Tony Leon pulls no punches in new book

Tony Leon has never been one to mince words. Ever since he became involved in politics in the Progressive Federal Party, the former leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA) has had strong opinions and has fearlessly made them known.

Some thought they were inspired, while others despised him for them, but most people took notice when he said something.

So, when publisher Jonathan Ball suggested that he write a book about South Africa, he wasn’t suggesting Leon write the consummate guide to the country. He wanted a view of where we are through the eyes of the founder of the DA and the longest serving leader of the official opposition.

“Apparently, people wanted to hear the views of someone who was actually in the trenches,” Leon, who retired as leader of the DA and from mainstream politics in 2007, told the SA Jewish Report last week. Two weeks after the meeting with Ball, COVID-19 struck and South Africa went into lockdown.

“I then realised this book would be my sanity,” said Leon. “I would have an afternoon project and every day to work on it. Even if it was rubbish, I would have been productive during lockdown.”

Leon is executive chair of Resolve Communications, an advocacy company for reputational management and strategic communication, but spends much time giving his political opinion through writing, speaking, or interviews.

And his book, Future Tense – Reflections on My Troubled Land tackles issues including why the African National Congress (ANC) is bad for business, problems in the DA, and revenge economics. He even addresses the Jewish community.

Leon, however, doesn’t long to be back in the political playing field. “I don’t miss it one bit. I’m not short of platforms to express myself now, but when I was leader of the DA, it was all-consuming and that sucked all the oxygen from me. By the time I left, I had really done and had enough.”

At the time, a few people in power asked him when he was retiring, but it was his late father-in-law who made it quite clear. “He called me, and said, ‘You are like Alexander the Great, your party has done what it can do, you have no more kingdoms to conquer, what are you going to do now? You aren’t going to become president and you have been there for 30 years.’ I realised he was right, so I resigned and went to Harvard without a career plan,” said Leon.

While he lives happily in Cape Town and believes in a future here, he’s not happy with the status quo in the country.

At the end of 2019, South Africa’s borrowing costs were a billion rand per working day. “When I finished this book, we were borrowing R2 billion rand a day, so debt-service costs doubled in a year. We have a big problem,” he said.

“All our essential policies are wrong, the people we have implemented to manage them aren’t performing, and we need to change both. Unfortunately with Ramaphosa, he just appoints another committee, usually headed by the wrong person, and then diddles around and doesn’t make decisions.”

Leon said that although there was talk about course correction, he had seen little sign of it. “If you keep going in the same direction, doing the same thing, you are going to go over a cliff. And we are pretty much on the cliff’s edge at the moment.”

He insists the country’s saving grace is the private sector, which has “stepped in to mind the gap that has been left by the state” and those within it do it willingly and with world-class standards.

“These are people who want to contribute to this country and have the skillset and right political views, yet they are debarred because they are white,” he says. “When a country throws away its knowledge base, that’s just ludicrous. These people want to help and contribute, but can’t.

“They then leave and go overseas, but the country suffers, the tax payers suffer, the young kids who would have had a better education with an inspired university suffer. You then live in a mediocre place, lead and governed by mediocre people, not because of a racist view, but from a knowledge-based view.”

But Leon is confident that “change will happen”. He makes a comparison between the ANC and the Israeli Labour Party. “They [Labour] lost power after being arrogant, and that’s what happens with time. What will replace the ANC is another question, but there will be a South Africa that won’t be governed by the ANC. Whether its successor is better or worse, or corrupt, I can’t guarantee.”

Being married to an Israeli woman, Leon is very aware of the ruling party’s sentiments about Israel, and he finds it distressing. “When Michal and I got married, the word in the ANC was that I was marrying a Mossad agent,” he said. “Posters went up in Athlone [in Cape Town], which is a very Muslim area, and they said a vote for the DA is a vote for Israel. It had barbed wire and blood printed on it.

“The ANC is fundamentally anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and there is a fair amount of antisemitism. In the book, I mention an extraordinary headline that was in a national newspaper in 2019: ‘Cyril’s in the pocket of the Jews’. There is all that recognisable negative narrative going on in the background.”

What really riled him was when Cape Town was running out of water and Israel was offering to help. “South Africa took pride in boycotting this, and the minister of water affairs went off to Iran to get water,” he said.

He insists that too often, the ANC’s argument isn’t about the borders of Israel, which are worth negotiating, it’s about the very existence of Israel. “And on that, it removes any room for any conversation.”

South Africa makes as if it’s an important global player and Israel is irrelevant, but it’s not like that anymore, Leon said. “This world view is simplistic and counterproductive for our country, but deeply ingrained. They could do this posturing under Mandela because he was a world icon, but South Africa has fallen so far that nobody is really interested in us shouting these sentiments about Israel.”

He doesn’t pull his punches in regard to those within the party he represented either. Leon said he thought at one stage that the DA was in serious trouble, and told Mmusi Maimane, then DA leader. Maimane called him in to sit on a panel of three to help guide them forward.

“They were a victim of their own success. They had done so well in the 2016 elections, but this had happened because the folk in the township stayed home rather than voting, while the suburbanites went out in their masses.”

Leon said the DA’s mistakes included not factoring in Ramaphosa coming in, the party soft-pedalling what it stood for, getting involved in internal fights, and alienating Afrikaans voters. “They made the mistake of thinking they [the Afrikaners] had nowhere else to go, and the truth is that voters always have choices. If politicians think for a single second that they have a captive market, they are in the wrong profession.”

He spoke of having a “complex relationship with his successor, Helen Zille, whom he recruited to the party”. Admitting to having had a number of disagreements, he said her record as a leader was “crowned with great success”. Although “she was purpose-driven and governed well”, he isn’t sure about “second and third acts in politics”.

As for Maimane (who took over from Zille), he said, “He is a great chap, but evidence of his leadership was profoundly absent.” He referred to him as “conflict averse” and “pointing in two directions at the same time” at the helm, which didn’t serve him as leader. Under Maimane, Leon said, “There was an overwhelming sense that the party was parev, not really one thing or another.”

However, he has confidence in the present leader of the opposition, John Steenhuisen, with whom he has a close relationship.

He identifies strongly as being Jewish, but said he wasn’t “a great practitioner”. However, he believes that the future of the Jews in South Africa “will be no better or worse than the rest of the white people in the country”. He spoke of being taken with how the Jewish community was “exemplary at looking after its own” and other communities.

“I’m really impressed with the fact that there are people who have incredibly busy lives and still insist on giving back,” Leon said. “Provided there is that kind of leadership and generosity, this community should be okay.”