The Bland Party: Unite for Change

After 30 years of ANC rule, we have all in a sense become ANC members. The DA pushes the ANC’s progressive philosophy and economic policy of the past 30 years with only a few tweaks for increased technocratic control, globalisation and foreign influence, while the ANC’s splinter parties call back to the explosive animosity and utopian promises of the 1980s.

Everyone is basically some form of a hardline American Progressive with varying levels of African revolutionary decoration. Everyone agrees on all the main issues and talking points, policy positions and ways of doing business, with the sole exceptions of the VF+ and the PA – both push some form of Christian conservatism. The VF+  push decentralisation and a stricter division of labour between public and private sectors, such as insourcing over lucrative public-private partnerships, and less regulation and taxation, while the PA push hardline authoritarianism, religiosity, and while courting legacy organised crime groups and openly signalling solidarity with lawbreakers.

Those who have signalled a confrontational ethnic solidarity have performed well in recent years, with the PA and MK growing the most in absolute numbers. But others seem to think that unity is most important. Paradoxically, while most support unity-ish sounding propositions in opinion polls, in the real world they want unity only in their own image. Weaker parties have leaned into this, with most softening any stances that would make them stand out, leaving the maverick populists to benefit from general disillusion.

Formed from exiles of both these political streams, a new political venture, Unite for Change, announced yesterday in Johannesburg, with the lofty ambition of reshaping South Africa’s fractious opposition landscape. But this word “change” doesn’t seem to mean much. They are formed from the merger of three minor players who have never been easy to pin down (largely because they are indistinguishable from the wallpaper). Build One South Africa (BOSA), the GOOD Party, and Rise Mzansi are leftists in the American mould, and being leftists, cannot move an inch to the right of any status quo. However, they are also too timid to try anything more radically redistributive than what the ANC is doing right now. 

Hard to see the point. They claim to be able to transcend the petty squabbles and ideological baggage that have hobbled smaller parties, unite everyone, and be friends with all and sundry. The saccharine sentiments would be enough to give you diabetes, if it wasn’t 99% hot air. They are basically trying to sell the idea that they are the ANC without the lower-class appearances and the corruption. The manifesto hasn’t been released yet, but judging by the parties that make it up, it is unlikely to mean much.

This is BOSA, led by former pastor, Obama wannabe and vapid windbag Mmusi Maimane, the GOOD Party, under former PAC member Patricia de Lille (though increasingly driven by former DA man Brett Herron),  and Rise Mzansi, the dull corporate vehicle led by Songezo Zibi, designed to erode the ANC vote, but which ultimately just stole votes from the DA. The three parties, none of which managed to secure even 1% of the national vote in the May 2024 elections, have collectively mustered a mere five seats in the National Assembly. Together that’s less than the VF+, whose voter base is overwhelmingly restricted to conservative Afrikaners, a tiny ethnic minority in the grand scheme of things.

They have struck a partnership to contest the 2026 local government elections, though its constituent parties will maintain separate identities in parliament until after the 2029 national polls. Leadership is vested in a “Council of Leaders”, a six-member collective including Maimane, de Lille, Zibi, and their deputies. Action SA declined to join, probably because Mashaba’s ego couldn’t fit in that little box, but they would be a perfect member of this political retirement home.

Unite for Change’s policy platform is predictably idealistic in its messaging, but rather nonspecific on policy. They emphasise exactly the same positions as everyone else: ethical leadership, economic recovery through job creation and infrastructure, dignified service delivery, safety and justice, “digitisation” of government, “merit-based” candidate selection (though they still back the racial quota system) and “community-rooted” leadership.

This sort of bland and predictable messaging doesn’t promise change, it promises the exact same thing as everyone else, proving the eternal political truism that any political organisation calling itself one thing ends up being the precise opposite – like the hereditary monarchy calling itself the Democratic Peoples Republic of North Korea.

Everyone says they oppose the ANC, because everyone hates them, even their own voters, while copying everything the ANC does, right down to the song-and-dance routines at political rallies. Yet the parties who have shown the most success as newcomers have been those who claim to be the real ANC (MK and EFF), or radically position themselves against it’s utopian philosophy (PA). 

But UFC is also going after the DA, which it accuses of squandering opportunities for change. That may be true, but yet again we have to ask, what change? A more rapid rollout of ANC-isms? The party has opened its blouse to alliances with foreign-funded NGOs and other microparties looking to huddle together for warmth, but it’s a small campfire.

Its leaders, most of whom have been playing musical chairs with political parties for the bulk of their careers, may find that their vision of a unified, ethical opposition resonates more in theory than in practice, and voters will likely struggle to motivate themselves to go down the alphabet to “U” to even find them on the ballot.

The only interesting aspect of the party is the potential to split over Palestine – while GOOD and its base are pro-Palestinian, Maimane and Zibi have pro-Israeli ties due to their donor base. The party’s social media handler visibly squirmed when questioned on this point: