inside politics

Analysis of and commentary on South African politics.

Tag: Ryan Coetzee

The media’s short-sighted hostility to the DA’s 2009 ‘Stop Zuma’ campaign


I am going to try and post to Inside Politics more often. One way of doing that, relatively easily for me, is to post some of the many archives I have produced over the years, perhaps with a bit of analysis upfront. Here follows an example: a collection of quotes from the commentariat on the DA’s 2009 ‘Stop Zuma’ posters, which were widely derided as evidence of fearmongering, poor strategy and the unfair personalisation of the election. With the benefit of hindsight, of course, the campaign and the message were clearly both important and prescient. The DA’s message is often overlooked in favour of such considerations as style and tone. Nothing makes the case better than the story of the ‘Stop Zuma’ posters.

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Causes and implications of the Liberal Democrats 2015 election result


InsidePolitics FEATURE: This is a fuller and updated version of the article that appeared in the Guardian today, by Ryan Coetzee, who served as election strategist for the Liberal Democrats over the course of the 2015 elections. In it, he sets out the causes and implications of the result of the election for the party.

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An erosion of the DA’s liberal values?


InsidePoliticsFEATURE: In yesterday’s Sunday Times, DA national spokesperson Mmusi Maimane wrote an article which, while attempting to advocate against stereotyping, ended up doing exactly that; seemingly the reflection of his own personal views about ‘Africaness’, Ubuntu and the inherent characteristics of ‘Africans’. It is troubling and indicative of a broader challenge facing the party: how best to safeguard its core beliefs and values without pandering to ‘identity politics’ and group identity.

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10 Questions with Ryan Coetzee


INTERVIEW: The DA’s Head of Strategy and Special Advisor to the Western Cape Premier, Ryan Coetzee, will soon be working for Britain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, on his party’s strategy in government. I asked him some questions about strategy, why it is important, how best to understand it and whether politics lends itself to a different approach to strategy, as opposed to the way it is practiced in other fields.

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The ANC’s intolerant attitude to tolerance


SERIES: The instantaneous and dramatic nature of current affairs lends itself to a kind of historical amnesia, one where the captivating nature of those things unfolding today, causes one to forget the bigger picture. From the Archives aims to put forward the odd reminder that, more often than not, history is merely repeating itself. In all likelihood, somewhere, someone has already experienced and commented on those all-consuming issues that appear to have materialised only yesterday. Today, a trip back to 2005 and an illustration of the ANC’s intolerant attitude to tolerance; one which its more recent response to The Spear suggests has only become stronger with time.

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The liberal individual, group identity and human solidarity


FEATURE: The case is often made that liberalism, by its nature, is a cold, selfish ideology. Former President Thabo Mbeki, for example, went out of his way to paint the DA in this light. Ryan Coetzee responds to this criticism in the piece below and draws a distinction between ‘identity politics’ and the liberal individual, arguing it is in fact the former, rather than the latter, that entrenches alienation.

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