The long-discussed merger of Helen Zille’s Democratic Alliance (DA) and Patricia De Lille’s Independent Democrats (ID) is another step closer to happening as the DA has signed a “memorandum of understanding” that is supposed to lead to a full merger by 2014. Four years is a forever in South African politics (think of how things looked in August 2006 if you need a sense of perspective), so much could change between now and then. And the palaver about this new alliance somehow threatening the primacy of the ANC is, to say the least, overblown given that the two parties polled less than 18% of the vote in the last election, with the Independent Dems garnering less than 1% of the vote. Still, adding the ID gives the opposition some weight on the left, and Patricia De Lille is quite popular despite the marginal status of her party. If a few more dominoes fall and there is more consolidation of the opposition (and if that opposition can shed its perception of representing disgruntled whites) then this shift will be seen as the first stage in a long-range makeover of South African opposition politics.
