LETTER: The DA’s appeal is in its difference from the ANC
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It was predictable that the new DA policy decisions would be met either by expressions of doubt or howls of outrage. Carol Paton’s views express the former, with a leap into a chasm of misunderstanding (“DA now a party for some, not all, as new policy endorses denialism (”, September 8). This arises from viewing the adoption of nonracialism in isolation, without coupling it, as logic dictates, with the DA’s new economic justice policy.
Where poverty is the real injustice, that should be the metric. The race of the poor person should be of no relevance whatsoever. Paton should rewrite her article with the complete picture in mind. The appeal of both policies, when presented to the electorate as a complete and workable programme that can be implemented by a capable and corruption-free administration, will then be clearly visible to all but those wearing blinkers.
Paton opines that black voters had been attracted to the DA because it had begun to look like a cleaner, more efficient version of the ANC. As a long-serving DA public representative and activist, now retired, I have to ask on what facts this opinion is based. My interactions with the black electorate informed me that it was the differences between the DA and the ANC that won their support. For the DA to be an ANC-lite will get it nowhere.
Like its predecessor parties, the DA fully recognises that the key to building a prosperous nation for all lies in uniting and mobilising all resources, human and material, in a body politic that is not based on racial identity and under sound governance in a capable state. Identity politics, exclusionary by its very nature, proved to be the undoing of the apartheid state. For the same reason, our beloved SA is unravelling again.
John Mendelsohn
Paulshof
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to letters@businesslive.co.za (mailto:letters@businesslive.co.za). Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.
Where poverty is the real injustice, that should be the metric. The race of the poor person should be of no relevance whatsoever. Paton should rewrite her article with the complete picture in mind. The appeal of both policies, when presented to the electorate as a complete and workable programme that can be implemented by a capable and corruption-free administration, will then be clearly visible to all but those wearing blinkers.
Paton opines that black voters had been attracted to the DA because it had begun to look like a cleaner, more efficient version of the ANC. As a long-serving DA public representative and activist, now retired, I have to ask on what facts this opinion is based. My interactions with the black electorate informed me that it was the differences between the DA and the ANC that won their support. For the DA to be an ANC-lite will get it nowhere.
Like its predecessor parties, the DA fully recognises that the key to building a prosperous nation for all lies in uniting and mobilising all resources, human and material, in a body politic that is not based on racial identity and under sound governance in a capable state. Identity politics, exclusionary by its very nature, proved to be the undoing of the apartheid state. For the same reason, our beloved SA is unravelling again.
John Mendelsohn
Paulshof
JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an e-mail with your comments. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Send your letter by e-mail to letters@businesslive.co.za (mailto:letters@businesslive.co.za). Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.