The DA Has An Ideology Problem

The issue, then, is not the DA’s ideology. The issue is how deeply the party alienates itself from its own beliefs.

Photo by Hansjörg Keller on Unsplash

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has an ideology problem. And no, the problem isn’t its own ideology. At least, not on paper. While many in the intellectually bankrupt intelligentsia paint the DA’s liberalism as some covert desire to return to Apartheid, this could not be further from the truth.

In general, you would be hard pressed to find a truly problematic policy or principle in the DA’s official documents. It is DA members who usually lead the charge against reckless legislation in parliament, and DA members who show the strongest grasp of economics, institutional design and policy implementation.

Liberalism is not the bogeyman

For the uninitiated, it is worth explaining why liberalism is not the sinister ideology its critics pretend it to be. Liberalism is the belief that human beings should be free: free to speak, to trade, to associate, to move, to build, to worship and to disagree. It places the individual before the state and insists that the purpose of government is not to engineer society from above, but to secure the rights of the people who live within it.

Liberalism is not a creed of chaos or greed. It is an acknowledgement that free individuals pursuing their own aspirations, cooperating voluntarily, and being held accountable by markets and law, create more prosperity and harmony than any central planner ever could. The irony, of course, is that the very academics and journalists who sneer at liberalism depend on its principles. Their freedom to critique power, to publish, to dissent and to earn private incomes exists because liberal societies tolerate them.

South Africa’s constitutional settlement is liberal. The dream of a post-Apartheid nation free from racial supremacy, dictatorship, corruption and political violence is liberal. In all frankness, the DA is a far more faithful ideological heir to Nelson Mandela’s vision than the ANC has been for decades.

The problem: The DA hides its liberalism

The issue, then, is not the DA’s ideology. The issue is how deeply the party alienates itself from its own beliefs. On paper, the DA is a liberal party. In practice, it treats liberalism like an embarrassment. Before negotiations even begin, the DA compromises on its principles, often without being asked.

Many in the DA justify this through the language of “pragmatism.” They insist that ideology has no place in governance, that metros and municipalities must be run as technocratic machines, and that the Government of National Unity (GNU) must be navigated as a delicate administrative arrangement lest the ANC embrace the much-feared Doomsday Coalition of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and MK Party.

But this is a spectacular misunderstanding of what ideology does. Ideology informs governance. It tells a government what it exists to accomplish, what trade-offs are tolerable, and which battles are necessary for the long-term health of society.

The DA’s best-run metros are not successful because they abandoned liberalism, but because they unconsciously practice it. They are stringent about corruption, sceptical of absolutism, and broadly respectful of taxpayers and constituents. In other words, they govern as liberals. The problem is that they are often too embarrassed to say so.

South Africa does not need managers; it needs liberty

South Africa is not simply suffering a crisis of technical capacity; it is suffering a crisis of ideas. The state has become a tool for patronage, populism and plunder because no major political force has insisted that government exists to protect citizens’ freedoms, not to distribute loot among political factions. Without a principled framework, “good governance” collapses into shallow managerialism: paving roads while ignoring the political rot that ensures those roads will fail again.

This is where the DA consistently fails. Not in policy documents, but in posture. Every time the party could articulate a clear liberal alternative to ANC hegemony, it ducks the confrontation. Instead of ideological clarity, it offers bureaucratic humility. Instead of staking positions, it apologises for existing.

The GNU debacle

The Government of National Unity is the most recent example. Rather than using its kingmaker position to demand ideological concessions that would break the ANC’s patronage culture, the DA meekly accepted its own marginalisation. It clings to the optics of “cooperation,” while ANC ministers continue to run departments like personal fiefdoms.

While the media may laud President Cyril Ramaphosa for winning cheap brownie points by alienating US President Donald Trump, DA leader John Steenhuisen is not accomplishing anything for his party by throwing in his support for the president effectively torpedoing our relations with the world superpower.

The fundamental principle of the DA’s role in the GNU should have been to ask what demands it could make of the ANC to advance liberalism and prosperity in South Africa and demand concessions.

Instead, the DA acted like it was lucky simply to be allowed into the palace. Even if it was only there to sweep the floors.

Governing as liberals, not tenants

Where the DA governs, it should govern as if the Constitution empowers it. Because it does. Liberal governance is a right, not a favour granted by Luthuli House. The party should stop asking permission from an incompetent and corrupt national government to implement policies that protect residents’ freedoms, property and lives.

If national legislation strangles municipalities with regulations that deter investment, the DA should contest it openly and aggressively. If state monopolies fail to deliver energy, water or infrastructure, the DA should act unilaterally to pursue procurement, private partnerships, municipal distribution and decentralised generation. Liberalism does not wait for the permission of central planners. It proceeds on the conviction that citizens deserve working institutions regardless of who occupies the Union Buildings.

This is not “rebellion.” It is governance. The DA often acts like a tenant in South Africa’s political house, afraid to disturb the landlord. It is not a tenant. It is a co-owner. The Constitution grants wide municipal and provincial autonomy precisely because national government cannot be trusted with every lever of public life. Where the DA governs, it must govern boldly.

One encouraging sign is the DA’s firmer stance against Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (BEE). But it remains to be seen if the DA will stake all its political capital on eliminating what may be the most disastrous piece of legislation in the country.

The Trojan horses inside

The rot extends inward as well. When ANC and other party defectors, opportunists and failed cadres crawl into DA ranks, the party welcomes them with open arms, often without ideological vetting. This is not magnanimity; it is negligence. A liberal party cannot serve as a rehabilitation clinic for politicians whose careers are defined by anti-liberal governance, state capture, or racial clientelism. Defectors who do not embrace liberalism are Trojan horses. They carry the very diseases the DA claims to cure.

A party rooted in liberal values should be discerning about who it allows into its caucuses and councils. Its greatest threats do not come from its enemies in parliament, but from saboteurs within its own structures.

This extends to the DA’s past obsession with appointing illiberal, if admittedly charismatic, officials to positions of prominence. Lindiwe Mazibuko did not belong in the DA. She was a disgruntled ANC supporter at heart and under her tenure the DA lost much of its soul. This was extended into the Mmusi Maimane era. And while Maimane is not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination, liberalism is an afterthought for him as he falls for the allure of cheap votes by becoming a “competent” version of the ANC.

The DA must not sacrifice its soul to become a big-tent party.

Stop apologising for the only ideology that works

The tragedy is that the DA defends the correct ideology but does so apologetically. Liberalism is not something to euphemise, soften or bury beneath technocratic clichés. It is something to declare proudly. South Africans do not need a party that whispers its principles like a confession. They need a party willing to say clearly:

We believe in individual freedom, constitutionalism, open markets, limited government and equality before the law. And we will govern accordingly.

Until the DA embraces liberalism wholeheartedly, without fear or apology, it will remain what it is today: a competent caretaker of failing institutions, not the architect of a free and prosperous South Africa.

Nicholas Woode-Smith is the Managing Editor of the Rational Standard and a senior associate of the Free Market Foundation. He writes in his personal capacity.