SOUTH AFRICA: Tony Leon believes South Africa's ruling party has very flawed policies, he tells Bill Corcoran in Johannesburg
As one of the ANC's principal detractors, Tony Leon, the leader of South Africa's main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), said his critique of South Africa's ruling party is based "on its obsession with control". He insists that the ANC's obsession with implementing its own race-based brand of affirmative action, designed to address the employment inequalities that arose during the apartheid era, is completely flawed.
Mr Leon (49) called the policy the "reintroduction of back-door apartheid" and said it was interfering with economic development and tripping up the delivery of local government services to the country's hard-pressed poor.
Known for his outspokenness, Mr Leon, a former lawyer, has been the main voice of opposition to the government since Nelson Mandela's successor, President Thabo Mbeki, took office in 1999.
Since then, he has been highly vocal on what he sees as the failure by government to deal with South Africa's huge problems of poverty, unemployment, crime and Aids.
"It is very difficult to get the levels of economic growth that we need, and the president has committed to, and simultaneously try to exercise what you might call ideological interference in the economy.
"The ANC's ideological policy in local government - appointing people on affirmative action grounds; demanding party loyalty; and booting out officials that don't meet that - well, when you've major issues around poverty relief, and the transformation of the economy, the one set of policies tend to trip up the other," he said, referring to the recent riots that took place in the central Free State over the poor delivery of basic services.
So the DA is against an affirmative action policy in South Africa? "Not at all," insisted Mr Leon. "Affirmative action is deeply necessary in South Africa because of the 350 years of systematic discrimination on racial and other grounds. The problem with this brand - it's not so much affirmative action, it's racial quotas that have been put in place that have to be filled.
"It is actually perverse - it's a reintroduction of backdoor apartheid and there is a lot of anger among our supporters who happen to be black, but are of Indian or coloured descent," he said in relation to his own Western Cape constituency - which has a coloured (mixed race) majority - where the government intends to apply its affirmative action quotas on a national demographic basis.
Although it is easier to sling mud from the sidelines than to effect meaningful change, Mr Leon needed only to point to the growing unrest over the last few years in South Africa among the poor - which has led to riots and strikes - to make his point.
Following the 1994 democratic elections, South Africans were promised a better standard of living, which included homes and basic services, within a 10-year period. Although the government has implemented an ambitious housing programme that has accommodated some people, for many nothing much has changed 11 years on.
While the ANC government has historically leaned to the left and embraces the concept of an open market, Mr Leon disagrees to an extent, saying they are "profoundly illiberal and very hostile to liberal democracy".
"I would see the ANC as an amalgamation of market Leninism. They have done good things on the market economy side, but they are very Leninist in their political control requirements and their racial policies."
But even with high levels of unrest in the country does Mr Leon envisage a time when the DA, which espouses liberal democracy and free-market principles, could become the ruling party? "Well, that's the challenge. Theoretically if we are a non-racial democracy, which is our greatest advertisement to the world, my race should be of little consequence, but I suppose one has to be brutally pragmatic about things and say it will be a challenge."
And quite a challenge it will be. Mr Leon's detractors would say that despite the unrest among South Africa's poor, the DA has failed to make any inroads against the ANC. And since the first democratic elections in 1994, the ANC has assimilated many of the opposition parties to the extent that it controls 70 per cent of the vote, so it would appear the chance of the DA winning power is slim.
While Mr Leon's DA increased its vote in the general elections of 2004 - winning 50 seats and cementing itself as the largest opposition party in the country - so too did the ANC, and both parties got their extra votes at the expense of other opposition parties.
Nonetheless, Mr Leon is confident that more progress can be made in the months and years ahead. First, he said, the DA has to mobilise "its own electorate", the people who would normally vote for the party, many of whom are not even registered to vote.
He also insisted that while the ANC's percentage of the vote has gone up, the party has lost four million votes since 1994 and most of those have gone into the pool of non-voters.
"We've got to start making inroads with the black South African voters, and it's not going to happen over a long weekend, but it will happen Just as you would have never expected the National Party [the architects of apartheid] MPs to join the ANC, which they have.
"We are on the ground all the time and we are at the centre of communities. And I think you'll see us doing pretty well in the forthcoming local elections, which are to be held soon."