South Africa’s Liberals Are Failing To Wrap Their Heads Around Race

Christi van der Westhuizen, Nelson Mandela University

South Africa’s official opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is reeling from self-inflicted political damage.

Its newly elected parliamentary leader John Steenhuisen recently appealed to his colleagues to “stop the political hara-kiri that’s going on in the DA – pulling out entrails to show everybody.“

This follows the departure of two more prominent black members, party leader Mmusi Maimane and Johannesburg mayor Herman Mashaba, apart from national chair Athol Trollip, who is white.

Other black members the party has shed include Cape Town mayor Patricia de Lille, forced out last year, and former parliamentary leader Lindiwe Mazibuko, who left under duress in 2014.

The recent resignations come in the wake of the election of former party leader Helen Zille to the powerful position of chairperson of the DA’s federal council.

She and other contenders for the post promised