In a wide-ranging interview on Eusebius on TimesLIVE, former Midvaal mayor Bongani Baloyi explained why he did not vote for his now former party, the DA, in last year’s local government elections.
He was at pains to explain to the host, Eusebius McKaiser, how he slowly started feeling estranged from the DA after policy shifts that did not resonate with his political and personal convictions. In particular, he says, the abandonment by the party of using race as a proxy for disadvantage entrenched his conviction that there is a lack of empathy from the party, including the leader John Steenhuisen, of the lived experiences of black people.
Baloyi also revealed to McKaiser that he had begun to feel like a poster child for the party, but never really “seen” by the party leadership. This manifested, he said, in a refusal to engage him intellectually on his views about the party, and he answered in the affirmative when asked by the host whether he is implying that the party had “infantilised” him despite his record of leadership and years of service.
The latter part of the interview focuses on critical questions about why Baloyi joined ActionSA instead. When pressed by McKaiser on similarities in the political convictions between his new leader Herman Mashaba and the politics of DA leaders Helen Zille and Steenhuisen, Baloyi tried to make a case for differences between the political vehicles.