South Africa and the Need for a Liberal Party

2019 Liberty Lecture An Imperfect Fit? South Africa and the Need for a Liberal Party Tony Leon * Hosted by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation with the Institute of Race Relations in Cape Town on 30 July 2019 and in Johannesburg on 1 August 2019 1 Thank you for this invitation to deliver the 2019 Liberty lecture, on a subject close to my heart and sponsored by two organisations with whom I collaborated closely during over 25 years in South African politics and whose work adds both rigour and worth to the public debate in this country. To summarize my conclusion upfront on the topic posed in the title to this lecture: I think the need for a liberal party – armed with courage, clarity, self-confidence, vision, and purpose – is needed now, at this time of demoralisation and peril in our country, more than ever. In this regard, although not political parties, the sponsors of tonight’s lecture have been at the forefront of advancing liberalism in this country for a long time indeed. The SA Institute of Race Relations has been at the helm of critical engagement in South Africa since its founding ninety years ago, in 1929. May it continue to practise the ‘long obedience’. That phrase, incidentally, was first brought to my attention by my predecessor as Leader of the Democratic Party, the late Dr. Zach de Beer. He reminded us newcomer Members of Parliament in 1989 of the worth of Nietzsche’s view that, as a guiding star for South African liberals – There should be a long obedience in the same direction; there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something that has made life worth living. Both as an encomium to the work and validity of the SA Institute of Race relations this is apt; it is also a useful marker for my address this evening on the Imperfect Fit and South Africa’s need for a liberal political party. With the co-hosts of this evening, the Friedrich Naumann Stiftung, I enjoyed a close relationship, and political collaboration, until I resigned the leadership of the Democratic Alliance (DA) in 2007. One of the few non-governmental organizations prepared to publicly and usefully assist the Official Opposition, it might be no exaggeration to suggest, per Robin Carlisle’s remark in 2 another context, that ‘South African liberalism would have died of malnutrition’ were it not for the Foundation’s thoughtful and material nurturing. I need to add in here, two personalities from Liberal International and the Foundation who provided so much value and encouragement to the work in which, on very stony and unyielding southern soil, we were then engaged to allow South African liberalism to replenish its roots at the time of transcending democratic change in the country from 1994 onward. The first of these was the late Otto Graf Lambsdorff – a close friend and staunch political ally. He served with distinction as President of Liberal International and as Chairman of the board of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation after his career as Chairman of the Free Democrats of Germany and as Federal Minister of Economics. He gave very useful advice on the need for ‘muscular liberalism’ and reminded us often that the departure point for a liberal view of political economy was – As much market as possible and as much state as necessary. Another figure from those times was the President of Liberal International in 1994, the year I assumed leadership of the Democratic Party here. Fritz Bolkestein, the Dutch liberal politician, told our small parliamentary caucus back then that the problem with liberal politicians of that era was that – They spend too much time trying to win the affection of their opponents, and not enough time trying to win the allegiance of their voters. No doubt imperfectly, my colleagues and I tried to operationalise both those wisdoms. Both those remarks also serve as useful introductions to this lecture. I want to start by telling the stories of two residences. The first of these is relatively close to here, in Pretoria. It is the official home of our president and has served for decades to house the head of state of South Africa. I first visited it in the early 1990’s when, paradoxically, its name was ‘Libertas’, after the Roman Goddess of Liberty. I could not help thinking at the time of the crowning irony of a name chosen for this grand Cape Dutch sentinel, as the home to a succession of segregationist and apartheid leaders who had denied its essence to the bulk of their citizens. 3 But of course the last resident under that title, although a Nationalist, FW de Klerk, did some remarkably liberal things to advance freedom and turn his and the country’s back on the grim path forged by all his predecessors. The last occasion I visited the same residence, in late 2012, let me in full confessional mode advise, was to see Jacob Zuma the president who had appointed me Ambassador to Argentina, from which post I had just returned. By then, the name emblazoned on the gates of his presidential home – in lieu of Libertas – was ‘Mahlamba Ndlopfu’, which, from the Shangaan language, translates as ‘New Dawn’. That would become the winning slogan for his successor, Cyril Ramaphosa, who would be the next inhabitant of this grand home. This was against the wishes of my host that evening, Jacob Zuma; and Ramaphosa would use the exact words on the gate, New Dawn, as a rallying counterpoint against the road to ruin charted by Zuma. Of course it was precisely the hope of the ‘New Dawn’ which helped power President Ramaphosa and his ANC to a fairly handsome victory, although it lost seats, but still maintained its national and provincial power bases, in the May 2019 elections here. But it is the dashed expectations of its achievement right now, and looking into the future, in the absence of any transcending agenda of reform by his government, which offers great peril to our country. However, it also – paradoxically – offers huge opportunity to a political movement which can embrace and refresh a principled and pragmatic programme to revive our economy and offer fresh hope to its citizens. The name changes, from Libertas to New Dawn, also prove how illusory labels can be in politics. The late Jeanne Kirkpatrick famously observed – Political labelling is like parsley on a plate, decorative but not nourishing. The second residence which I visited far more recently, just over a month ago, is very far from here, just outside a beautiful town in Kent, England, named Westerham. Chartwell was the country home occupied by Winston Churchill for over 40 years, from 1922 until his death in 1965. He left so many lessons of political leadership, innumerable 4 mementoes of which are dotted around the large rooms of his house, that just two are worth recalling for current purposes and tonight’s topic. In his modestly comfortable Chartwell study, he dictated the speeches and the books which helped save the world from fascist tyranny. His home served as ground zero when, very much alone, he took on the might of the appeasing British establishment in the 1930s, even though, as the grandson of a Duke, he was a charter member of it. In his ‘wilderness years’ without high office but with great influence, he warned of the menace of Hitler and prepared for the inevitable struggle against it. It is worth recalling, as his brilliant new biographer, Andrew Roberts, recounts in Churchill – Walking with Destiny, just what a contrarian and unpopular position he held back then. Perhaps a reminder of how the heresies of the day can become the settled and received wisdom of the future. And of course, on a raft and range of issues – from Gallipoli to India, and many other miscues – he made some disastrous decisions. Perhaps that is inevitable for someone of his vigour and longevity and willed obstinacy. But, as Roberts concludes his monumental work – The battles he won saved liberty. i Churchill himself, who displayed such a copious combination of raw bravery in battle and in politics and sheer bloody mindedness, never minded being alone, in the wrong company, or going against the popular grain of the moment. He offered a clarion call to politicians everywhere and in each epoch, which sadly finds only a faint echo today, if indeed it is heard at all – Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality of that guarantees all the others. Courage to fight your corner and stick to your beliefs is very hard, especially in South Africa where – ironically almost from the arrival of full blown democracy here in 1994 – a dominant hegemony often dictates the terms of the debate, limits the boundaries of the discourse and heaps opprobrium on dissenters. Of course, the limits of dissent and disagreement here today are nowhere near as dire and dangerous as under the previous regime of racial nationalism, and free speech enjoys, notionally at least, full blown constitutional protection. 5 But in the furies of the moment and charting a principled course for the future in our politics, any party or person seeking to advance a creative and credible alternative needs, as a minimum departure point, a star and a fixed point to steer their course. Otherwise, to borrow a phrase, you will be embarking on a journey without maps. And, to modernize, without a GPS or the Waze app., you will certainly lose your way, or land up in a bad place. Interestingly, during the helter skelter constitutional negotiations of over 25 years ago, one person who navigated by a fixed and bright star was Nelson Mandela.

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