WELL, this is awkward. The announcement by the Democratic Alliance that Mamphela Ramphele will be its presidential candidate seems to have come out of nowhere. That is, it might seem that way if you have been keeping tabs on all the denials that Agang SA has been releasing. One of the most recent came to deny a Sunday Times story that the Agang SA leader was on the blue opposition party’s list of election candidates. BDlive reported, before the announcement, that one of the "secret" positions on the DA elections list was for Ramphele.
A release sent by the party seemed to deny this. "Today, the Sunday Times speculates that our leader is on the Democratic Alliance list of candidates for the election. Ignore this speculation," it said. "In the run-up to the elections, you will read all sorts of suggestions in the media, and there will be rumours everywhere. Do not read any truth into them. The only truth is what we communicate directly to you."
It continues to say Agang makes no secret of communicating with other parties, and that an "extraordinary window of opportunity" has opened after the passing of former president Nelson Mandela (I’m not sure what they’re talking about) and the fracturing of the tripartite alliance.
Was that meant to say that the Sunday Times story was wrong? It wasn’t. Can one generously interpret the statement as nothing more than a vicious dig at the press for getting the scoop before the day of the announcement? That reflects very poorly on the Agang leadership.
I think that someone at Agang must have had an inkling of the extent to which this country’s generally liberal press was ready to fall in love with Ramphele and her new party. It’s like the DA, but without the problematic conservative, National Party bits! It is led by media darling Mamphela Ramphele. Agang hired the strategy team that helped Barack Obama win his first presidential election. It is through no fault of journalists that coverage hasn’t been brilliant. I don’t know why it seems to bear saying, but it does: the party went through a series of missteps and blunders. Agang was bankrupt and spread too thinly before serious electioneering had even started. How did that happen? And in what financial management textbook is such a scenario synonymous with "good management"?
Who can forget that when Ramphele formed the Citizens Movement, she said at the time that she declined to be involved with the DA? "I am not a joiner but a change agent. I have always seen my role as a change agent supporting any appropriate transformative process initiated by any South African," she said.
In A Passion for Freedom, her new autobiography, Ramphele describes why she initially turned the DA down.
She writes: "As I met with young people I heard a refrain: ‘We want to take up the challenge confronting us, we want to be more active and engaged but we do not have the platform. We will not vote for the ANC because of their corrupt, autocratic ways, nor will we vote for the DA because we know they do not understand the transformational challenges facing the country.’
"With these comments foremost in my mind I went back to the DA. I did not believe that the English-speaking white supporters of the DA understood the inequities visited on the majority in the country and the consequences of their perpetuation for the quality of our democracy."
She goes on to say that through discussions she eventually managed to convince the party that the economy does need restructuring, but then thought that the party needed repositioning.
"This problem would not be solved by my presence as leader of that party. My presence would not obliterate the misgivings of the majority of black people," Ramphele writes.
One wonders what has changed in the meantime.
Was Agang being deceptive about Ramphele’s future plans by saying that the media scoops were lies? I have to tell you, the reaction from some Agang people that I know says so. But congratulations to the DA. It got what it wanted all along. It just had to wait for the new party to be brought to its knees before the doctor saw the light.
One hopes that the DA’s vastly more experienced communications team will tell Ramphele that the scrutiny that made her wince at Agang is about to become more focused and intense, now that she’s jumped into a bigger ship. This is the nature of things.
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