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The DA belongs to the liberal tradition in South African politics which was represented during the apartheid era by the Progressive Party (later to become the Progressive Federal Party (PFP) in 1977). From 1961 to 1974 the Progressive Party’s only presence in parliament was that robust defender of human rights, Helen Suzman (Giliomee, 2009). The PFP became the Democratic Party (DP) in 1989, following an amalgamation with other liberal parties and splinter groups, and participated in the multiparty talks of the early 1990s which brought apartheid to an end. During these years, the liberal voice was audible if not powerful, yet its presence should not be overlooked as a persistent parliamentary critic of apartheid.

In post-apartheid South Africa, the DP formed an alliance with the New National

Party (NNP) in 2000 and became the DA. The NNP was the National Party (NP) of the

apartheid era; the addition of ‘new’ in 1997 was an attempt to dispense with its racist history. The NNP later cut its links with the DA and formed a new alliance with the ANC (with which it had served in the Government of National Unity (GNU) between 1994 and 1996) in 2004. This, however, was not disadvantageous to the DA whose support has steadily increased. If we consider that in the first democratic elections of 1994 the DP’s seven seats were swamped by the NP’s eighty-two, the party can be seen to have made major progress. In one sense, the 2009 result confirms that the DA, as the vanguard of parliamentary opposition, is numerically less strong than was the NP in 1994. But unlike the NP/NNP which was constrained as an opposition party by virtue of its involvement in the GNU (De Klerk, 1999) the DA was more adversarial in its approach. Certainly, by 2009, after a prognosis following the country’s second democratic election that the ‘DA now stands to become the home of the majority of whites, coloureds and Indians’ (Southall, 2001: 277), it was evident that both the white and coloured community of the Western Cape regarded the DA to be their party. But it is worth noting that the DA has not attracted the same level of support from the coloured community in the Northern Cape, a significant regional variation which will be touched upon below.

When apartheid ended and the parties that had traditionally received the support of white voters had to find their way in the new political dispensation it was not immediately evident what the DA’s political trajectory would be. Former leader of the DA, Tony Leon, acknowledges that when democracy arrived in 1994 the liberal tradition in South Africa lacked orientation: ‘South African liberalism entered the post-apartheid era with a sense of disorientation … under apartheid [it] didn’t really need a map. It was anti-apartheid; it opposed the National Party’s authoritarian state and the tyranny that upheld it’ (Leon, 2006: 38). But Leon himself sent out highly ambiguous messages. On the one hand, after he assumed the party leadership following the first democratic election in 1994 he initially appeared more concerned about attracting support from other traditionally ‘white’ parties (notably the NNP) than about expanding the party’s appeal to black voters; on the other hand, while claiming that ‘redressing the imbalances of the past’ was one of the two most important challenges facing South Africa (the other was achieving sustainable growth), he vigorously attacked what he termed the ANC’s ‘race-based’ policies without putting in place a serious alternative whereby historic redress might be achieved, save by referring to the necessity of creating an ‘opportunity society’ and expanding opportunities for all (Leon, 2008: 501). Meanwhile, the party’s slogan for the 1999 election campaign, ‘Fight Back’, might well have proved effective in rallying the white vote but it was far too easily parodied by its critics as sending out the message to its supporters to ‘Fight Black’, and could also be presented as a coded appeal to coloured and Indian voters on the grounds that they were not really ‘black enough’ to qualify for affirmative action under the ANC.

The foundation of vocal opposition politics that Leon had laid is one that the current party leader, Helen Zille, has sought to build upon – albeit with a different vision. Although their personalities may be dissimilar, it is possible to observe in the two leaders’ different styles a significant shift, away from perceived racial exclusivity and towards more vigorous attempts to embrace racial inclusivity. This complements the DA’s contemporary position and strategic needs. Leon’s straightforward aggression in the pursuit of strengthening party opposition is no longer the main priority; instead, Zille appears to argue that what is now called for is a pragmatic politics that can cater for the practical needs of ordinary South Africans. Furthermore, as the ruling party within the Western Cape at provincial level, the DA profiles itself as a future party of national government – in coalition form or not.

The protection of individual liberty, which constitutes the core value of liberalism, was embedded in the globally applauded new constitutions of 1994 and 1996. Hence, the fundamental pursuit of the liberal creed – the defence of individual rights – seemed to be secured and, further, the arrival of democracy suggested that the ethnic and racial politics that had defined apartheid South Africa might now become a thing of the past. Hopes were high that South Africa was well on its way to becoming a ‘normal’ democratic society. Yet, as Giliomee (2009) warns, and of which students of deeply divided societies are well aware, majoritarian democracy is problematic in societies with long histories of ethnic and racial division. We thus need to explore what the case of the DA suggests about race, ethnicity and identity in post-apartheid politics in the country more generally.

It is important, when investigating the reasons for a party’s success, to consider the quality of its political competition. A first challenge for the DA was the battle for the white Afrikaans-speaking vote, this competition coming from the Freedom Front Plus (FF+). In 2005, when the NNP, after polling a staggeringly poor 1.7 per cent of the vote in the 2004 elections, opted to disband itself, the Afrikaner constituency had the option of voting for other parties. The parties most likely to appeal were the DA and the FF+. The latter satisfies the criteria laid down by Donald Horowitz (1985) for an ethnic party; thus in its stated ideological defence of Afrikaner interests it might have had wide appeal. But widespread support for the FF+ has not materialised. The most distinguishable policy of the FF+ is its call for an Afrikaner Volkstaat, which, although scaled down somewhat in recent years, still forms part of party policy (Southern, 2008). The party’s policy prioritises ethnicity over race (demonstrating the limitations of a shared whiteness) and not only does it lack appeal for English-speaking whites but, more significantly, it has failed to gain the support of the vast majority of Afrikaners. As noted by DA MP James Lorimer (private communication to Southern, 25 May 2010), the majority of Afrikaners saw their political future within the confines of the new South Africa and not in the unrealistic aspiration of independent nationhood. There has been a de-emphasis on race within Afrikanerdom – at least in terms of political identity – which has allowed Afrikaners to vote for the DA with its non racial message. Afrikaner voters would also seem to vote DA because to do otherwise would place them at the margins of South African political life.

The unrealistic ethnoterritorial policy ambitions of the FF+ provided the DA with the opportunity to address two key issues. First, there was the requirement that the party should focus on winning the support of South Africa’s ethnic minority groups. Second, the party needed a new method of operating vis-à-vis the ANC. Tony Leon opted for a confrontational style.

Regarding the first of these, Eddy Maloka (2001: 233) was to argue that by the 1999 elections the then DP’s ideological restructuring had assumed a thoroughly racial dimension. According to him, ‘the DP repositioned itself by opting for a route that led to the abandonment of its liberal ideology’ and had come to project itself as a representative of white minority interests. However, in contrast to Maloka’s questionable judgement, the DP can be seen to have adopted a strategy which sought support among the country’s racial minorities. Indeed, commenting on the success of the DP in the 1999 elections, Davis (2004) points to the party bonding with coloured, Indian and white voters. For Davis, the common denominator of these ethnic groups was their minority position and the fact that each harboured fears of being excluded in a country that showed signs of increasing Africanisation, for by 1999, the interethnic and interracial reconciliatory priorities which had marked Mandela’s presidency had given way to the transformation objectives of Thabo Mbeki (Lodge, 2002). Mbeki’s racially defined two-nation concept of South Africa led the ANC to emphasise the need for affirmative-action policies and push forward the principle of black economic empowerment. Thus the 1999 elections can be interpreted as a demonstration of the DP’s growing capacity to achieve cross-racial appeal, albeit overwhelmingly across racial minorities rather than among the African majority.

Leon gave DP politics an aggressive tone. As noted above, this was most evident in the party’s controversial choice of the ‘Fight Back’ slogan that it used to spearhead its campaign in 1999. Leon (2008: 495–510) argues it was a slogan that was designed to encapsulate the DP’s no-nonsense approach to opposition politics. For many, however, this slogan was out of kilter with the reconciliatory needs of the country. Only the year before, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had presented its report following a truth-searching process that revealed the pain and suffering caused by apartheid. Indeed, Deegan (2001: 183–184) comments that in the DP’s attempt to win the coloured vote in the Western Cape in 1999 it ‘played on racial scaremongering’ and that in order to attract the NNP’s Afrikaner constituency the DP had shifted to the right. In contrast, the DP argued that its intention was to link together minority groups who felt alienated. As Louw (2000: 219) suggests: ‘Through its “Fight Back” campaign the DP in effect became a de facto “minority front”, representing non-blacks alienated by the ANC’s black nationalist discourse.’

The central message of the DP in 1999 was uncomplicated: ethnic minority concerns needed to be adequately addressed and it was only by bringing minorities under the political administration of a single party that groups’ interests could be effectively safeguarded. By default, the fragmentation and fracture of opposition parties which the results of the 1994 elections confirmed was a contributing factor to ANC dominance (Southall, 1998). Indeed, at one level, the ‘Fight Back’ slogan can be interpreted as an attempt to counteract any tendency by minority groups to withdraw from politics and, as Lanegran (2001) argues, it worked to attract racial minorities who felt threatened. Additionally, other concerns such as a soaring crime rate, the problematic situation of white farmers and land ownership in Zimbabwe, and the disenchantment many whites felt concerning employment equity undoubtedly made the DP’s (and DA’s) determination to play political hardball with the ANC an electorally attractive option.

The gains that the DA has made since 1999 can be viewed as a mark of the party’s success in marketing itself to a sizeable portion of the country’s minority groups. But simply appealing to minority groups can be conceived of as being strategically self-limiting as no party can afford to alienate majority African support. In the next two sections we will explore how the DA has gone about altering its image to the intended end that all South Africans will be able to identify with it yet how certain realities make the achievement of further electoral progress difficult.