it’s policies. The way to beat them is with better ones.