Lindiwe Mazibuko - Leader of the Opposition in the South African Parliament HARDtalk

Now on BBC News, it's time for Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Sarah

Montague. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has given up on South Africa's

ruling party, the ANC. He says he will not be voting for them in next

year's elections. But what are the alternatives? The ANC, Nelson

Mandela's All Party, have dominated politics and government in South

Africa since the end of apartheid nearly 20 years ago. My guest today,

Lindiwe Mazibuko, is the parliamentary leader of the largest

opposition party, the Freeney. What chance does it really have against

the ANC, which is still seen as the natural home for black voters --

Lindiwe Mazibuko, welcome to HARDtalk. Thank you very much.If

getting near government it has to reach out and get support from

black voters. And that's where you have struggled so far, isn't it?

Absolutely. There's no question that any party in South Africa that

aspires to be a government at national level has to be able to

attract support from black South Africans. Not only in terms of

numbers, but it needs to be on a moral and ethical level a South

African party, a party for the people. That is one of our major

targets in the run-up to the 2014 election, and it's been one of the

goals we have set ourselves, to get to 30% at national level by

bringing on significantly more black supporters. One of the

problems you have got at the moment is you have got roughly 80 Members

of Parliament, and the majority are white. But 9% of the population is

white. I mean, my Members of Parliament are from communities all

over the country. They are representative of a large number of

language groups, a large number of race groups, a large number of

communities in every part of the country. But the Democratic

Alliance's parliamentary caucus is representative of where we were in

2009 at that election. The fact those MPs in 2011 affected me, a

33-year-old black South African woman, to lead them, is a

representation of how committed they are to the growth and

diversification of the party. Looking at the Congress last year,

the fact that we marched against the youth wage subsidy in

Johannesburg, thousands of black South Africans came out to support

the Democratic Alliance. You can see how quickly the party is

changing. I don't think our representation four years ago is a

representation of now. We're growing at an almost pays. You have

made a lot of black voters convert to you. We are the biggest party in

the opposition among black South African voters. If there was only a

black electric in South Africa we would still be the official

opposition. -- Black electorates. There's no question that there's a

big challenge ahead of us. We're ready for that challenge. Part of

that challenge has to make sure with making sure we're a party not

only of being black, there's a danger of parties only being about

racial nationalism and competing with each other. We need to cast --

craft a political policy about diversity and protecting people's

rights. You made the point that they elected you as their

parliamentary leader, but you will know the Communist Party chief

called you a coconut. The suggestion you're black on the

outside but White on the inside. political opponents say lots of

disgusting, racist, sexist and age is things about me. I don't believe

them to be true -- ageist. I don't lie awake at night worrying they

have misunderstood a part of my character. What makes my leadership

so exciting is that South Africa's a young country. Two-thirds are

under 35. The statistician general in the year before last census said

the average age of South Africans is 25. Looking at Jacob Zuma, who

is in his 70s, we have birthdays a few days apart, he has just turned

71 and I've just turned 33, we are much closer to the age of the South

African populous. You look at the former president of the ANC's Youth

League, he said you were the tea girl of the madam, referring to

Helensvale, the party leader. interesting thing about him, he

backed the wrong horse in the ANC's policy Conference, so now he's in

the political wilderness. How long that will be, we don't know. His

brand of politics was based on divisiveness. It was based on the

very kind of name-calling that he engaged in when he made reference

to mead, racialism, talk about nationalisation -- nationalising

minds and strategic interests. The divisions between older and younger

South Africans and black and white. He dominated the discourse in youth

politics for a long time. Now he has left that vacuum, my party, a

modern forward looking political party with a mixed generation of

leaders, has the opportunity to capture the imagination of those

young people who are living difficult lives. They are suffering

from poor education, they are worried about their employment,

they want to enter the formal economy. We want to make sure

there's a political an affirmative -- political alternative that is

not racist and offers them a different future. But you also

offer a party that has overwhelmingly the support of the

whites in South Africa. People will look at you and think, there are

things that you can't do because you will alienate your white

supporters. Yes... one of the things we have done in the

Democratic Alliance is we have embarked on a campaign. The purpose

is to deal with some of the stereotypes around white South

Africans in politics, which have led to the implication that if

you're a white politician you must have been part of apartheid and you

must yearn in your heart for a return to apartheid. It is one of

the challenges we have come across when talking to young South

Africans, and about supporting cast. We talk about various stories, who

are the leaders of our party and helped form our party. They fought

in the struggle for liberation. To put paid to this notion that having

a political party that has white leaders in its ranks necessarily

means those leaders somehow yearn for apartheid. You call this the

pre-election campaign... the ANC as Loch Ewe for stealing, for

borrowing their credentials in the struggle -- mocked you. They said

that you were synonymous with repression and never involved in

the liberation of South Africa. That's not true. Part of our

campaign has been reflecting on what ANC leaders have said about

the struggle. We have made reference to the warm relationship

that Helen had with Albert, who wrote to her and told her what a

great job she was doing standing up for liberty in Parliament on her

own for 13 years. We made reference to comments made by Winnie Mandela

and Nelson Mandela about the legacy of our predecessor leaders in the

struggle against apartheid. But this is about the past. We are

talking about the past because we want voters to know where we come

from and not to be afraid all concerned all worried about what it

is we want to do in the future. Even your own former leader, Tony

Leon, said if you get into a contest about that with the ANC

they're going to beat you every time. It's not a contest with the

ANC. We want to tell Our Own story and not on the ANC's own terms. The

police minister called us agents of apartheid, if we don't respond to

that we allowed the ANC to frame our own history. But that is

because you came up with the campaign, no you're Democratic

Alliance. We can never preside over a situation where the ANC tells our

story for us. I was questioning your version. You came up with the

story in the campaign. Their own leaders have paid tribute to our

leaders' role in the struggle for liberation. If they want to

contradict that position they are contradiction members of their own

leadership. You want to transcend race, but Archbishop Desmond Tutu

describe South Africa as the most unequal society in the world. When

people talk about it being an emerging economy and a powerhouse

for the Continent... it is usually unequal. Absolutely.And that

inequality correlates with a race. Absolutely. When you have a poor

black person looking to see which party he could vote for in

government, that is most likely to insure that he or she will get a

job... it is hard to see why they would go for you, with you're

predominantly white support, against the ANC, which is still

seem as the Party of Liberation. The party that basically presided

over the struggles, and won freedom for blacks in South Africa. It's

important when making reference to us to remember that we won 24% of

the vote in the last local election. And only 9% of the population is

white. Yes, we have white supporters, and we have large

numbers of them. But we're no longer a white party. Are you

picking up the poor black vote? Before I get to that, it's very

important that you recognise how much the Democratic Alliance has

changed and how little the label of white party applies to a party that

has one in four of all South African voters supporting it. But I

agree, inequality is a massive problem. In 18 years in government

the ANC has not addressed in a quality, it is at the same high

levels it was at when they took office. They have been -- there

have been good inroads made into economic policy to address her

Westermann questions, but job- creation has not been a success --

Investment questions. We're not only an opposition party. We are

coming in Cape Town and in 28 other municipalities. -- we are governing.

We have a semi federal system of government, so we are implementing

policies that do that. In the last quarter, South Africa shed jobs.

The only province in the entire country which didn't was the

Western Cape, which increase the number of people working by 8,000.

You're talking about somebody in Johannesburg that is thinking about,

should I vote for this party. One of the things you will know that

has been said about you, they look to you, a young black woman leading

this party, they see somebody... I have read enough of this... they

want a role model. It was one of your own colleagues who apologised

for it afterwards, they said, "If you close your eyes and you listen

to Lindiwe Mazibuko, when she speaks you would think a white

person is talking to you close quite. They after a black role

model, talking about the difficulties are the economic

situation when your back. One of the big mistakes people make in

South Africa is believing that the only people that can attract

support from any particular race crude or population group are

people that look and sound like that group. It is the mistake the

ANC made when they thought simply having a coloured leader

campaigning in the Western Cape, coloured South African people would

automatically rally behind it. But instead Helen, a white woman of

German extraction, who learned to speak Afrikaans, went out into the

community in the Western Cape and empathised with, engaged with, and

understood the issues close to the members of those communities'

hearts. What about you? You come from a comfortably-off middle class

family, privately educated. You spend time overseas. I presume you

are fluent in... I am.But you choose not to speak in that

language? I speak in Zulu all the time but this is an English

language medium. Do you recognise you haven't reached people, it is

the personal thing? It is a recognition of the evening you

could be speaking for them, rather than a comfortably off woman

leading a white party. I know you object but that's it. It is not

that I object but it is that people making those analysis don't engage

on any other level. People making that kind of accusation don't

listen to me at rallies, on the radio stations, where we engage

with members of the community from all walks of life. In the

Democratic Alliance we do not expect people only to speak to

people looking and sounding like them. Just because I'm black and

middle class, I'm not only expected to campaign in middle class areas.

How do you see yourself? Are you back first and South African second,

or the other way round? I would call myself a black South African

young woman. Black comes first? That is the order. Black comes

first? Yes. I also acknowledge the right of every South African to

choose whatever order they want to order their identified. It is not a

group identification system, that is what apartheid was. But thinking

about my identity as a political leader, the first thing that comes

to me is that I am black. With that be the case for most black South

Africans? I don't know, it could be a legacy of apartheid. It could be

a function of resources, where you lived or what you did. It was seen

as the only important identify at of you as an individual. It's why

there's a residual self identification that begins with

race in South Africa. We acknowledge that as well. We're not

trying to pretend race does not exist. Transcending race is not

about acting as though it has no cogency. It is about making sure

people can understand that they can trust each other across racial

It is their desire from people to make his bit more about race? To be

more aware of it? Not to be in denial of it all to try to

transcended as you often do? It sounds as though you're trying to

speak to your white supporters or pacify them. Not at all! It is not

about not freaking out. Afrikaner nationalism or black nationalism

under a black National Party are equally bad for South Africa.

Nationalism is not just bad for one that rescript. The problem with

nationalism is that it excludes people and it excludes them on the

basis of their race and nothing else. If we are trying to bind the

wounds of apartheid, we cannot offer a political Offiah on a

national level entirely based on race. We have to tell people that

we understand race and that Equality has a colour and we have

to address disparities. We must do so together and not separates --

separated by groups as apartheid dictated. There had been a tense

for your party to try and get the part of Steve Pico who was the

father of the Black consciousness Movement, a very significant figure.

It failed. She ended up setting up her own political platform. There

has been this problem within the divided opposition. And you are

never going to be able to take on the ANC unless you work together?

Absolutely. When we talk about our electoral calls, entering

government in 2019, we are talking about a Coalition. For the first

time, we will have a new government when the ANC is pushed below 50%

and the opposition can work together. We were engaged with the

tractor negotiations with that Dr. All of us in the Democratic allies

admire her track record. offered for her to be your leader

and changed the name. She declined because she chose a different path.

She formed a different political organisation and contested the

elections on her own. She said that she would never be caught dead.

That was the choice she made in the end. It is her choice. It is a good

thing because we have more options for Coalition government. -- never

be co-opted. We believe that that we can win in a Coalition and if

she is added to the mix, that is another part of the political mix.

CROSSTALK. Up if you were a success for an

getting her, I imagine that you were approached -- that you

approach the Archbishop. I cannot talk about who and who we have not

approached. The endorsement of someone like him would be a

landfall. For any organisation. I will not talk about why have and I

have not approached. We spoke to Patricia, the leader of the

Independent Democrats, a trade unionist and hugely admired in

South African politics. She merged her political party with hours two

years ago and is the mayor of Cape Town. Her great projects for the

Democratic Alliance since she became the leader of the party has

been to close down the barriers with opposition parties which share

the same values but differ on policy matters. This is so that we

can make a credible offer to voters. In the event it best not all

political parties to share our values agree to that measure, we

can still work together in a Coalition. We need to build those

relationships. You seem a long way from that. Giving the public

conversations that to have had about this. The opposition is

seriously divided and it is hard to see work together. The opposition

is not divided. I have worked with the opposition in parliament for

every year. We have a multi-party opposition Forum. We led a bill to

unseat President Jacob Zuma from office because of the crisis he

faced in government last year. We opposed to the State Information

Bill. We fought for more accountability and more

effectiveness in Parliament. We are not divided. We are working

together. We had different value sets and different programmes of

action. Where we have common cause we come together and work together.

We will be enabled to get into Coalition. The government is to

work on one thing. A reform. I will report from 1941, a former ANC

president. The fundamental basis of all wealth and power is the

ownership of land. Without land rights, any race will be doomed to

poverty and the lack of life's essential. The reason that the

government said, we want to transfer 30% of the land that is

owned by whites to blacks and we're talking about apartheid, 87% of the

land in South Africa was owned by whites. You agree that ambition?

support land reform. It is two parts. There is land restitution,

the land from which a black South Africans were dispossessed under

forced removals in the 1930s Land Act. And then land reform for its

own sake because we need to diversify the economy. The reason

that land ownership is skewed is because of economic legislation

drafted by the apartheid government which deliberately kept a black

people off land. It is absolutely essential... To improve their

prospects. The government has said it cannot meet the target by next

year. We are talking about radically changing it. Speeding it

up. Do you agree with that? think that had we been in

government, we would have reached that target. We shall not go over

the history. We shall talk about now. The file you is something for

which the government must take responsibility. We must speed it up.

It is no way near the target. The methodologies have failed. The

government needs to do a rethink about how it engages in the reform.

There is a national development plan which has a case in point. It

is proposed a system of shared ownership will wear black farm

workers who have been living and working there for generations are

given funding by the government to acquire a share on the farm in

which they have worked for We have implemented that approach

where we govern. The ANC has not engaged in a process of land reform

that has taken any innovative ways into account. That is why they have

not reached this. You are saying that they could reach the 30%...

The talk of expropriation, of going -- of making it just and equitable?

It is a constitutional method of land reform and we supported. We

are a constitutional party. Willing buyer, willing seller. It is not a

seizure of land that is done without the consent... The

constitution is very clear about the fact that if land is

expropriated, it must be done at market prices. If the two parties

cannot reach an agreement, the courts can intervene to set the

price and make sure that the deal can go through. We are

constitutionalists as a party and we believe that land reform must

take place. The ANC does not have to go down the route of a land

grabs which is what forced expropriation would imply in order

to reach these targets. They will fail to reach the not because they

did not be forced appropriation but because they did not do the correct

policy. The ANC say they will not do this. One of the reason for so

much uncertainty is that the ANC government quite offensively toys

with extreme examples of economic intervention. They talk about

nationalisation and that kind of policy uncertainty leads investors

to wonder whether or not they should bring many into the South

African economy. The ANC should not talk about expropriation without

compensation. I believe that there is enough social justice room and

enough of a social justice mandate in the constitution which compels

the government to engage in expropriation for the purposes of

land reform but it dictates that that must be done to the principle