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I am standing for the leadership of the DA because I want to contribute to the project Nelson Mandela started.
Now, more than ever, South Africa needs a strong, nonracial party committed to protecting our Constitution and redressing the legacy of apartheid.
For us to succeed, we must acknowledge that nonracialism does not require us to be colour-blind. We must recognise that race shaped our identities and opportunities, but must not allow ourselves to stay trapped in the past. Our end goal must be to transcend race so that all may be truly free, both socially and economically.
This is not easy in a country where racial divisions are etched so deeply into our consciousness. I grew up in the 1980s in Dobsonville, Soweto, where my first memory of white people was the soldiers who occupied the streets during the state of emergency.
I don’t remember hating anybody, but I remember hating the system. It was a system with the power to define us. A system that could put a pencil through your hair, tell you where to live and who you could marry. Worst of all, it was a system that curbed your aspirations; that put a ceiling on your economic worth.
Those experiences shaped me, just like they shaped so many young black people of my generation. And that is why I don’t agree with people who say that they don’t see colour. Because if you don’t see that I’m black, then you don’t see me.
But that doesn’t mean my skin colour defines me. If freedom means anything, it means breaking the straitjacket of racial determinism, without losing sight of the forces that shaped us. That was Mandela’s vision of nonracialism that inspired so many. Unfortunately, it is a vision that is fading fast from our national discourse.
Our politics must never again be allowed to degenerate into a contest between races. Instead, it must be a battle of competing ideas.
When I ran for Gauteng premier in 2009, we covered 50 000km in our campaign bus, meeting with people in every community in that province. I chatted to informal traders in Alexandra, businesspeople in Soweto and suburbanites in Sandton. We visited the Apartheid Museum, the Voortrekker Monument and Freedom Park.
It became clear to me then that many people in our country, of all races and backgrounds, share the same values. They want the freedom to make their own choices about the life they want to live. And they want the power to improve their lives, because freedom means nothing without opportunities.
It is a fact that, in general, black children still do not have the same access to a quality education as white children. This is a tragedy that no South African should ever accept, which is why we must equip all our children to compete on an equal footing in the global economy.
At the same time, we must start growing the economy at a rate fast enough to start creating jobs on a significant scale. It has been said that if South Africa wants to create 5 million new jobs, we need a million new small businesses. I want the DA to become the champion of small business, the party with the best ideas and the best policies to make South Africa a “start-up” nation.
We will reform black economic empowerment to make it truly broad based, so that it benefits small businesses instead of those who have been empowered already.
We will ramp up infrastructure investment, delivering the critical infrastructure our economy needs to thrive again. We will slash unnecessary red tape to make it easier to start, run and grow a business. And we will trade more with the rest of Africa – still our greatest and most underused economic growth opportunity.
Our government’s inability to grow the economy and create jobs has created the space for the emergence of populists who use racial mobilisation to divide our people. They have no interest in building our nation. Their goal is to break this constitutional democracy that so many great South Africans painstakingly built.
While others trade on the divisions of the past, I will position the DA as the party of tomorrow. We will reinvigorate the politics of real nonracialism, based on shared values and a mutual commitment to making our country work.
Never before in our democracy have the options been so clear. The choice is between a growing economy or further job losses, and between reviving nonracialism or reigniting racial mobilisation.
If I am elected DA leader, I will make sure every South African understands what is at stake. And I will do everything I can to reach the millions of people who agree with our party’s values but don’t yet vote for us.
We will build a stronger DA for a better South Africa.
Maimane is leader of the DA in Parliament and a candidate for DA federal leader
